At one time Pakistan had a plethora of top ranking vocalists and instrumentalists, appearing as though the river of creativity would never run out. So much so that it was difficult to determine who was the best in the pack. Due to their relative abundance, it was easier to identify the virtues of each and assess according to their strengths, as it should be, rather than to evaluate with one blanket and simplistic criteria.

Pakistan was in a sense a lucky destination – as Muslim vocalists and musicians migrated their due to their faith, and as it happened many leading practitioners happened to be Muslim. Suddenly, within the span of a few months, there were many outstanding musicians huddled together in one country. Their abundance, instead of being cherished led to complaisance regarding the nourishment of talent. This took for granted the very ephemeral nature and coincidence of the situation, and sufficient steps were not taken to ensure its continuation and sustenance.

It was not easy to grasp that traditional methods and systems of creating musicians and their nexus – which includes patronage – was all but disappearing and needed to be replaced by systems more in synch with the contemporary social and economic compulsions of our society.

The ancient and time tested method of patronage was guaranteed by the elite and ruling classes was a familial set-up which preserved and nourished musical knowledge. This practice began fading with the creation of a new country and the abolition of princely states. Most outstanding practitioners were products of this environment which left them without shelter and sustenance, left to fend for themselves in the market and compete with more popular forms of expression.

Iqbal Bano too was the product of such a system. Having made her mark post independence, after a successful but short stint in film, she was trained at home, as is the wont with hereditary musicians – her mother Zahra Bay of Rohtak was a famous singer from her time. She was further under the tutelage of Ustad Chand Khan and Ustad Kareem Khan. Post partition she moved to Multan, were she lived for many years before settling down in Lahore.

Before her introduction in film, she had emerged as a promising exponent of kheyal and thumri, performing frequently on radio. After the creation of Pakistan, ghazal emerged as a popular singing form, and some of the most outstanding exponents reached the apex of this scale. In the process, significant contributions to the evolution of this style took place.

Bano, began singing in the upper register, but with the passage of time began to stress more on the middle, which gave her the opportunity to embellish her singing with grace. Her initial phase in the 1950s and 60s, was full throated, where she used to throw her voice in the traditional manner. In the 1970s, however, she explored the lower and middle octaves which added an undeniable richness to her vocal profile. Most of her memorable numbers, singing Ghalib and Faiz were sung in this period.

Ghazal was considered a happy compromise, as a poetical form, it had greater links with the Central Asian and Persian literary traditions. Ghazal, however, had survived on popular forums like the salons of dancing girls, which were more accessible to the people. The audience was admitted on the basis of their ability to pay rather than rank, position or any other societal eminence.

The challenge was to lift the ghazal in terms of music from its plebeian status. The singers who were trained in classical forms and were suited to sing the kheyal and thumri, brought their musical knowledge to the singing of the ghazal. The more romantic strain in our gaiki which is possibly expressed in the short behlavas, murkis and zamzamas were creatively employed in this new emerging form.

Bano emerged with her rendition of Faiz’s dashte tanhai, composed by Mehdi Zaheer, she sang it without compromising the quality of music. Usually the singing of great poetry, is dictated by the predominance of the note and the rendition only follows as a supplement to the written word. It takes a great singer to avoid playing a subordinate role in the equation, and many great vocalists avoided this tension between the word and note, choosing instead to use their own lyrics or from unknown poets.

The unity of word and note cannot be directed towards, but rather is reached as a synthesis of a sensibility which exposes its totality. Dashte tanhi with its ambiguity and mystifying sense of loss had left a diffused impression, which needed musical discovery to facilitate discovering the unknown and unformulated.

In the 1980s, Bano rendered Hum daikhain gay composed by Israr Ahmed, which was more of a rousing tarana, keeping with the lyrics, which for many became an anthem to be sung and chanted. Its rhythmic accompaniment and effervescent tempo went quite well with the lyrics, perhaps more in synch with an everyday understanding of equation, between word and note.

Two of her contributions stand out against the entire backdrop of high-quality singing; her decision to sing nazm in itself, and the singing of ghazals in the lower and middle
registers.

The author is a culture critic based in Lahore