How Tagore’s songs were ahead of their time in form and feeling
Addressing a tutorial on the English romantics, a professor concluded: “Read Tagore, I implore you, to understand how unlike poets such as Shelley and Keats
Addressing a tutorial on the English romantics, a professor concluded: “Read Tagore, I implore you, to understand how unlike poets such as Shelley and Keats, he did not struggle to reconcile imagination and reality. This tip stayed with those students of Jadavpur University, one of whom I borrow the anecdote from to embark on this eminently rewarding but daunting endeavour to celebrate the poet-laureate’s musical oeuvre on his 165th birth anniversary, which was celebrated last week. Bengalis raised in Kolkata will readily profess how Rabindranath Tagore has been central to their formative years. He has been omnipresent in school texts, music on the radio and records at home, not to forget the compulsive desire in each of us to sing, recite and enact his offerings with aplomb — often without concern for glaring individual limitations of craft and performance. One of my earliest memories of Rabindra Sangeet is Hemanta Mukhopadhyay’s rendition of ‘Ogo nodi apon bege’, a song of the river as a willing chronicler of life’s many turns across meadows and landscapes. Later on, songs of ‘Chandalika’, the dance-drama about love pitted against social ostracism, would play on loop, gradually leading to timeless anthems such as ‘Dhono dhannay’, ‘More bina uthe kon shure baje’ in school and college.
These experiences are by no means exclusive. If anything, they are stereotypically ‘Bangalee’. Yet, these have been essential, a rite of passage that paves the way towards serious cultural and intellectual exploration of Tagore songs. For the invested music lover, it is a work in progress that opens doors, at times a whole new horizon, at each hearing. Wherein lies the essence of Tagore’s music? Rabindra Sangeet offers the ultimate synthesis of words, tones and melody, explains Reba Som in her exemplary book, The Singer and His Song. Unbelievable as it may sound, Tagore has songs for every emotion. There is a song for every season; he’s able to tell the story of sunshine and rain, spring blooms and winter fog. And in doing so, he unveils ideas of love, faith, devotion and surrender, introducing us to elevated thoughts, at times with disarming simplicity. “I know no man in my time who has done anything in the English language to equal these lyrics,” said Irish poet W.B. Yeats, while introducing some of Tagore’s own translations of his songs to a gathering of English intellectuals circa 1912. Events that followed are well-known. Gitanjali is published in England the same year. Tagore wins the Nobel in 1913 and is knighted two years later.
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