By Prithwindra Mukherjee
Basically a poet and musician, during the First World War Dilip had also shown his excellence in chemistry and mathematics. Son of a famous Bengali poet, playwright, and composer, since his childhood Dilip had taken advantage of the family background and learnt scores of popular and classical compositions from an unimpeachable source. Shortly before a three-year trip to Europe, in his teens he came under the personal spell of Bhatkandé. This forged his determination to embrace music as a vocation, though he qualified as a brilliant mathematician at Cambridge. Dilip chose to garner "a smattering of European Music" and tour widely through Europe to discover the heart of its tradition. The ancient modes like Ionian, Lydian, Mixoldyan, Dorian, Aeolian, and Phyrgian, reminded him of the Indian thât like Bilâval, Iman, Khamâj, Kâfi, Asâvari, and Bhaïravi respectively.
In his diary, Inde, Romain Rolland speaks of Dilip with some frequency -- mentioning him about a dozen times in all. He records Dilip's first visit on 23 August 1920: "...His is no ordinary intelligence... A young man, tall and well-built, (...) in his complexion the orange-brown of a Créole features, except for the lips..." Talking about his songs, Rolland mentions, "Especially a religious song by Tânsen... I find there some affinity with Gregorian melodies and, furthermore, with the Greek hymns that had been at the very source (...)" And Rolland goes on: "By listening to the popular melodies one is better able to grasp the pure and natural genius of the Hindu race. Dilipkumar Roy sings some of them, so charmingly, delicately, cheerfully, poetically, exhibiting such a mastery of rhythm - that they could just as well be popular songs of our own (...) One realizes - how popular art admits far fewer boundaries than sophisticated art." And about Dilip's voice: "He sings with nasal intonations and his voice reaches quite high, with a singular suppleness in the ceaseless blossoming of vocal improvisations and ornaments..."
On 24 October 1927, Romain Rolland describes another visit from Dilip: "He belongs to a type which is the best of aristocratic India." On listening to an old hymn to Kâli sung by Dilip, Rolland mentions: "It is simply captivating, an overflow of passion that implores, laments, reaches fever pitch, subsides, from soprano to bass notes (...) and begins again, with doubled and exacting ecstasy..."
In Europe, Dilip realized "the greatness and the deficiency" of Indian classical music as practised by his contemporaries. Instead of mediocre word- supports to eloborate melodic and rhythmic compositions, Dilip was convinced that the modern Indian languages - the daughters of Sanskrit - could provide more adequate lyrics for the classical models (as demonstrated by his own father and by Tagore, among others). Back in India, he joined Bhatkhandé and, following the latter's methodology, travelling widely to collect and publish serial notes on râga-variants from regional masters, with notations of specific compositions. Perhaps nobody in India has left such numerous and precise notations. Like Bhâtkhandé and his pupil Ratanjankâr, Dilip wrote and demonstrated that music could be taught on a purely academic basis, with a syllabus, thus invalidating the shrouded master-to-disciple secrecy. As an outspoken music critic, he attained considerable fame, especially in his audacious criticism of the sacrosanct Gurus.
Embracing of the Cosmic Soul
Whereas the very ancient Indian tradition of lieder-like lyrics - passing
through the 9th century caryâ-pada songs - admitted and
encouraged the tâna, Tagore, who had composed more than 2000 lyrics, wanted
to individualize his compositions in the European way and protect their
execution according to an
authorized notation. A peerless expert of the tâna and phrase-variations,
Dilip had argued and obtained - exceptionally - Tagore's permission to
interpret the latter's songs as he wished.
Among the paramount contributions of Dilip, we find composiitions of an Indian type of opera, based on the traditional model of the kîrtana: this involves an emotional catharsis through a succession of modal and rhythmic patterns, compatible with the classical schools of Indian dance. Though on his experimental form, too, Tagore has left the stamp of his genius, much has yet to come.
Attaining popularity for the force, the sweetness, and the range of his voice, Dilip was admired by men like Sri Aurobindo, Tagore, and Gandhi. In the 1940s, a hit film in Hindi flooded the country with the songs of Mîrâ Bâi, that princess-saint of medieval India. Though they were sung by the golden-voiced M.S. Subbulakshmi, they had all been collected or composed by Dilipkumar. In homage to her teacher, Subbulakshmi has written that when Dilip "sings (...), it is an outpouring of the individual soul, yearning to embraced by the cosmic soul."
Honoured by the Sanskrit Academy of Calcutta as the 'Source of the Nectar of Melody' (sura-sudhâkara), Dilip was elected member of the Indian State Academy of Fine Arts. Author of more than 50 records (several of them still reprinted by the HMV-India); 8 volumes of songs with notation; 21 volumes of English and 46 of Bengali novels, poems, plays, reminiscences and essays; Dilip's was a luminous personality, graced by a cheerful affection and an eagerness to share -- with all those who approached him -- whatever the wealth he had accumulated over the years. When I went to him as a twelve-year old pupil, I remembered the old adage: The heavier the branches grow with fruits, the lower they stoop. The coruscating coils of improvisations during his youthful years had something of the élan vital depicted, for instance, by Van Gogh. When Dilipkumar Roy was fiftyish, these had yielded considerably to other crafts, expressing deeper intonations of a spiritual attainment.
Dr Prithwindra Mukherjee is an ethnomusicologist affiliated to LACITO- CNRS Paris.