Abstract

Harmonium, an instrument of French origin, was brought to India late in 19th century and was widely used by missionaries and chaplains though it was welcomed by Indian musicians and performers also as it facilitates singing and has a loud sound but soon, in early 20th century it became a matter of discussion and criticism among the scholars. They criticized it for its fixed key intervals lacking in srutis (microtones) and some certain subtle inflections such as andolan, meend and gamak etc. which are very important in Indian classical music as they play a crucial role in certain ragas carrying same notes, to make a difference among them. Rabindranath Tagore condemned it as "bane of Indian Music" (B.C. Deva, 1978: 95). John Herbert Foulds, head of All India Radio, Delhi in 1930s alleged this instrument of being incapable of producing microtones and thus unsuitable for classical music and calling it as "Harm-onium" as well as 'Un -Indian'(Rahaim, M. 2011:17) That is why in 1940 the then controller of AIR Mr. Lionel Fielden banned harmonium on AIR and it remained banned till 1971. On the other hand performers of this instrument continued carrying their work with harmonium. They developed reforming techniques to play the instrument so that to cope with the shortcomings of the instrument to some extent. Meanwhile, the classical singing also underwent some changes with the passage of time (Meer, W., 1980:188). The missionaries, chaplains and well trained performers made the instrument popular in public as well as in musicians also. Even classical singers started allowing accompaniment of harmonium with their performances, solo of harmonium was also developed by good artistes. With the efforts of harmoniumists and with changing trends, the ban on AIR was also lifted in 1971. The instrument now-a-days has become very popular as an accompaniment of singing. This paper aims at searching the present position of harmonium in sikh kirtan tradition which has been accompanied by harmonium since its arrival and the controversy among the scholars of this field because even now-a-days some of the performers prefer singing gurbani with string instruments of Guru's times instead of harmonium accompaniment; they even condemn it for being out of tune.