A tribute site for Pandit Nikhil Banerjee
(14th October 1931 -
27th January 1986)
I dedicate this page to our friends Swati and Ratan
Mukherjee,
who trusted us with their beloved
brother/brother-in-law.
Their daughter Sheema,
here
accompanying her uncle,
has her own web
site.
And here
is Ratan accompanying his beloved
friend/cousin/brother-in-law.
A note,
inside a card, that I wrote to Ratan for his 90th birthday (1st January 2020.)
A truly remarkable film tribute has been created to Panditji's memory
by Steven Baigel. With Steven's permission I have included his work
- a veritable labour of love - at the foot of this web page.
(In March 2019 - visiting a sister who lives in Mill Valley CA - I had the
great pleasure of meeting up with Steven for several hours...)
Author Alan Tootill
haas a wonderful Nikhil Banerjee site
here.
Pandit Nikhil Banerjee was the most wonderful
musician I ever heard. I first heard him in London on
Saturday 22nd October 1983
(concert
poster),
then in London on Saturday 24th November 1984
(its concert
poster), and finally in Dublin on Friday
21st June 1985. In that year Pandit Nikhil
Banerjee gave only three concerts in Europe: in London,
in Bath, and here - at our invitation - in Dublin, on
European Music Day. I haven't reproduced our
concert poster, simply because it is too large to scan,
and I take this opportunity to correct that it
wrongly billed his visit as being his
first visit to Ireland; in my ignorance I
believed it to be so.
Nikhil Banerjee's first visit to Ireland was in late
October 1972, here at the invitation of the then
Music
Association of Ireland, and a very brief
account
of that visit was published in the Irish Times on 31
Oct. 1972.
That first visit of Nikhil Banerjee's is alluded to
("... most notably, Nikhil Banerjee in his recital in
TCD about ten years ago...") in this split
review, headed UNMISTIFIED ADMIRATION -
review1
and
review2
- of the March 1982 Ravi Shankar concert in the National
Concert Hall (NCH). The reviewer
Douglas
(Hyde) Sealy was, incidentally, a grandson
of Douglas Hyde, the first President of Ireland. It is a
great regret of mine that I never met Douglas. (In
October 1981, I bought the Peggy Holroyde book to which
Douglas refers; it was in the early days of my renewed
interest in Indian music.)
(Incidentally, I attended that Ravi Shankar NCH
recital - my third time to hear him, the first (with
Yehudi Menuhin) and second times had been in London in
the late 1960s, when I was a student there. After his
Dublin recital I met him and Alla Rakha backstage - not
because I knew him, which I certainly didn't - but
because a poet friend of a friend of mine wanted to give
him a gift of a bodhrán (an Irish drum). He
received us graciously, but I refrained from telling him
that I first knew of his music through Yehudi Menuhin's
1966 album Menuhin at Fifty.
The following month - April 1982 - the mathematician
Anand Pillay (who also played sitar) came to stay
at our home here in Dublin and, having looked through my
Indian music LPs, remarked: John, there's a very big
gap in your collection; you have nothing by
Nikhil Banerjee.... Then, the following
month, the BBC broadcast a Nikhil Banerjee
performance of Rag Kedar. I listened ...
it made not the slightest impression on me ...
but my great good fortune was that I had
recorded it, listened to it again and again -
looking for something - and then one day
it dawned on me: this is real music,
fundamental music, and in that moment -
without knowing it at the time - my future life
was determined... )
Subrata Chowdhury uploaded
that 1982 BBC studio recording of Kedar to
Youtube. The sound quality is not what it should be, but
the magic is there nevertheless. The BBC ought to issue
a clean version of the original on CD.
Of his 21 June 1985 visit here to Dublin, musicologist
Dr. Barra Boydell reviewing for the Irish Times wrote:
"It happens perhaps a handful of times in a
lifetime, an experience such as we
had on Friday evening at Carysfort College,
Blackrock, when the outstanding Indian musician,
Nikhil Banerjee (sitar), with Anindo Chatterjee
(tabla) and Sheema Mukherjee (tanpura),
performed. ... Hopefully, a return visit will be
possible, which nobody who believes in music
would want to miss." Dr.
Boydell's full review is given further down this page.
(Incidentally, Dr. Boydell is a son of Professor Brian
Boydell, who composed the tribute
In
Memoriam Mahatma Gandhi in 1948,
months after Mahatma Gandhi's assassination. Dr. Boydell
was also the joint editor of the
2014
published The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland.)
Before reading further, you might wish to hear Panditji's beautiful,
gentle voice in this thirteen minute
Interview with Nikhil Banerjee.
I myself have an audio file for this interview, one which I used to have
up on the earlier version of this web page, but I haven't been able
(yet) to re-insert it in my updated site. I would prefer to have my own
insert, and not rely on some external reference which could vanish at
some future date.
A Tribute to Nikhil Banerjee by Nikhil
Ghosh. [Parenthetical comments are my own, JC]
" He was one of the finest sitarists of our times, who remained a
student at heart in spite of overwhelming success and adulation. He
has left his mark on the sands of time. We were very close
to each other since I first met him in 1949, when I was accompanying
Ustad Allauddin Khan at a concert in Delhi, and Nikhil [who was then
only eighteen] was at the tamboura [what a memorable evening that must
have been].
In later years he was also associated with Sangit
Mahabharati since its inception in 1956. He gave several
performances in aid of Sangit Mahabharati in its early years and finally
a recital in 1983, which, by popular recollection, was one of his most
moving recitals. I was on the tabla. Decades of memorable performances
together came to my mind in a flash, when he asked me for my Ijazat
(permission) saying, "Nikhilda, shall I start?"
Ever since I knew him, his enquiring mind always prompted him to ask me
about so many technicalities, handling talas like Dhamar, Pancham
Sawari, Nasruk and more significantly, about musical concepts and
attitudes, during those long train journeys for our numerous concert
tours all over India. He was one of those few sitarists who performed in
unusual talas with an enviable elegance.
What was most noteworthy about him was that he spent hours in
contemplation. He knew well that he would derive his strength from this.
That was how his musical energy on stage never showed any signs of
flagging in an entire recital.
The younger generation of today's musicians will be missing an example
of true musicianship. " [End of Nikhil Ghosh's tribute.]
Recently (2023) dipping into a box of letters from Ratan Mukherjee I
came upon a treasured
letter
of 1993 from Nikhil Ghosh. It dates from a time when I used to source
books on Indian music and dance from Madras/Chennai, Bombay/Mumbai,
Delhi, Hyderabad, ...
Addendum December 2022. Two delightful recent internet
discoveries of mine has been these:
(1). This truly wonderful, moving, Doordarshan live recording of Pt. Nikhil
Banerjee Sitar Maestro, which is beautifully introduced by
Shubhendra
Rao.
Incidentally, the young tanpura accompanist, in the Dhun
section at the end, is Nikhil Banerjee's elder daughter Mita Tagore.
(2). Although I cannot speak Bengali
(it has a beautiful script, immedaitely recognisable from seeing films
of Satyajit Ray), nevertheless I was delighted to come upon this
Pandit
Nikhil Banerjee interview in Bengali. It is lovely to hear
him speak in his first language, and to hear him sing in Bengali near
the end.
The song near the end is evidently Tagore's Tomaye Ami Peyechigo
Jatobaar, sung
here, "a rare
recording of Legendary Sitarist Pandit Nikhil Banerjee".
When I began this tribute site to Panditji in the summer of 1999 - when
I first obtained a web site - a web search for 'Nikhil Banerjee' brought
up only two returns: the wonderful
Raga Records site
in New York, and my own. Now, years later, any web search will bring
thousands of returns.
This web page contains the following sections:
-
A photograph taken by Ira Landgarten.
-
Panditji's visit to Dublin, June 21st-23rd,
1985.
-
Dr Barra Boydell's Irish Times review of
Panditji's concert.
-
In July 1985 Ratan Mukherjee informed us that...
-
Unpublished obituary notice that I submitted to
the Irish Times.
-
A photograph from December 1940 of nine-year old
Nikhil, with his younger brother Tapan.
-
Fifteen photographs from Panditji's concert, two
privately taken (by me) photographs, and a photograph
taken by Ira Landgarten.
-
Review - from the New York Times - of Nikhil
Banerjee's last concert outside India, in Carnegie Hall,
November 1985.
-
An important, extended article on Nikhil
Banerjee by Nilaksha Gupta, together with a note of
appreciation by Anindya Banerjee, both articles from the
Calcutta Telegraph, February 1986.
-
Reflections on Nikhil Banerjee by Mohan Nadkarni
(amongst other things, the biographer of the legendary
vocalist Pandit Bhimsen Joshi), from the ILLUSTRATED
WEEKLY OF INDIA, MARCH 9, 1986.
-
A (text) interview with Ira Landgarten.
-
Some Nikhil Banerjee links (I will add others as
the years go by):
Anandaroop Bhattacharya used to have a wonderful
tribute site, which vanished, then reappeared, but then,
sadly, vanished yet again (in October 2002). Does anyone
know anything about what happened to Anandaroop's site?
Please let me know if you have any information about
him.
Addendum December 2022. By a stroke of great luck
I have just been able to rediscover Anandaroop
Bhattacharya's tribute site (as it stood in 2001), and
it may be of independent interest to readers to know
how I managed to do so.
I do not know how well known is the truly
remarkable, non-profit website Wayback Machine,
but I will illustrate by an example how it works: my
first website (which no longer exists, it was at
my place-of-work) had this address
www.spd.dcu.ie/johnbcos. Now, if I enter that
no-longer-existing address in the above Wayback Machine
home page, I discover that the earliest occasion on
which I made a link to Anandaroop Bhattacharya's
tribute site is on the 11th February 2001,
and
here
it is.
The following photograph of Pandit
Nikhil Banerjee is from Ira
Landgarten's wonderful web site,
Raga Records
(one which I unreservedly recommend). The photograph was
taken by Ira Landgarten in Panditji's music room at his
Calcutta home in 1973.
-
Two letters (below), one from
Satyajit Ray,
the other from
Anita Desai.
A photo of Pandits Nikhil Banerjee and Satyajit Ray
together.
According to Andrew Robinson's biography (1989, my copy
a gift, in 1989, from my wife Mary) of Satyajit Ray,
p.280, "[Ray's documentary] The Inner Eye, by
contrast, is a small masterpiece... . Binode Bihari
Mukherjee, its subject, was Satyajit's inspiration at
Santiniketan [where Tagore established his famous
university] ... ", and at p.282, "He [Ray] has given the
whole of himself to The Inner Eye, including his
marvellous feeling for music. This really comes to the
fore at the end, with a stirring, radiant
composition on sitar by Nikhil Banerjee.
The Inner Eye is viewable at Youtube.
-
A little note from Catherine (our younger
daughter), from the end of May 1985, about one month
before Panditji's visit.
Some final (at the initial time of writing) remarks.
-
A later addition. Steven Baigel's moving film tribute to Nikhil Banerjee.
-
Added early/mid 2023. Extended commentary on the contents of our concert programme.
In Ferbuary 1985 my wife (Mary) and I arranged with Ratan Mukherjee to
bring the great Indian sitarist Pandit Nikhil Banerjee to Ireland.
(Ratan Mukherjee is married to Nikhil Banerjee's sister Swati, and
Ratan's sister, Purabi, studied for 35 years with Ustad Amir Khan, the
renowned Indian
classical singer. See
Nikhil Banerjee's thoughts on the music of Amir Khan, and
this
photograph
of Panditji, Ustad Amir Khan, and Purabi Mukherjee from 1970. At the end
of June 1986 I had the for-a-lifetime memorable experience of hearing
Purabi sing in the music room at the home of Ratan and Swati; Ratan
accompanied on tabla, Sheema on tanpura, while Swati and I were their
only listeners, sitting on the floor...)
The date on which we agreed turned out to be the 21st of June
(which happened to be "European Music Day"; 1985 was
designated "European Music Year"). I wanted Nikhil Banerjee's
concert to be in the National Concert Hall, but it was already booked;
instead I booked the Main Auditorium at Carysfort College (where I was
then a member of its Mathematics Department), which venue I actually
considered to be the best in Dublin for Indian classical music. Months
in advance I invited Charles Acton to review the concert, but he was
already engaged for that evening; instead the Irish Times
reviewer was Dr. Barra Boydell (whose review is given below).
For Nikhil Banerjee's concert we produced a 16-page programme (Note of
January 2023. I am trying to add it, page-by-page, at the foot of this
web page) - dedicated, with her permission, to the renowned Indian
classical dancer,
Alarmel Valli
- which included a two-page essay
(Leslie1
and
Leslie2),
Understanding Indian Music, by the author and musicologist,
Leslie Shepard (Irish Times obituary notice, 4th Sept 2004:
Leslieobit1
and
Leslieobit2).
The programme contained advertisements from the
Chester Beatty Library and Gallery of
Oriental Art
(and although he had never met me, nor knew anything about me, the then
Director, Dr. Wilfrid Lockwood - who had come to Ireland from Cambridge
University Library - offered to purchase page 2 of any future programme
that we produced...), Waltons Musical Instruments Galleries, the Moghul
Indian Restaurant, lapis limited, Irish National Insurance,
Sharwood's, the Gramophone Company of India, Books from India (London),
Collets (London), Indian Music and Dance Promotions Ltd. (ourselves),
[name removed], Hodges Figgis Bookshop, and Ariane Art Gallery.
One page of the programme consisted of
quotations
from two short stories of Anita Desai's, and another page of
quoted
from a novel of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's.
Some photographs from the concert are shown at the end of this page; the
concert photographs were taken at the time without my knowledge. For the
evening I had hired the College's technician - Rod Walsh - to look after
the sound etc. Some days after the concert he gave me some photos that
he took during the concert; I was amazed, as I had not seen any flash go
off (and would have been shocked had anyone used flash...), but Rod
informed me he had used 'fast film', something of which I had never
heard until then. I bought the photos and negatives from him, and I
regard the photographs as being available to anyone who wishes to copy
or print them.
I have had many requests over the years for a recording of Panditji's
concert, and I have had to tell that we made no recording. On Wednesday
12th June, the week before the concert, I received a phone call from the
office of the Irish Tourist Board in Paris. They told me that French
television had been attempting to find where we lived to arrange - if we
were willing - to televise the concert, but we declined; we did not want
any distractions during the concert.
Note of Thursday 1st December 2022. For many years I have wanted
to scan the pages of that 16-page concert programme and place them up
here in this site, and now I have finally decided to do so. Why has
it taken me so long to do so? I suppose I felt that there
wouldn't be anyone who was interested, but now I have decided that I owe
it to those generous souls who decided to place advertisments in the
programme, for it was their generousity that paid for most of the
printing costs. There is a small story behind the placing of each one of
those advertisments - worth recording in themselves perhaps - and I have
inserted all at the end of this web page, immediately after my Steven
Baigel corner.
Review from the Irish Times of Monday, June 24, 1985
Indian Music at Carysfort College, Blackrock
By Barra Boydell
"
It happens perhaps a handful of times in a lifetime, an
experience such as we had on Friday evening at Carysfort
College, Blackrock, when the outstanding Indian musician, Nikhil
Banerjee (sitar), with Anindo Chatterjee (tabla) and Sheema
Mukherjee (tanpura), performed. On European Music Day, when
musicians throughout Europe have been playing, we enjoyed an
experience which showed how truly international great music is
on a worldwide scale, for though the traditions of Indian and of
European music are far removed from each other, these
performances brought us into contact with a common truth.
Nikhil Banerjee is distinguished from some sitar players perhaps
more widely known in the West in that he does not tailor the
length of his ragas to suit the supposed Occidental preference
for shorter works, and also by the sheer brilliance of his
technique and musical invention. In his playing, as in Anindo
Chatterjee's, the world seemed contained in his fingertips.
Two ragas were played, Puriya Kalyan and Zila Khafi, both
building up to breathtakingly beautiful exchanges between sitar
and tabla. Although each raga lasted an hour, time did not exist
while they played, and in the first I reached a state of ecstasy
only to discover higher, unknown states as the ragas developed.
I am deeply grateful to John and Mary Cosgrave, who brought
Nikhil Banerjee to this country. Hopefully, a return visit will
be possible, which nobody who believes in music would want to
miss."
Here is a
scan
of the original review.
In July 1985, Ratan Mukherjee informed us that Nikhil Banerjee would
perform for us again in Dublin in 1986, and indeed that he would mould
his European concert dates around ours. Later that year we agreed a date
with management in the National Concert Hall: Wednesday 22nd
October 1986. It would have been my fourth time to have heard him in
live performance.
Ratan Mukherjee phoned us on the evening of Tuesday 28th
January 1986 to tell us that Nikhil Banerjee - his beloved
brother-in-law - had died at his home on the previous day, having
completed his morning music practice.
This photo of Pandit Nikhil Banerjee
is from Amigo Records (Sweden)
Unpublished Obituary Notice
(submitted to the Irish Times, Friday 31st January 1986)
John Cosgrave
"
Pandit Nikhil Banerjee, one of India's greatest and most loved
musicians, died at his home in Calcutta on Monday 27th
January, following a heart attack. A gentle, modest, unassuming man of
incomparable genius, his death will be mourned throughout the world by
all lovers of Indian classical music.
Born in Calcutta on October 14th 1931, his first teacher was
his father, Jitendra Nath Banerjee. A prodigy, he won the All-Bengal
Sitar Competition at the age of nine, and then worked for All-India
Radio. In 1947 he became a disciple of
Ustad Allauddin
Khan,
the most renowned music teacher of North India, and a direct descendant
of the famous saint-musician Miyan Tansen, one of the 'nine gems' of the
court of the emperor Akbar the Great. Nikhil Banerjee studied with
Allauddin Khan for seven years, living with him as a member of his
family; he called him
'Baba' ('father'), and revered him. He was also a disciple of Allauddin
Khan's son, the famous sarod master
Ustad Ali Akbar Khan.
His concert career began in 1954, and he toured outside India many
times. In 1968 he was awarded the Indian Government title 'Padma Sri,'
and was named outstanding musician of the year by the Sangeet Natak
Akademi (the National Academy of Performing Arts). His last public was
in Calcutta on Friday 24th January 1986; outside India
it was in Carnegie Hall, New York, on Saturday 9th November
1985.
Last June he visited Dublin with his wife Roma and daughter Debdutta,
his sister Mrs. Swati Mukherjee and her husband Ratan, their daughter
Sheema, and the tabla master Anindo Chatterjee.
Of his concert here, Michael Dervan wrote in the Sunday Tribune that he
had conveyed a true flavour of the spirituality for which Indian music
is renowned, and that despite the undemonstrative introverted of his
playing his concert had been enthusiastically received.
Writing in the Irish Times, Dr. Barra Boydell recorded this:
"It happens perhaps a handful of times in a lifetime, an
experience such as we had on Friday evening at Carysfort
College, Blackrock, when the outstanding Indian musician, Nikhil
Banerjee (sitar), with Anindo Chatterjee (tabla) and Sheema
Mukherjee (tanpura) performed ... Two ragas were played,
"Puriya Kalyan" and "Zila Khafi", both
building up to breathtakingly beautiful exchanges between sitar
and tabla. Although each raga lasted an hour, time did not exist
while they played, and in the first I reached a state of ecstasy
only to discover higher, unknown states as the ragas
developed...Hopefully, a return visit will be possible, which
nobody who believes in music would want to
miss."
We had just completed arrangements for such a return - he was to perform
in the National Concert Hall on Wednesday 22nd October 1986 -
when we heard the tragic news from Ratan Mukherjee. We are filled with
grief at the thought that we will never again see his beautiful,
thoughtful face. In common with all people who care about Indian music,
we will be eternally grateful that we heard his music, and owe more to
him than any words can express. Our thoughts are now for his wife and
two daughters, and all his relatives. Their loss is beyond
description."
A note of Wed. 3rd. Jan. 2024. In my obituary notice above I
noted that Nikhil Banerjee won the All-Bengal Sitar Competition
at the age of nine, but I failed to note that Tapan, his younger
brother, won the tabla competition at the same (inaugural) event.
Nikhil, grandfather, Tapan
Fifteen photographs (#2 had a flaw)
(1,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14,
15,
16)
taken at Nikhil Banerjee's concert at Carysfort College on
Friday 21st June 1985. These photographs were
discretely taken - using fast film (no flash) (without my
fore-knowledge) during the concert by Rod Walsh, who handled the
sound system for the evening. Recently Ira Landgarten generously
offered to transfer the negatives to jpg files, so that I could
make them publicly available at my web site. A big thank you to
Ira Landgarten (whose work on behalf of Raga Records will be
known to you) for his time and effort.
Here are two privately taken photographs from that weekend: Mrs. Swati
Mukherjee (Panditji's sister) with our daughters Catherine (left) and
Marie (right).
I took
this photograph outside our home on the morning of Sunday 23 June 1985, and
here
is a photograph of Sheema Mukherjee outside our home on the same morning.
I also make available
here
a photograph of Panditji with Anindo Chatterjee, taken by Ira Landgarten
(and used with his permission) in Panditji's home in 1973.
I have typed the following from a hard copy of the original review.
__________________________________________________________
The New York Times, Wednesday, November 13, 1985
Music
Noted in Brief
_________________________________________
The World Music Institute and New Audiences presented the Indian
sitarist Nikhil Banerjee and a troupe of seven professional folk
musicians from the Thar Desert of Nowthwest India at Carnegie Hall on
Saturday, providing an inspiring evening of music. It was difficult to
imagine any better-known Indian performers presenting a program more
vital, kaleidoscopic and moving than this one.
The desert musicians, who performed first, were members of the Langas
and Manghaniyars, two castes of folk musicians prevalent in the arid
northern province of Rajasthan. Together and individually, they filled
the hall with bold, ringing voices and lively instrumental music of a
sort one finds mostly in the wide open spaces of deserts and steppes.
Sadique Khan weilded a pair of wooden clappers or castanets called
khartal with virtuosity and canny showmanship while singing in a
commandingly outgoing manner, though the melismatic fluency of the young
Bundu Khan made him the evening's outstanding vocalist. Karim Khan's
solo on the murali, a single-reed horn with two fingering-pipes and a
drone chamber, and the satara double-flutes played by the same musician
and by Mehardin Khan in duets, enlivened the concert with music that was
melodically and texturally ravishing, and ably supported by the supple
drumming of Ramjan Khan. The other musicians distinguished themselves on
several varieties of bowed lutes, with Sakar Khan's percussive playing
of the kamaycha suggesting a historical link between this ancient bowed
instrument and the modern plucked lute - the sarod - played by Ali Akbar
Khan.
Nikhil Banerjee, following this intensely upbeat opening with a
classical raga, proved himself a master of the sitar. His long, gorgeous
alap, the meditative opening exposition of the raga, demonstrated that
in the proper hands, the sitar can be as subtle an instrument as the
veena, its extremely ancient ancestor. And later, as he played
cat-and-mouse with the virtuostic tabla drummer Zakir Hussain, the
extraordinary fluidity and assurance of his rhythmic ideas and phrasing
set a pace that would have left most of the international
"stars" of Indian music far behind.
Robert Palmer
Note of July 2023.
By chance I met those Langa-Manghaniyar musicians here in Dublin
earlier that year, and I have only in the past few days written about
them in the
photos corner of my
website. (What I wrote about them is at/near photo #61 (Manmohan
Thakore); the exact location will change whenever I add a new
photograph to that page.)
Articles by Nilaksha Gupta (three and a half pages) and
Anindya Banerjee (one and a half pages) from the Calcutta
Telegraph of February 1986.
Page 1 scan,
Page 2 scan,
Page 3 scan,
Page 4 scan,
and Page 5 scan.
Those pages were sent to me in a
letter
of 24th June 2005 from our friend Ratan Mukherjee.
Article by Mohan Nadkarni (I am grateful to Ashi and Nishi Doshi
- twin daughters of Ambassador Kiran Doshi and Mrs Doshi - who gave me
the original article in 1986). Because this two page article appeared in
large page format (A3 size) I had to split each page in two for scanning
purposes.
First page, top half.
First page, bottom
half.
Second page, top
half.
Second page, bottom
half.
See
also.
(Addendum December 2022. A delightful recent internet discovery
of mine has been this treasure trove: (what might be called)
The Collected Writings of Mohan
Nadkarni. The site has an especially good search facility;
for example, entering 'Nikhil Banerjee' in the 'Search for' box, and
clicking on 'Search', brings up
this page, a
more readable version of the original ILLUSTRATED WEEKLY OF INDIA, MARCH
9, 1986 article, the one I multiply scanned above.)
Mohan Nadkarni's tribute finished as follows: "...The half-a-dozen
commercial discs he has cut for the Gramophone Company of India
are now all that we have [my emphasis, J.C.] to cherish
and preserve as mementos of his greatness and, let me say it
again, of the best sitar maestro of our time." Happily this
is no longer the case, as there are very many commercial recordings -
LPs, cassettes, CDs - now available, not to mention a huge number of
Youtube recordings that individuals have posted over the years (I am not
going to name them, leaving it to interested persons to seek out
themselves). Here I give a
complete
listing
of all the Nikhil Banerjee recordings from my personal collection.
The text of an (extraordinary) interview with Ira
Landgarten, the day before Nikhil Banerjee's last U.S.
performance at Carnegie Hall, New York (1985). From booklet accompanying
Raga CD-207 (Purabi Kalyan). Copyright 1991 Ira Landgarten.
Satyajit Ray.
Some months after Panditji died I conceived the idea of arranging a
memorial concert here in Dublin. Anyone who really knows Indian music
will understand why there was only one appropriate person I could ask:
Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, the legendary sarodiya.
Unfortunately, although I devoted much time to this dream, it all fell
through by the end of April 1987, and I decided to stop altogether. (One
day I will write up an account of this, as much for my own sake as
anyone else's.)
In the course of planning, however, I went ahead with work on the
printed programme, one which I wanted to be really special. Again,
anyone who knows India's extraordinarily rich culture (indeed,
world culture) will understand why I wrote to Satyajit Ray to ask
if he would kindly provide an introduction for my proposed Nikhil
Banerjee memorial programme. Satyajit Ray
wrote to me.
Anita Desai.
I had always felt badly that I had never written to Anita Desai to tell
her I had used (with permission from her publishers) music-related
quotations from two of her stories in Nikhil Banerjee's June 1985
concert programme. Then, early in 1993, a friend of a friend was going
to India to interview some leading fiction writers, and when I heard
that one of those was going to be Anita Desai, I asked my friend's
friend if she would present to Anita Desai a copy of the programme,
together with a letter of explanation from me. Anita Desai wrote to me
(ADpage1
and ADpage2),
and since some might have difficulty in reading the faint script, I
reproduce it here:
Dear John Cosgrave, I was in London last week (for the filming
of a book I wrote called "In Custody") when the
concert programme you sent me arrived in the post. I'm afraid I
did not meet the friend who brought it to India for me but now
that I'm in England (writing, in a small cottage in
Cornwall, for a few months) I wanted to write and thank you for
sending it, and tell you how [unclear] I was in the concert you
arranged. I have of course heard Nikhil Banerjee play and
been to several recitals he gave in India, and I can quite
understand your enthusiasm for his playing which had such
purity, integrity and dignity. You might be
interested to know that the score for the film " In
Custody" has been composed by two Indian musicians you may
know - Zakir Hussain, the tabla player, and Sultan Khan, the
sarangi player. The sound resordist for the film was an admirer
of Sultan Khan's and was planning to film a concert he was to
give in unbelievably, - the Ellora caves. I am sorry you have
folded up your company but can imagine how difficult it is to
organise a concert of Indian music in Dublin (a city I visited
for the first time last summer). Still, I am glad it brought
Nikhil Banerjee to Ireland. With my best wishes, Sincerely,
[Signed...] (ANITA DESAI)
One day near the end of May 1985, about one month before Panditji's
visit here, we were sitting in our kitchen, behind closed doors, talking
quietly about our concern at the poor sale of tickets. We heard a sound
from a door, saw that something had been pushed underneath, and heard
some footsteps going away... This is what was pushed under the door:
a note,
and three single pound notes from our then just ten-year old daughter
Catherine. I am proud that our daughter could write such a note.
I have kept that note all these years inside a (wonderful) biography by
Elizabeth de Jong-Kessing
(front cover scan,
back cover scan)
of
Inayat Khan
(whose daughter was the remarkable
Noor-un-Nisa
Inayat Khan).
(Addendum December 2022. This wonderful woman, Noor-un-Nisa
Inayat Khan, was the deserved subject of a
BBC Great Lives
episode in December 2021.)
In later years I
wrote on the back of that
note.
Almost one month later, after his concert, Panditji paid us the honour
of having a meal at our home (we cooked for two days, all Indian food).
With him were his wife Roma and their younger daughter Debdutta, Ratan
and Swati Mukherjee, Sheema and Anindo, together the Indian Ambassador
Kiran Doshi (who offered use much assistance) and his family, and a
small number of friends.
I can still hear the laughter of our daughters Marie and Catherine, and
Debdutta as they played with a balloon in the hallway late that Friday
night.
Panditji's love for his guru Ustad Allauddin Khan is legendary (and I
had the great good fortune to hear of it from Panditji himself, in our
own home, on the afternoon after his concert).
In the room in which Panditji prepared himself before his concert, I
placed a copy of Jotin Bhattacharya's biography of Panditji's guru, with
flowers on either side. Here is the
cover
of that book of that note,
which Panditji saw. I gave the book to Sheema as a gift, and got another
copy later, the one which you see here.
Parting on the Sunday afternoon is a memory for a lifetime.
Here are those eleven truly wonderful videos made by Steven
Baigel. The italicized text is Steven's:
" This is a short excerpt from my 80 minute unfinished documentary
film That Which Colors The Mind, on the life and music of the
incomparable Indian classical music sitarist Nikhil Banerjee.
The film (shot many years ago) stalled for a number of years
largely due to lack of funding, especially for archival rights
as well as other issues. There is much low resolution footage as
a result of never finding the funding to gain access to the high
resolution. Many people have inquired over the years about the
status of the film so I thought to start releasing short
segments (imperfect as they are) from the film that can be
viewed on Vimeo.
Some final words on this project: I began this film with the
most humble, loving, and sincerest intentions, to bring to the
world some light on the life and music of Pandit Nikhil
Banerjee. I have often been asked why hasn't the film been
finished? Why can't you raise the necessary money? When can I
get a dvd copy? This is not the place to get into depth about
all the obstacles I faced in trying to make this film.
This is admittedly a very imperfect film with many flaws, but at
the same time I do believe it serves a certain cultural and
historical importance. A combination of my own limited
resources, be they creative, intellectual, questionable
fundraising tenacity, as well as being overwhelmed by the many
disappointments, frustrations, broken promises, and rejections I
experienced along the journey is in part why the film was never
properly finished. I invested many thousands of my own dollars
and many thousands of hours of my own time into making this
project. I received no financial assistance and with few
exceptions, very little logistic help from anybody.
The film sadly languished for many years partially finished
because I essentially lost the heart to continue, and then
eventually I decided I had to finish it at least in some state
for the select few who would actually appreciate and possibly
benefit from the effort. Initially I was looking for worldwide
distribution and broadcast because I naively thought there
should be a global audience for Indian classical music, and more
specifically the music and life of Nikhil Banerjee. But I came
to learn that there was very little interest beyond the
passionate and dedicated few.
I want to apologize to everybody for the film's shortcomings as
well as the long delay in getting the various segments out so
they could be viewed. The bulk of the film was shot 20 years
ago. I hope soon to re-stitch the segments together and put them
up on YouTube as an unfinished, non-commercial, basically
personal celebration of the life and music of Nikhil Banerjee,
as his life model and music have had such a profound impact on
my life. It is my personal thank you to him.
Photographs used were what I was able to find many years ago
when the film was still in production. Since then many others
have surfaced that I wish I could have included in the film.
Unfortunately I do not have the names of most the photographers,
so any help in identifying them would be appreciated so that I
can give proper credit where due.
I want to offer a very special thank you to all those who,
without their support and contribution, this film could not have
been made, especially those who took time to sit for my
interviews. And most especially, my heartfelt thanks to Smt.
Roma Banerjee and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, because without them
this film would not exist.
Thank you.
Steven Baigel
Berkeley, CA USA "
1. Introduction: The life and
music of Nikhil Banerjee
2. Indian Classical Music
3. Childhood
4. Maihar
5. Emergence
6. Practice & Performance
7. The Inner Man
8. To the West
9. In the West / Teaching
10. Family / Last Years
11. Finale
A final word here from myself. I believe that Steven Baigel has
performed an incalculable service to all lovers of the music of Nikhil
Banerjee, and I urge anyone who views Steven's work to write to him to
express their gratitude, so that he will know that what he has done is
appreciated and valued. His email is in the public domain, and is this:
sbaig@igc.org
Steven's physical address is also public domain, and is this:
Steven Baigel
2034 Blake St. Suite 5
Berkeley, California 94704
USA Tel: (510) 841-5599
Addendum January 2023. For many years I have been intending to
scan the pages of the 16-page programme which we had printed for Pandit
Nikhil Banerjee's June 1985 concert, but, since the pages were slightly
more than A4 size, I couldn't scan them satisfactorily, and was
reluctant to place imperfect scans on this webpage... However, in
December 2022, I managed to get them scanned to my satisfaction, and I
now make them public.
There is a story behind every single page, and readers may find
something of interest in reading how each page came to be.
The front page. This page simply dictated itself; it had to look
like this. This copy was autographed here at our home after the concert.
Page 2. Here I had a stroke of great fortune... I approached the
antiquarian rug dealer Peter
Linden, hoping that he would take page 2 of our programme.
Peter declined, but he suggested I try something that would not have
occurred to me: why not ask Dr. Wilfrid Lockwood (the then
Director of the renowned Chester
Beatty Library; prior to his appointment at the Chester
Beatty, Dr. Lockwood had been in charge of Oriental books at Cambridge
University) if he would take page 2.
I can remember exactly how I felt at that time: I'll try this, even
though I will fail (why? Well Dr. Lockwood has never met me, wouldn't
know who I was, and probably - like everyone else I had approached -
would not know who Nikhil Banerjee was...)
I phoned the Chester Beatty, asked if I could speak with the Director,
and was put through to him... I launched into my (by then) standard
speech: Hello, my name is John Cosgrave, I'm a mathematician, and I'm
trying to sell advertisment space in a concert programme that I
want to produce for the visit here to Dublin of a very great
Indian musician called Nikhil Banerjee; have you heard of
him?
It would be impossible to describe the absolute joy that I felt when Dr.
Lockwood told me that not only did he know who Nikhil Banerjee was, but
he had heard him many times! Where? In India...
Dr. Lockwood asked about the structure of the programme, and wanted to
know about any future plans I might have.
I told him about my plans for the structure of the programme
(it was exactly what you see here), and told him that if everything
worked out well this first time then, in the future, it would be my hope
to bring to Ireland the great Bhatatanatyam dancer
Alarmel Valli, and - looking
further ahead - the remarkable sarangi maestro
Ram
Narayan, ...
(Of course I wanted to bring the shenhai master Bismillah
Khan - but I had wrongly thought he didn't fly - and, as for
Ali Akbar
Khan, well, I just thought (wrongly) that he would not be
willing to come here... )
Hearing all of this, Dr. Lockwood then astounded me by saying
not only would he take page 2, but he would take page 2 of
every future programme. (I am writing this in January 2023, some
thirty-eight years after the event, but I can still feel the joy of that
day...)
Page 3. I contributed this page myself, and at the foot of it is
the dedication I made (with hew written permission) to the great
Bharatanatyam dancer Alarmel
Valli.
A diversion to explain why I included that
dedication. My initial interest interest in Indian music
goes back to April 1966 when I bought the LP Yehudi
Menuhin At Fifty (I still have it, after all these years),
in which Menuhin spoke about his musical life, and he enthused about his
discovery of Indian music when he travelled to India in the 1950s... ,
and he gave us an example of what he particularly liked: an excerpt from
an LP of Ravi Shankar's (I had never heard any Indian music, nor of Ravi
Shankar (not even of his association with George Harrison of The
Beatles), until then), a part of Raga Ramkali... I was completely
bowled over (the rhythm...) ... and as soon as I could I bought the full
Ravi Shankar LP.
I listened to that LP, but it meant absolutely nothing to me...
In the academic year 1968-69 - while still a student in London
- I attended two concerts of Ravi Shankar's, one (with Yehudi Menuhin)
in the Albert Hall, the other in the Royal Festival Hall, but again
neither meant anything to me...
Then, in January-March 1980, there was an eight-part BBC TV Series The
Spirit Of Asia, produced by Michael McIntyre (not the
comedian with the same name), and presented by the renowned David
Attenborough; the fourth episode was devoted to India... In the middle
of that fourth episode there was a quite extraordinary segment
exhibiting the art of this Alarmel Valli... , and I was transfixed...
This led to a pre-occupation with India (readers will not be
interested in the details), and not long after it led down this
wonderful journey to not only discovering the music of Nikhil Banerjee,
but to bringing him here to Dublin for his memorable 21st June 1985
concert.
In the early days of planning this 16-page concert programme I
was already thinking ahead to the following years (would I alternate
musician, dancer, musician, ... ?). Looking back on all of that now
(2023), I wonder how I had the energy to think about doing this, as my
full-time job was Lecturer in Mathematics... But, I was young, I was
just thirty-nine, had a supportive and loving wife (thankfully still
with me)... , and everything seemed possible.
My immediate thought was that since Alarmel Valli had been the
true spark for my interest in Indian music and dance, then I would write
to her to inform of my plans, and to my very great joy I received a
three-page hand-written letter from her; here are those pages:
page
1,
page
2 and
page
3.
Page 4. Growing up down the country in the 1950s (no TV, no
phone, no...) we relied on the radio for everything outside our small
town (the common lot of everyone at that time), and one of the radio
programmes that we all heard - once a week - was
The
Walton's Programme, with its slogan "If you feel like
singing, do sing an Irish song" - presented by the Leo
Maguire.
One fine day in March 1985 I walked into the Dun Laoghaire branch of
Walton's music shop, and launched into my well-tried speech (I
was like a non-stop recording from many failed efforts) on the young
woman behind the counter: Hello, my name is... , and I am bringing a
great Indian musician called Nikhil Banerjee to Ireland in
June... , 16-page concert programme, ... , would Walton's take a
half-page advertisement ... ? She: yes, we will... .
'She' was Eorna
Walton, one of the Walton family, and she made a generous
offer to sell our concert tickets for no commission. (Eorna
became a friend, and we own two of her paintings, and a watercolour
which she gifted to us.)
And now, the Moghul Indian Restaurant. We had an Indian neighbour
who owned two Indian restaurants, one of which was managed by
Fuzail Waris (who lived just across the street from us). Fuzail -
whose first language was the poetic Urdu - hailed from Lucknow,
and his family knew the renowned Begum
Akhtar (I used to know some lines of one of her famous
ghazals). In late 1984 Fuzail struck out on his own, and opened
his Moghul restaurant in nearby Bray; he took the half-page space that
you see here. We were on friendly terms with Fuzail, but, when the
Moghul folded, Fuzail vanished out of our lives, and we never heard from
him afterwards.
I have just found
this
photograph,
one taken on the occasion (late 1984) of the
opening of Fuzail's restaurant. Left to right it shows our friends Tina,
Peadar (of the Chieftains) and Nuala Mercier, my wife Mary, Felicity,
Fuzail, and myself.
Felicity (who spent years in India) bought the very first ticket for
Nikhil Banerjee's concert, and was sitting with us at our home on the
afternoon of Wednesday 12th May 1985 when I received a telephone call
from the office of the Irish Tourist Board in Paris: are you the John
Cosgrave who is bringing Nikhil Banerjee to Dublin to perform next Friday 21st?.
Yes, why? French television have been trying to find you as they want to send
over a film crew to record the concert; will you permit that? They consider it the
greatest musical event in Ireland for that day
[being European Music Day, a French idea I believe.] I said 'no', on the
grounds that I wouldn't want TV lights etc distracting from the music...
When I subsequently told Ratan of this he said that I had done the right thing.
Page 5. The text in these two pages (5 and 6) was contributed by
my friend, the renowned
Leslie
Shepard (unfortunately this Wikipedia page does scant
justice to the extent and depth of his knowledge and experience). It
might be of interest to record how I came to be a friend of
Leslie's.
By early 1983 I had a considerable number of Indian music LPs
(eventually as many as 400, and innumerable CDs) and a small number of
books on Indian music (Peggy Holroyde's The Music of India being
especially memorable) and dance. I heard on the grapevine that there was
another devotee of Indian music in Dublin, one named Leslie Shepard. I
looked him up in the telephone directory, phoned him, introduced
myself... , Leslie had heard of me on the grapevine, he had been
intending phoning me, and ...
We agreed that I would call on him, and I set off on my bike - on the
15th of April 1983 - with the four books on Indian music that I then
owned - intending to lend them to him - but not only did Leslie possess
copies of those already, but a huge number of others besides. Indeed, he
owned some three thousand books on musicology; his house was
crammed with books, in every room, floor to ceiling. His home was a
veritable wonderland for bibliophiles.
I can only partially report on Leslie's love for matters Indian which
began with his practice of Yoga in his teenage years; then he
heard the rudra veena playing of Swami
Parvatikar in a recording made by the renowned musicologist
Alain
Daniélou, following which Leslie travelled to India,
hoping to meet this Swami... Now, one couldn't make this up, but
on his first evening in India Leslie found himself in a hall somewhere,
and who should be singing across the space? Yes, Swami Parvatikar...
Leslie went to introduce himself, but Swami was in the middle of a
seven-year vow of silence (only singing permitted), and - what a very
great pity that Leslie himself did not write a fuller account in his own
lifetime - it was agreed that Leslie would become the Swami's personal
secretary. They communicated by exchanging written notes: Leslie had
boxes full of them in the loft of his house here in Dublin, and I know
it had been a longterm plan of his to go through them with a view to
editing them... Sadly that never happened, Leslie always had so much to
do, it would have taken several lifetimes to do...
Leslie was a friend of Moses Asch (do I need to say who he was?),
the founder of FOLKWAYS RECORDS (do I need to say who they
were?), and one of Leslie's labours-of-love was to make the Folkways
recording #FR 8970, The Sounds of YOGA-VEDANTA, on which Swami
Parvatikar performs on his rudra vina. Here is a three-page essay
that Leslie wrote about Swami Parvatikar:
first
page,
second
page, and
third
page,
published in Vol 3, No. 5 of Easter Horizon in May 1964.
I am only too aware that I have only superficially given a background to
explain why I invited Leslie to contribute his two-page essay to our
Nikhil Banerjee programme.
Finally, here is a letter
that Leslie wrote to me on 13th August 1985, in which he remarks "It is good news
that Nikhil Banerjee is willing to come back again next year..."
Page 6.
Page 7. First, lapis limited is now Lapis
Jewellers, and its owner was/is the geologist Pauric D'Arcy,
a brother of our dear (late) friend Proinsias Ní Dhorchaí.
Although I had only ever had fleeting contact with Pauric, he generously
bought this half-page.
At that time our next door neighbour was Giles Kerr, then working at the
Irish National Insurance Company, and Giles' company also generously
supported us.
Page 8. Anindo
Chatterjee. When Anindo was with us I asked him (at lunch in
our home on the day after the concert) about his early studies... he won
a tabla contest as a child, one judged by the renowned Jnan
Prakash Ghosh. Anindo told me that, after the decision,
J.P.G. sat him up on his knee and asked: would you like to study with
me?... There could only be one answer!
On the morning of Friday 21st June - heading from the airport to their
hotel - driving along the Strand Road in Sandymount, I asked Ratan if he
knew the ragas that Nikhil Banerjee would play that evening... Ratan
told me that Nikhil Banerjee himself never knew until the last moment
what he would play... His practice was to be at the theatre for perhaps
two hours beforehand, sit quietly - thinking of his beloved guru
[teacher, the great Ustad Allauddin Khan] - and then, depending on his
mood, decide what he would play... At this point Anindo chipped in and
said something like: Yes, John, that's what it's like... you were at
his London concert in 1983, yes? Did you see how nervous I was
when we emerged at the start?
I had to confess that I hadn't noticed (how could I, I was half-way back
in the Queen Elizabeth), and Anindo continued: we were just stepping
onto the platform when Nikhilda asked me to play a rare
fifteen-beat cycle divided four, four, two, two, one-and-a-half,
one-and-a-half!!!
On the Sunday, about to fly back to London, Anindo told me that he was
about to accompany Ravi Shankar on a tour in Japan, and he kindly
offered to put in a good word for us with Ravi Shankar should we want to
invite him here. I thanked Anindo for thinking well of us, but I
declined.
After Nikhil Banerjee died, Anindo wrote to me (I still have his
letter): " Except Nikhilji I am playing with all the artists now. But
he was my favourite musician ever, I played maximum concerts
with him. Every day I listen his music, God is so strict with us
that he took Nikhildao so early from all of us... "
Page 9. I first saw Sheema on BBC TV, with her uncle Nikhil
Banerjee and Anindo. On Sunday mornings there was a regular broadcast
called
Nai
Zindagi Naya Jeevan, and I started to view it sometime in
1981, after I had discovered Indian music/dance. I saw her backstage -
as I've described elsewhere - at her uncle's 22nd October 1983 Queen
Elizabeth Hall concert, and then I met her at her parent's home, when I
visited Ratan to have lunch with his family a couple of months before
the June 1985 concert.
After lunch we went into the music room - the one in which Nikhil
Banerjee practiced when he visited - sat on the floor, and Ratan asked
me if there was something that I would like Sheema to play... I
tentatively suggested Kedar (the raag that had first make
me fall in love with the playing of her uncle). Ratan said that it would
be some time yet before Sheema could take on Kedar, could I
suggest something else... I suggested Manj Khamaj (a lovely
creation, one that would be anyone's ideal introduction to Indian
music), which Sheema then played beautifully. A very happy memory, one I
frequently recall.
A note on the photograph at this page.The photo you see here is
the one sent to me by Ratan, but, about three weeks before Nikhil
Banerjee's concert, our printer (from whom I had (foolishly) ordered 500
copies of the printed programme) contacted me to inform that when he
started printing he had had to discard eighty copies as the photo was
coming out so dark that it could not be seen, and he asked what did I
wish to do... It was too late to get a good black-and-white photo, and
as I desperately needed to get copies for publicity purposes I had to
quickly decide to print without any photograph of Sheema on this page
nine.
As it happened, we only sold ninety programmes, which was consistent
with what I later learned: generally, at concerts, only about one-third
of people actually buy a printed programme...
Page 10. Thank you Sharwood's; you didn't know who we were, but
you unhesitatingly supported us.
Page 11. I had hoped that the renowned publishers William
Heinemann would purchase this page - I told them that I wanted to
fill the page with the R.K. Narayan and Anita Desai
excerpts that are on this page - but they wouldn't, instead they only
granted me permission to quote these excerpts.
There was a reason for 'First Choice' (puzzlingly) appearing at the top
of this page (I did also have 'Second Choice', ... ): I was in a race to
give materials to our printer, and while I awaited hearing from various
publishers as to whether or not they would pay for purchasing a
page, or even just grant permission to quote excerpts (without
payment), I had to have a menu in place for our printer. Heinemann
wouldn't pay for this page, but the contents of this page was
indeed my first choice... When I instructed our printer over the phone
to use the page headed 'First Choice', he inadvertently also printed the
heading...
It's too long a story to explain why the bottom left-hand corner
reference to the Arts Council of Ireland appeared there,
rather than where it ought to have been: at the foot of the front
of the programme. (They offered to cover up to five hundred pounds of
any financial loss.)
Although William Heinemann wouldn't pay to advertise with us, I had
already determined that, for Nikhil Banerjee's return visit, I would use
the following extensive quotations from the final pages (177 - starting
at 'It was Mayna's wedding day,' near the end of page 177 - to
183 of my own copy) of Anita Desai's wonderful novel
The Clear
Light of Day:
176-177,
178-179,
180-181,
182-183.
Heartbreakingly, that was not to be.
Page 12. Ah, this was a special page for me... Of course I
expected that the Gramophone Company of India would
purchase this half-page, and Arvind Srivastava - its very supportive
London Branch Manager - bought this half-page. Also, whenever I was in
London in those years I always headed for the wonderful BOOKS FROM
INDIA, and its owner (a Mr. Vidyarthi) also supported us.
Sadly, BOOKS FROM INDIA on Museum Street no longer exists, and London is
now a poorer place.
About one week after Nikhil Banerjee died, Arvind Srivastava (who didn't
yet know that Nikhil Banerjee had agreed to visit us later that year, on
22nd October) thoughtfully phoned to tell me... , and later the
following year he generously sent me a gift copy of the Gramophone
Company's IN MEMORIAM LP, a wonderful live recording (1978) of
Raga Hem-Behag, Pandit Nikhil Banerjee accompanied on tabla by
Pandit Kishen Maharaj.
Page 13. Ah Collets, that wonderful
London institution... It, too, no longer exists. It was a
great thrill for me that they took this half-page space.
When I used to visit there the main people in the downstairs 'folk'
section were Jill Cook and Piers Harker. I can recall phoning
Collets from Dublin on the eve of a visit to my brothers in London:
Piers, what do you have in the way of Indian recordings?, and he
would fetch what they had, read titles to me over the phone, and...
Okay, Piers, I'll take that and that and that... , and I'll pick them
up in a few days time. Ah, those were the days... . Where
are they now, Jill and Piers?
Our own advertisment space. Because the cost of printing the
programme was 750 pounds, I needed to sell as much space as I could,
but... getting to the deadline the printer had set for me, and, near the
end still having one unsold half-page, the obvious solution (to complete
this page 13) was to fill it with our own insert, and - dipping into my
Indian books, and opening significant pages - one passage simply jumped
out at me (it contained - for me - the very definition of
Nikhil Banerjee): the one below, taken from Raghava R.
Menon's The sound of Indian Music (INDIAN BOOK COMPANY, NEW
DELHI, 1976), a book that I bought in Books from India on the 19th of
September 1983 (almost one month before I heard Nikhil Banerjee in his
Queen Elizabeth Hall recital).
Page 14. I had hoped that Granada Publishers would
purchase this page - I told them that I wanted to fill the page
with the Ruth Prawer Jhabvala excerpt on this page - but they wouldn't,
instead they only granted me permission to quote.
Page 15 . I have omitted this page... I knew the person
who bought this full page... I was promised a poem in Irish -
with a translation into English - by a well-known poet (one,
incidentally, with an interest in Indian music). Every time I asked for
the text I was promised, and promised, and promised... Eventually, with
days to go to our printer's deadline, I was given something quite
different, something so tasteless, that I was sorely tempted not to use
it. But, beggars can't be choosers.
Page 16 . Ah, Hodges-Figgis
(now owned by Waterstones), Dublin's oldest bookshop (since 1768).
Because Nikhil Banerjee's concert was going to be in Carysfort College
(where I worked at the time), and since Hodges-Figgis had an outlet in
the college, then it seemed obvious to me that H.F. would advertise with
us... I approached the then General Manager of H.F. (I regret I cannot
remember his name, though I am currently attempting to determine it) and
asked... At first he declined, saying that they had already spent their
advertising budget for the year... I asked if he would listen to a
counter-proposition, and he kindly listened to me: India's greatest
living musician will be performing in the College on that
evening, the place will be packed - [little did I realise
that on the eve of the concert my wife and I would have to remove one
hundred seats from the concert venue, and that we would only sell 260
seats (90 in outlets around Dublin, plus ones I sold myself)] - if
you lay out tables in the foyer with Indian authors (Anita
Desai, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, R.K. Narayan, ... ), Indian cookery
books (Madhur Jaffrey, Meera Taneja, ... [books that I used
myself]), Indian history, ... then you will have huge sales... .
He gave in (perhaps to get me out of his office!), and bought this half
page... It was deeply satisfying after the event - when I called at H.F.
to collect payment for their advertisement - that he told me the evening
had been a commercial success for them, and that he would happily
advertise again if we ever did another concert.
And finally, the Ariane Art Gallery. Walking along Molesworth St.
one day, I passed this small Art Gallery (I had already visited several,
without success), and went inside. The owner was a young woman, and I
launched into my sales pitch... , I told her that this was my first time
ever to do anything like this... and she said 'yes', that this
gallery was her first venture too, and so we were both starting
out... .
To my shame I cannot remember her name (it would be in an
accounts book that I kept at the time, I found it here at home recently,
but despite searching up and down, I simply cannot find it); I
think she may have been Karen Nugent. To my shame, too, I
didn't keep in contact with her to follow her gallery's success... . It
no longer exists, and I would dearly love to know something of her
life's path.
