The rich Indian traditional Carnatic and Hindustani music in the form of vocal and instrumental found its way to reach the common man in the early 1900s through the Gramophone and LP records or Long Playing records. But with the advent of magnetic tapes, CDs, mobile phones, and other technological innovations, the Gramophone and LPs became more of a collector’s item.
Many treasures of great music by eminent musicians like Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Ustad Salamat Ali Khan, Gangu Bai Hanagal, M.S.Subbulakshmi and a host of others recorded in the form of the LPs were lost and it called for some initiative by passionate people to preserve whatever could be.
That is when Vikram Sampath, a tech savvy young Bangalorean and a music aficionado took up up the mammoth task of archiving the music of yore. By digitising original recordings and making it available to music lovers at the click of a mouse on a digital platform, Vikram’s mission, Archive of Indian Music (AIM) is a comprehensive and honest approach to wards preservation of some of the gems of Indian music.
The challenges
“The first challenge of the project was the collection of LPs of different genres of music from different sources across India. Then we had to evaluate the quality of the records. The process of conversion to the digital format and finally uploading to the public domain through a website involved using top class technology,” says Vikram.
Collecting rare LPs from different parts of the country, spreading across genres, was indeed a tough task for Vikram and his team. He says, “The first ever Indian gramophone record was made in the year 1902 by Gauhar Jaan. I had a collection of a few hundreds of LPs to begin with. It was an absolute team effort to collect LPs from different parts of India, in different languages cutting across the genres of music.
Today, we are in possession of a huge inventory of LPs which include speeches of famous personalities.”
Bringing Gauhar back
Vikram, who is also a published author of three major books- ‘Splendours of Royal Mysore’, ‘My name is Gauhar Jaan! – the life and times of a musician’ and ‘Voice of the Veena: S Balachander, a biography’, stumbled upon an LP of Gauhar Jaan, when doing research on his book on the Mysore royals. “Gauhar was an extremely gifted Hindustani vocalist and it was her music that inspired me to initiate AIM,” says Vikram.
Giving shape
During his visits to Berlin, Vienna and other European countries, he was exposed to the technology of archiving of music content and that was the triggering point for him to give concrete shape to the project.
“Initially I proposed the concept to the Government of India, but the response was lukewarm but I was lucky to get help from Mohandas Pai of Manipal group. It has been a great journey in the world of music which has connected me to a team of dedicated music lovers,” he says. To listen to the preserved music, visit www.archiveofindianmusic.com.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Bangalore / by R. Manjunath Chavan rmchavan@newindianexpress.com / ENS – Bangalore / July 13th, 2013