Tradition · vocal gharana · India
Bhendi Bazaar gharana
Also known as Bhendi Bazaar, Mumbai
The Bhendi Bazar gharana of Hindustani vocal music, founded by Ustad Chhajju Khan (1890-1940) and his brothers Nazir Khan and Khadim Hussain Khan at Bhendi Bazar in central Mumbai in the early 20-century. The gharana emphasises slow-tempo meditative alaap, long sustained notes, and the vocal technique of 'merkhand' (a mathematical approach to combining swara-sequences into complex melodic patterns). The gharana was particularly influenced by the Pathan Mughal classical tradition brought by its founders from Moradabad. The 20-century Vidushi Anjanibai Malpekar (1883-1974) was the most famous female exponent. The modern gharana is maintained by Padma Shri Suhasini Mulgaonkar and Shashikala Shankar. The Bhendi Bazar gharana remains one of the smaller but distinct Mumbai-based gharanas, distinct from the dominant Agra, Gwalior, Kirana and Jaipur-Atrauli traditions. The 1930s Bhendi Bazar gharana concerts at the HMV Studios Mumbai were landmark events.
- Function
- Arts & performance
- Tradition
- Hindustani vocal tradition; gharana histories
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 18.965, 72.826
A gharana is a lineage/tradition rather than a simple place-bound institution; the mapped point is an origin, court, or major associated centre and should not be read as an exclusive birthplace.
Connections (2)
- Companion in the same setBettiah dhrupad tradition
Bettiah and Bhendi Bazaar are the two extremes of how a gharana gets its name. One is a Bihar zamindari that paid for dhrupad singers from the seventeenth century and kept a form the cities had stopped wanting; the other is a Bombay street where three brothers from Moradabad set up in the 1890s and built a style around merukhand permutation and breath control. Court money and city rent produced the same institution by different routes.
- Site withinMumbai
Bhendi Bazaar gharana lies within Mumbai — the two sites sit about 3 km apart, well inside the city's historical boundary and part of the same urban or peri-urban landscape. Bhendi Bazaar gharana is one of the specific sites that give Mumbai its layered character, and reads differently when seen as a stop within the larger city rather than as an isolated monument on an open map. The surrounding neighbourhoods, roads and other heritage ensembles belong to the same single urban fabric.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Bhendi Bazaar gharana”. Bonnie Wade and the standard gharana literature; IGNCA and Sangeet Natak Akademi oral-history collections.
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