Classical music doyen Pandit Jasraj passes away

A husky yet pure, ringing voice that could blend the sensuous with the most austere formal elements. A musicality that could attain the sublime while not being averse to pleasing the common ear. It was no wonder that Pandit Jasraj, who died of a heart attack today in New Jersey, at the ripe and fulfilled age of 90, had deigned to match the greatest of the twentieth century while being marked out in public consciousness as the ultimate symbol of the classical vocalist.

This was no small feat—for it was a musical epoch of astounding variety and depth. Film music ruled the radio. And in the classical sphere, some of the world’s greatest musicians—practitioners of among the most structurally difficult of the arts—strode the land. And yet, Pandit Jasraj’s special gayaki managed to elevate him — and his Mewati gharana—to the very astral regions of the Hindustani classical musical firmament. 

Born to a musical family based out of Haryana, with an accomplished but ultimatey lesser known vocalist elder brother in Pandit Maniram, it fell upon Jasraj to carve a niche for himself in the public mind in a way none of his forebears had. It was a mark of his sheer vocalism—and his eclectic musical ethos— that allowed him to accomplish this.

Soaring tans, rippling sargams strung out to near-perfection, but also experimentation in the form of his ‘Jasrangi’ style of duets with a female voice. The devotionalism of his Mewati school also sat well, in the final years, with the popular demand for bhakti.