he barsi of Ustad Salamat Ali Khan (July 11) again went unnoticed this year. The day passed without remembrance of his contribution and the mention of his name.

Ustads Nazakat Ali Khan and Salamat Ali Khan were the architects of a new tradition. They were dhrupadias by early training but later chose kheyal as their principal expression. Proceeding on the path of dikhiya, sikhiya and parikhiya (to see, to learn and to creatively assimilate), they achieved great success.

To many detractors their break from a tradition where a formal ustad-shagird nexus assumes a mystical status was a sacrilege. However, the two brothers silenced their critics with their remarkable progress in kheyal singing. They were driven to perform at a very early age – partly due to their promise, and partly because of poverty. The family just could not let them not become earning members to salvage a near desperate financial situation at home. They got their early training from their father Vilayat Ali Khan. Probably, they also benefited from the tutelage of Mubarak Ali Khan, the Jallandhari qawwal.

Belonging to the famous Sham Chaurasi Gharana, Nazakat Ali Khan and Salamat Ali Khan were the founders of their own gharana of kheyal gaiki. Theirs was a family of professional dhurpad singers: one of the four major schools of dhurpad in the Punjab: Talwandi, Haryana, Sham Chaurasi and Kapurthala. Their grandfather Mian Karim Buksh had been a great dhurpad singer and the flagbearer of the Sham Chaurasi gaiki. However, the grandsons, Nazakat Ali and Salamat Ali, chose to switch to kheyal gaiki. For this they did not formally submit themselves to any ustad but their influences were many. The most profound of those were Ustad Ashiq Ali Khan and Ustad Baray Ghulam Ali Khan – the two giants of the Patiala Gharana who dominated music scene in those days – as well as Tawakkel Hussain Khan, the most virtuoso of singers.

Barsis have traditionally been occasions when the ustads of the bygone era are remembered. And what better way to do so than to hold a concert where all the participants pay their homage through performances. However, with the passage of time and the weakening of the traditional bonds such occasions are also falling by the wayside.

This tradition (riwayat) was particularly integrated with the ethos of the musicians. Mostly following inherited learning, these musicians were mindful of maintaining the links that reasserted their music culture as part of the social matrix of the society.

The urs festivals of sufi adepts are also barsis by another name. In many instances that tradition has survived, though in an altered form, at the shrines of the sufis who promoted the cause of music or refused to join those condemned the practice of music. In many cases, the celebrated sufi elders eulogised the harmony and the balance that music espoused theoretically and capitaliaed on gaining plenty of cerebral justification from it, but stayed away from the practice of music. This strange contradiction is a little difficult to comprehend but it does form a consistent approach in the intellectual discourse of the past.

Perhaps, the intellectual satisfaction that they achieved or aspired to was held above board and untainted, while the practice of music was sullied by the emotional outpourings that went with it. Such forced distinctions and differences have been part of the epistemological discourse not only in our society but across the worlds where dry ideas are held above vaulting emotions. Such cut and dried routes between ideals and flux of human relatedness have been the bedrock of human understanding in the past.

Ustad Salamat Ali Khan was blessed with a good voice that he honed with great diligence. His real forte was the lightning taans, which traversed the three registers in a flash, and lai kari, which was nearly unprecedented. Despite all the virtuosity there was a base of the dhurpad as they elaborated the raga and then in the drut lai astonished everyone with their taans and subtle division of the rhythmic patterns in that tempo.

Needless to say, Ustad Salamat Ali Khan was the dominant partner. However, his elder brother, Ustad Nazakat Ali Khan, too, had a mellifluous voice that could similarly traverse the three registers. It was he who formed the basic aesthetic tonal pattern of the raga. One of the most difficult things in kheyal or dhurpad is to establish this aesthetic tonal pattern (shakl) of the raga. Nazakat Ali Khan was very good at making a sketch. Salamat Ali Khan would then took over and start adding colour by dividing, sub-dividing and combining the variations of stress that enunciated the musical possibilities inherent in the raga.

The writer is a culture critic based in Lahore.