As is well-known, the role of sitar subsequent to its invention in the 18th century, was what is called purak baj. It is believed that the role of sitar was to fill up the gaps which occur during recitals of qawwali singers. It was the role of sitar players to fill these gaps with strokes dir dir dir dir, executed with the right hand, while the left hand remained stationary on a note suitable to the melody. Thus, it was called purak baj.
With musical and stylistic evolution, the role of left hand had also to become more active, which resulted into small pithy phrases being played by the left hand, duly supported by the right hand. Over a period, the left hand became increasingly active and started playing melody on its own. Hence, right hand and left hand started executing music on sitar in tandem.
It is only since the first decade of 20th century that records of instrumentalists are available – Ustad Imdad Khan’s (1848-1920) records published in 1904 (about 14 sides) appear to be the first instrumental music records available. In these recordings, it is clearly noticed that while the right hand is playing a dominant role, left hand is also moving fairly dexterously. However, right hand still seem to dominate the recital.
Even sarod gats which we had the opportunity to listen to subsequently, also indicated the same situation, as the right hand was playing a dominant role. Colloquially, compositions played on plucking instruments were called gats and on other bowing instruments, such as sarangi etc. were called bandishes. This is a general statement as my observations in this note refer mainly to, plucking instruments with a focus on sitar.
It was in Ustad Enayet Khan Saheb’s (1894-1938) style, that we note from his several records, that the left hand is almost equally relevant compared to the right hand which resulted into the “divine music” – he being called ‘Bengal ka Jadugar’. It is also noted that, in addition to the bol patterns of Ustad Imdad Khan’s gats, Ustad Enayet Khan’s gats also revealed a specific bol pattern, especially for drut gats.
It was thus – as far as sitar is concerned – left to Ustad Vilayat Khan to assimilate gats of his forefathers and add a flavour of gayaki ang, which made the gats composed by him, highly lyrical and displayed considerable affinity to the compositions of vocal music. His gats can be divided in three categories –
a. Gats with main stay of right hand bols – left hand playing relatively a simple role.
b. Later a change occurred in which the right hand and the left hand together, played a role with contribution of 50% each. In other words, vocalized style and instrumentalists’ style played equal roles.
c. Still later, the gats display the left hand contributing almost 70-80% of the gat compositions while the balance was executed by the right hand – just to support the vocalized idiom.
Conclusion
Therefore, we notice that from a purak baj where only the right hand was relevant – over a period i.e. up to Ustad Vilayat Khan style, the vocalized idiom, i.e. the left hand played significantly important role in the formation of sitar gats.