C Aswath: Sufi, boatman, rock star

Many reverential stories will be told about singer C Aswath, who died on his birthday on December 29. This is perhaps a good time also to recall the quixotic tales fellow-musicians tell of him.

Filmmaker and friend Nagabharana, for whom Aswath did some memorable work, was among the many who called him crazy, but everyone who knew Aswath knew it was an epithet used more in affection and exasperation than malice.

Story 1: Aswath was irritated by a fellow passenger who insisted on playing his two-in-one loudly on a night train to Chennai. He got down from the upper berth, and started chatting pleasantly with the boy. “Very nice, could I take a look?” The boy handed him the player. “Where did you buy it? How much does it cost?” The boy told him. “And do you get these in Chennai?” Yes, the boy nodded. Aswath slid up the window, flung the stereo out, handed the boy cash to buy another, and went back to sleep.

Story 2: Aswath used to tell musicians the way to attend a Pandit Bhimsen Joshi concert was to carry a boulder to the hall. Joshi and Michael Jackson were among the musicians Aswath loved. “Every time Joshi delivers an extraordinary turn of melody, we bang our head against the boulder. And by the end of the concert, we are dead!”

Aswath was energetic, and restless. His confidence in his music was staggering, prompting some to conclude he was full of himself. But he was also an open admirer of unpredictably diverse musicians, as the second story demonstrates.

His life work
Aswath’s oeuvre (about 75 albums and 23 films) brought together many stylistic elements, and this is a personal, and admittedly subjective, appreciation of some of them. Music lovers generally recognise the folksy lilt of Aswath’s tunes. His work in the 1980s on Shishunala Sharif’s songs was pioneering, and set the tone for a whole new way of rendering the poetry of the Kannada mystics. In essence, it took classical ragas, and rendered them in an open-throated, folksy style.

The best of Aswath’s compositions may be called Sufi, because their orchestral arrangements suggest syncretic Muslim influences, with their predominant use of the Persian-sounding banjo, bowed instruments such as the sarangi and the taar shehnai, and the bassy daf (or what we in Kannada called the halage or tamate). The wildly popular Sharif song Taravalla tagi ninna tamboori is an example of this style.

Outdoorsy style
Aswath used to say he was inspired by the Hindi music composer Naushad. Another influence is the Bengali boatman style popularised in the movies by S D Burman and later his son R D Burman. Aswath lived in West Bengal for a while, and as he once told me, he kept his imagination open to the influences of that region’s folk music. This style thrives on an open-voiced and outdoorsy exploration of the higher octave. It suggests drifting and philosophical acceptance.

We see Aswath at his best as a practitioner of this style (as in his score for the film Kakanakote). Aswath was one of those rare composers who could get even a strongly individualistic S P Balasubramanyam to adapt to this boatman style, as evident in songs such as Entha marulayya idu entha marulu and Preetiya kanasella karagi hoyite konegu.

Movie gloss
While Shishunala Sharif songs made Aswath famous across Karnataka, his film scores brought him another kind of listenership. His work for Nagamandala was among his best. For Mysore Mallige, he rerecorded songs he had done earlier for the sugama sangeeta album.

The gloss that a huge film orchestra imparts to songs seems to take away from the distinctive power of Aswath’s compositions. His uniqueness comes from a more earthy and less overpowering idiom. Likewise, his music became less exciting when he followed the formulaic orchestral style of 1980s Doordarshan sugam sangeet shows (flute, sitar, keyboard, tabla).

Aswath made many widely sung tunes for the works of 20th century Kannada poets such as Kuvempu, Bendre, G S Shivarudrappa, K S Narasimha Swamy, and Gopalakrishna Adiga. He also produced albums with the poetry of the generations that followed, notably of H S Venkatesha Murthy and B R Lakshmana Rao. Aswath was particularly proud of his achievements in this realm.

Rock scale
Aswath’s first Sharif album appeared as an LP, with an attractive jacket adorned with a painting by S G Vasudev. That was around the time gramophone records were giving way to cassettes, and it is in the cassette era that Aswath reached Kannadiga homes in a big way.

Even though his inspiration was the intimate music of the Sufi and the boatman, Aswath brought a grandness of scale to his world, putting together shows that drew unbelievable numbers. His 2005 show at the Palace Grounds had a rock show-like bigness, and was attended by over a lakh.

Aswath, who worked for 27 years at Indian Telephone Industries and retired as an assistant engineer, had traversed a musical path that made him Sufi, boatman, and at age 66, rock star.

Also read Prakash Belawadi's tribute in the DNA: Ashwath’s passing brings to question the very future of sugama sangeeta, the ‘light music’ tradition of Kannada.