Ajoy Chakraborty and the Question of Technique vs Emotion in Indian Classical Music
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Ajoy Chakraborty and the Question of Technique vs Emotion in Indian Classical Music
A doyen of the Patiala-Kasur gharana, a monsoon raga stretched past its own weather, a 2023 controversy over a Nazrul anthem, and a question every listener on earth has the right to ask: does the song still feel like itself?
And then, somewhere in the first few phrases, you realize you don't, anymore.
This is not an argument against classical music. It is not an argument against technical brilliance. Pandit Ajoy Chakraborty is a doyen of the Patiala-Kasur gharana (a hereditary school of vocal style), trained under Ustad Munawar Ali Khan, son of the legendary Bade Ghulam Ali Khan. He is, by wide and long-standing consensus, among the finest living exponents of khayal (Hindustani classical vocal music's principal form) -- and he is celebrated just as much for his Rabindra Sangeet (Tagore's own compositions), his thumri (a lighter, romantic genre), his devotional singing. None of what follows disputes any of that.
But there is a question sitting juxtaposed against that extraordinary technique which deserves to be asked without circumlocution, and answered without flinching. What happens to a song when the person singing it becomes more important than the song itself?
1 |
The Destruction of the Original Mood |
Curiously, while surfing his repertoire of songs, I have noticed a pattern. I would brusquely use the phrase: "the destruction of the original mood or theme."
A quiet composition arrives dressed in layer after layer of ornamental tassel: taans (rapid melodic runs) stacked on taans, meend (a smooth glide between notes) after meend, until the plain ache or plain joy the song was built to carry is drowned under its own decorative undercurrent.
Let me put this question in front of you: what happens when a song built on restraint meets a style built on abundance -- a superfluous array of jet-speed taans, overarching meends and gamaks (rapid oscillations between two notes)? The original framework struggles with the new musical attire.
For example, a Rabindra Sangeet of quiet surrender depends on a single unbroken breath across a phrase -- the melody exists to carry the word, not to showcase the throat behind it. A monsoon composition in Malhar (a raga traditionally sung during the rains) depends on sustaining one unbroken weather, one steady descent of rain, for its entire length. A song of separation depends on the tremble staying a tremble, not becoming a display.
When ornamentation starts competing with the original version, sans first asking what that particular song needs, the result is not a richer version of the same composition. It is a different composition wearing the original's name. The listener still hears the words. They no longer feel the weather -- the latter surrenders to jargon-heavy classical vocabulary.
| ELEMENT | WHAT THE SONG NEEDS | WHAT HEAVY ORNAMENTATION DOES |
| Vocal line | A straight, resting note carrying the weight of the word. | Constant micro-ornamentation around the note, so the word gets lost inside the movement. |
| Pacing | Silence and space between phrases, where the meaning settles. | Every gap filled with a run or a flourish, leaving the song no room to breathe. |
| Emotional register | One sustained, specific feeling -- grief, longing, devotion. | Technical display becomes the dominant feeling; the original emotion becomes background. |
Imagine restoring a 1990 Ambassador -- battered, honest, unmistakably itself -- by rebuilding it, panel by panel, with the full resources of a master workshop, into a Rolls-Royce. The engineering might be dazzling. The craftsmanship might be beyond reproach. The finished object might even command admiration. But at some point, a question arrives that no amount of chrome can answer: where did the Ambassador go?
The car has become more elaborate, more opulent, more technically imposing. It has also ceased to be what it once was. That is the paradox at the centre of this entire argument -- that a performance can become more impressive and, in the same breath, less itself.
2 |
Not Only an Indian Argument |
This tension is not unique to Hindustani music, and it is worth saying so plainly for readers outside India who may otherwise read this as an internal dispute in a tradition they don't share.
Jazz has argued with itself for a century over how much improvisation a standard can carry before the melody disappears inside it. Opera has its own version of this fight -- when vocal fireworks are allowed to eclipse the emotional core of an aria, purists call it showmanship dressed as artistry. Flamenco has a word for what gets lost when technical virtuosity crowds out feeling: duende leaves the room, and only skill remains. Even in the Western symphonic tradition, conductors are still fighting over how much grandeur a quiet theme can survive.
The specific vocabulary changes from tradition to tradition. The underlying question does not: does the treatment serve the composition, or does the composition become raw material for the performer's own display? Every serious musical culture on earth has had to ask this question of its own virtuosos. Hindustani classical music is not being singled out by asking it now.
3 |
The Double Standard |
There is a further complication, and it is one Ajoy Chakraborty created himself.
In 2023, A.R. Rahman released a radically re-composed version of Kazi Nazrul Islam's "Karar Oi Louho Kapat" for the film Pippa -- retaining the original lyrics, replacing the stern, martial melody Nazrul wrote in 1922 (a song that had rallied freedom fighters and, decades later, the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War) with something lighter, more folksy, more festive. The backlash was immediate and furious. Kazi Nazrul's own family objected publicly, calling the change a betrayal of the composer's intent. Bengali listeners on both sides of the border felt something sacred had been casually rearranged.
Ajoy Chakraborty was among the voices who spoke out. He said, publicly, that he did not like the new version -- that the song carried a specific, irreplaceable emotional weight for Bengalis, and that more research should have preceded any alteration of something this culturally significant.
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His underlying principle is sound. A historically and culturally significant composition should not be treated as an empty canvas, free for anyone to overwrite. But a principle invoked once cannot be quietly retired the moment it becomes inconvenient. If a song's emotional architecture deserves protection when a film composer alters it, that same protection must apply when a classical maestro reshapes it -- however beautifully -- into something the song was never written to be.
What protects a composition from being misunderstood when A.R. Rahman interprets it should also protect it when a legendary classical vocalist interprets it. Anything less is not a principle. It is a preference dressed up as one.
4 |
Who Owns the Song? |
I recently came across a video performance of the famous song: "Jao Jao Mose Na Bolo Kanha", in which Ajoy Chakraborty, with characteristic candor, declared that the piece was not intended for the general public at all -- that it properly belongs in the cloistered company of great ustads and pandits.
I don't buy that hierarchy, and I don't think most listeners need to. One does not need to catalogue ragas (melodic frameworks) to recognize when a lullaby ceases to sound like a lullaby. Emotional recognition is not the exclusive preserve of the trained ear -- it is a universal faculty, available to anyone who listens with sincerity.
But who, then, truly owns the experience of a song?
Is it the musician who shapes it with breath and gesture?
The scholar who annotates its lineage?
The ustad seated in the front row, measuring its fidelity to tradition?
Or the anonymous listener who receives it on a train platform, in a kitchen, half a world away from where it was composed?
Must a listener master raga, tala (the rhythmic cycle), meend, and murki (a quick ornamental turn) before being entitled to say, "I did not appreciate what you have done to this song"? I do not believe so.
A listener may not name the raga, but he can recognise melancholy. He may not parse the ornament, but he can feel when tenderness has been replaced by display.
Music, after all, is not a credentialed seminar -- it is a human encounter, a plunge. Its legitimacy lies not in the ranking of who is permitted to judge, but in the immediacy of what is felt. The song belongs as much to the scholar's manuscript as to the child humming it unknowingly in the dark.
Music, after all, does not require a university degree at the entrance gate.
5 |
Reverence's Dangerous Twin |
There is another subtler angle in the performance scenario: the lurking hero-worship syndrome sitting right inside the guru-shishya parampara (the teacher-disciple tradition) itself -- one that has nothing to do with Ajoy Chakraborty personally and everything to do with how disciples relate to any towering figure.
The tradition deserves enormous respect. It has preserved India's musical inheritance across centuries, passed hand to hand, breath to breath, in a way few other art forms can claim. But reverence has a dangerous twin: unquestioning obedience. When admiration for a guru becomes so absolute that every interpretive choice must be defended simply because it came from the master, musical criticism curdles into something else entirely -- institutional loyalty wearing the costume of musical judgment.
A great artist does not need a protective wall of disciples reflexively defending every choice. A great artist needs listeners willing to say, in the same breath: "This is magnificent," and, "This does not work for me." The two statements are not in conflict. They are what serious listening actually sounds like.
When world-class musicians like Manna Dey, Lata Mangeshkar, Kishore Kumar, and Bhimsen Joshi, to name a few, can be criticised, Ajoy Chakraborty can't be an exception to this rule. None of that diminishes their greatness -- if anything, the opposite is true. The ability to question a great artist without denying his mastery over the subject is one of the clearest signs of a mature musical culture. A tradition that cannot host disagreement about its own maestros isn't preserving them -- it is attempting to turn them into monuments.
6 |
The Song, Not the Pedestal |
My criticism, in the end, is unequivocally not of Ajoy Chakraborty's stature. It is directed at a particular habit, applied to particular songs, rather than a sweeping verdict on an entire career. A musician may command extraordinary technique and yet deliver a rendition that betrays the emotional tenor of a composition. He may know a raga with intimate precision and still misjudge what a specific song requires in spirit. He may craft something technically resplendent and, in the same breath, efface the very quality that once made the original unforgettable.
That is not insult; that is criticism. And criticism is not disrespect -- it is, in its purest form, the highest respect we can offer a work of art, for it means we are still listening to the song itself rather than genuflecting before the reputation of the performer.
A great musician has every right to reinterpret. But the listener has an equally legitimate right to ask: what has been gained, and what has been lost? Or, stated less diplomatically -- how far has the song drifted, on the noise-scale, from its own gold standard?
From more than three decades of association with music across genres, I have come to comprehend this: technique is not the final measure of music. Complexity does not always confer depth. Ornamentation is not emotion. And virtuosity, however dazzling, cannot compensate for the disappearance of feeling.
Finally, I do not wish the musician to vanish, but neither do I wish him to grow so vast that the song itself disappears into the spectacle of his showmanship. The artist may render a song, but the song must still stand erect on its own. Otherwise, however magnificent the performance, we are no longer listening to timeless music -- we are listening to the musician, and only his version of it.
This article is published by SumanSpeaks for general informational and educational purposes only. The author has over 25 years of capital markets experience, apart from being a Musician (Hindustani Classical Vocalist, Tabla, Sitar and Harmonium player). This piece reflects personal opinion on matters of art and interpretation and is not a recommendation regarding any individual, institution, or commercial work. Readers are encouraged to form their own views.
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