Sad tales of the santoor

Nurul Haque is one of the very few experts of the Santoor in the country: who will carry on the legacy in future?

Nurul Haque has been playing the Santoor for about 28 years and he actually had no guru. He says, 'My father Abdur Rahman Jabbar was the main person who inspired me to play the Santoor. I used to play the Mandolin and the American Banjo previously. After some years of playing those instruments, I started to play the Santoor learning it all by myself. When I was very young I attended Shiv Kumar Sharma as my guru. I never met him though. I only watched him on the TV and was inspired by his magical presentation and began to follow him. It was sometime in 1980s.'

'My father was fond of music', recalls Nurul Haque, 'I was acquainted with musical notes in my very childhood. Playing instruments was a passion, not profession, of my father. I was greatly inspired by my father who had introduced the Santoor to me.'

Nurul Haque says with grief, 'It is very sad that there is no evaluation or recognition of this instrument as well as its players. There are very few people who want to learn it. I myself don't have any students. Often some people start to learn it but they don't continue and they buy the instrument and keep it in the closet without even trying to learn it.' He says with desperate disappointment, 'I will never inspire even my own children to learn the Santoor because it has no future prospect, at least not in our country.'

According to Nurul Haque, if anyone wants to learn the Santoor, he or she should find the right guru first. But since there is no guru in our country, the learners must go to India to learn it. As it is a very difficult instrument to play, about two hours should be spent for practice. Nurul says referring to his self-learning, 'it might not be possible for everybody to learn it without a proper guru.'

Nurul Haque's favourite Santoor-players are Monsur Ahmed in our country and Shiv Kumar Sharma in India. He also says that there is no professional Santoor player in our country right now. 'After my death there will be no-one left to play the Santoor anymore. The use of this instrument may be met by the electronic instruments like Keyboard or other modern instruments but the original melody will not be there', sighs Nurul.

'I have never been abroad for playing the Santoor', informs Nurul Haque who is a staff artiste of the Bangladesh Betar. He has played the Santoor for about one thousand movies and 800 audiocassettes. But he has performed on very few occasions on stage. He says proudly that he has played with great artistes like Ghulam Ali, Mehedi Hasan and Hemanta Mukherjee.

It is a matter of surprise that being an enlisted artiste of the Betar Nurul Haque is not a considered a government service-holder. 'Even the peons are government employees with facilities like pension after retirement. But I will not get any pension', says Nurul in remorse.

The most of the programmes of the Betar are musicals. According to Nurul more facilities should be allotted for the regular musical artistes working in this state-owned media-organisation. 'It needs ten to twelve years to be an instrument artiste and it is difficult to be one. So why shouldn't the government give us due facilities?' Nurul puts the inevitable question.