Only tunes remain…

While his bhavgeet compositions ruled the hearts of many music lovers,not many know that Gajananrao Watve was a ghazal singer as well. Me being his son,got the opportunity to observe him closely,and thus got to experience some of the compositions that never came in front of music lovers. I remember the days when Suresh Bhat would to come to our house and Anna and Bhat would sit for hours giving music to countless ghazals written by Bhat. One such ghazal that I remember is- Jivanta majhya kalewarala,which was composed by Bhat and music,was given by Anna,but unfortunately,its presentation remained limited to private mehfils. In 1960s in fact,famous ghazal singer Aasma Khan used to come to Anna to learn ghazals.

He was a great fan of Marathi poems. His selection of poems was quite offbeat. He would select such compositions,which were generally perceived as- difficult to give music to. For instance,In- Matiche Garvageet,a poem by well known Marathi poet- Kusumagraj,one part of the song is the narrator and the second part includes words that the soil or the earth says. While giving music to this poem,he skillfully used a light tune for the second part of the song,without affecting the essence of the song as well as the words by the narrator.

Publicity or glamour is something that he always enjoyed but never really went out of the way to get. Recording technique was his weak point. I remember in 1940s when the recording technique with three minutes of recording discs was introduced,he,coming from the old school of thought,was not quite open to adjusting to the changes in technology. This is the major reason why many of his songs remained unrecorded. The audience always wanted to listen to the famous tracks,but Anna never performed the same songs over and over again,just because the audience loved them.

His knowledge about Indian Classical music was immense,and despite having friends such as Kumar Gandharva,Wamanrao Dehspande and so on,he always knew the limitations of his voice and never really ventured into giving classical music performances in front of the audience. I don’t even remember him doing a regular riyaz,like most of the other singers. But yes,it also never happened that he had to struggle with sur,before a particular performance. He used to teach music and that is something that he enjoyed doing till he was 88-89 years old- that was his riyaz. His style of teaching was also very different. He would not really get into the technicalities of Raagdari music,but would teach one song at a time to his students.

I grew up listening to his music and his style of teaching. I never really learnt music from him,but I remember that even when I was 10 years old,while teaching a particular tune to his students,if he forgot,he would call me and ask me the exact notation in the tune.

Anna minus music is something that we could never imagine. The only time when he could not remain attached to music was during the last two years of his life,otherwise,he was a nastik who remained faithful to only one god-music!