For the record

Times have changed and after cassettes and CDs,it’s now the turn of Blu-Rays,iPods and iTunes. To find out how this interface between the old and the new has shaped entertainment and the music industry,Delhi-based singer Vidya Shah,in collaboration with CMAC,has created a website,which is “a one-stop shop for everybody tracing the history of music in India,” says Shah.

Only,it is not a shop. And all the information is available for free.

The website calledwww.womenonrecord.com,which went online on Thursday,also includes records of India’s first and only Linguistic Survey conducted by the British Raj from 1914-29 sourced by Professor Shahid Amin,information and videos on a slew of musicians in Indian cinema,anecdotes,video interviews,some rare recordings and audio biographies of singers like Siddheshwari Devi and Rasoolan Bai,apart from some interesting trivia.

Two interesting three-and-a-half clips in the Lingusitic Survey section are by Mir Baqar Ali,a legendary Dastango of Delhi. These are the only records of the voice of a man,who practiced Dastangoi,the age-old art of storytelling.

“Some of the material is really rare and is not available anywhere,while some that has been put up exists elsewhere but is too scattered. This puts things in perspective by having all the information at one place. We have carefully divided it in various sections because the website will cater to music connoisseurs,historians,students or anybody who is interested in listening to a rare recording or wanting to know more about Indian music. It is a part of a larger idiomatic approach for making communication interesting,” says Shah,who set up the website with the help of her husband Parthiv Shah,a multimedia artist. Both have been poring over a lot of information for the last three years,which they have tried to source from a series of people like disciples of various musicians,professors,archivists,students and private collectors.

The website also attempts to recapture some of the great musical moments by putting up rare photographs and videos in their video galleries and tries to present the history of film music through the prism of various artistes. “Film music has totally reinvented itself from the time it began during the talkies era to now. We draw parallels between the music in Dilip Kumar’s Devdas and the music from Anurag Kashyap’s Dev D,” says Shah.

The website also has an interview section. “We will upload one of the only interviews with Geeta Sarabhai,a noted disciple of Rasoolan Bai,” says Shah. The section will also include interviews with caretakers at the Chitpur badis in Kolkata,who now look after the houses where the ‘singing ladies’ sang their beguiling melodies.

Shah is also planning to add a folk music section to the website,which will require her to travel and record various dialects in various villages,in turn giving these folk artistes a virtual presence.

“We live in times where there is an appetite for and acceptance of everything. This is an experiment to allow everybody to have an interesting experience with the click of a button,” says Shah.

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