“Raga Shudh Kalyan is personified in her blue royal robes, gently rocking on a swing. Women hold her lovely hands. Kalyani (its name in old scrip tures), the giver of blessing strikes with a plectrum the strings of her lute. Yellow as turmeric, her neck is loaded with garlands of champa flowers. The birds sing along with her. Her each day is a season of love.” The raga gripped with its voluptuous lyricism its sheer beauty of expression. Every note fitted into its place, every phrase seemed instruct with melody and meaning. In its delicacy of tone as also in its formal grace, the music struck one as derivative from some heightened sensibility or perhaps some finer, happier mood, in which every thought or feeling took on its most attractive colouring; in which music is forged to a point where every idea is fittingly embodied.

This was Roshan Ara Begum of the mid-1960s with an amazing combination of alertness and repose, a supreme confidence and a bit of the music’s wile qualities that helped her occupy the centre-stage in the Indo-Pak classical music for a record half century—with steady luminosity, with an effortless ease. Her music was well formed, sincerely communicative and free from vocal excesses. There was no hankering for startling effects, no vigorous urge for self-display. Unpretentious, un-obtrusive and at the same time marked by a sense of grace and temperate sweetness, her singing was extremely appealing.

However, in order to achieve the citadel of music grandeur and dignity she had to travel a long way on a laborious and unflinching journey. She had a great ambition to learn music from Abdul Karim Khan, the great virtuoso of the Kirana Gharana. But, unfortunately, Khan Sahib would not take girls as his pupils because he had a hunch that before completing the “shiksha” (training) they would get married and his “taleem” would dissipate. Perhaps, Roshan Ara was the only exception.

She migrated to Pakistan after independence. In the beginning she used to remain worried by the fact that the then generation of listeners has little knowledge of classical music and therefore some tended to ridicule its subtle nuisances. Her regret was that most artistes suffered similarity—singing to the popular and substandard demand of a larger audience that portends the death of classical music. But she would say with confidence, “We will have to veer people back to us.” The distinctive feature of Roshan Ara’s singing was, however, her steadfast adherence to traditions. The musicians of the Kirana Gharana like to sing in a rather mellow voice; while performing they keep the “rasa” (emotional impact) on the listeners) of the raga in their view and go on creating different metaphorical images of the raga to provide more variety and impact. Roshan Ara used to say that she had the great fortune of being able to listen to the maestros of the Kirana Gaeky, like Ustad Abdul Waheed Khan, Swai Gandharv, Pandit Bal Krishan Bua, Gangu Bai Hangal, Bhim Sen Joshi, Heera Bai Barodkar and Ustad Ameer Khan. And therein also lay her strength. She would say with reverence that there was a little departure from the master’s manner of singing in her style.