What a shame that in the end it was left to the Marathi language television channels to pay tribute to Pandit Bhimsen Joshi. Bhimsen Joshi was born in what is now Karnataka, died in Maharashtra, and learnt his first formal lessons in Hindustani classical music in Gwalior, which is now in Madhya Pradesh. He lived and learnt from gurus as far away from home as Kolkata and Jalandhar. Pandit Bhimsen Joshi belonged to India. His voice was a gift of the Gods, his life was of his own making.
Few classical musicians and singers are as pan-Indian as the late Bhimsen Joshi. Not only was he a blend of north and south, east and west, as he often proudly stated, he was a blend of many traditions. His gurus included the likes of Ustad Hafiz Ali Khan of Gwalior and Guru Sawai Gandharva, in whose name he organised an annual festival in the one city he called his home, Pune. In the week since he passed away tributes have flowed effortlessly from all corners of the country, mourning the silencing of the ‘voice of India’. Pandit Bhimsen Joshi’s was truly a pan-Indian voice.
His life mirrored India’s progress over a turbulent century. Running away from home at the tender age of 11 in search of a guru who would teach him how to sing, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi showed the importance of hard work even when one was born with a divine talent. His rigorous hard work paid him rich dividends both in terms of the life that he was able to lead and the fame that he earned. From a young man who worked as a household servant in the home of a guru to be able to afford one meal every day and learn at the guru’s feet, Bhimsen Joshi grew to become a world-famous artist who was able to bequeath to his own children a life of comfort and well-being. With nothing more than devotion in his mind and music in his voice, Bhimsen Joshi rose to the pinnacle of fame in the world of classical and devotional music.
He had a human side to his personality. His love for a good drink, his penchant for driving a Mercedes Benz and suchlike human frailties were what made him a normal human being and not the superman that he could well be thought of as, given the power of his voice. Post-Independence India has been fortunate to have had a generation of great classical artistes like Ustad Bismillah Khan, Pandit Ravi Shankar, M S Subbalakshmi, Balamuralikrishna and scores of others who have revived the classical tradition and popularised it. New generations of Indians have become captivated by the beauty and divinity of classical Indian music. Few nations in the world, fewer still in the post-colonial world, have so rediscovered, recovered and revitalised their classical traditions.
While India has been open to cultural influences from around the world, and popular music in India is influenced by Western, Asian, African and Latin American music, and even as new trends are experimented with, the revival of classical Indian music, both Hindustani and Carnatic, show the depth and range of their appeal. The emergence of new generations of classical musicians and singers is owed in no small measure to the inspiration provided by the generation of Bharat Ratna Pandit Bhimsen Joshi.
