In a documentary noted vocalists from the Gwalior gharana Rajan Sajan Mishra mention of one question their father used to ask them:
"What is the opposite of sur?"
Sur, in common parlance - is a note - an established harmonic frequency of sound between which the musician glides to produce delightful experience.
"A quick answer to this question," Mishra brothers elaborate, "is besur meaning, off-note. However, we don't believe that is so. The opposite of sur is silence. Music is the play between sur and silence. If we dont allow silence, we cannot appreciate sur."
The generosity of such a definition of sur certainly needs discussion. Now, sur is often understood as to be in sur. So the opposite of it could mean to not be in sur. One could approach the understanding of sur from speech too: For example, why is speech not considered music? Why is speaking not singing? In this line of thought, singing or music is that experience of hearing that glides between or through particular frequencies of sound. These frequencies are ascertained as harmonics of a base note in ascending or descending order, clearly distinguishable as different from the previous. We thus have 12 key notes - including harmonics and intermediate sharp/flat notes. A more trained ear would be able to decipher 23 - which demands immense hearing acuity. At a simply level then, to be in sur means to glide from one identified note to another through an aesthetic rule. Any sung or heard note, off the aesthetic register shall be deemed off-note or besur. Speech does not follow musical rules thus, but is not bereft of sur thus. We all speak in some pitch - however, our subsequent words are not uttered in complimenting musical pitches. Speech my have lyricality, but still, it ceases to be called musical, or surail (surila).
To think of sur held in conjunction with silence rather than be-sur offers a fundamentally insightful way of thinking about music, people and the world at large. For music, it calls to identify each utterance as a musical frequency - in some scale. If not identifiable, it coaxes the listener and the musician to rethink their own knowledge so as to locate the sound in an appropriate scale. In such an understanding, Pt. Rajan-Sajan Mishra not only go past the binaries of sur-besur, but they suggest, in fact that every uttered word in a part of the world, in some sur - that exists in some scale - identified or unidentified. Such a reading speaks of the emancipatory potential of musical knowledge in its abstraction, making it inclusive through the transcendence of spoken language.
What is there in enjoying (Hindustani Classical) music? Sometimes, I feel it's so simple - dwell on the glides and transitions between the different notes and what they make you feel. You suspend yourself in a pure abstract space - you are free to make your meaning out of it. A free wheeling journey that you can totally indulge in. Sometimes, it answers the internal questions in bypassing jargon of verbalism completely. If you are able to decipher, the tone, texture, quality, ingenuity of moving between the notes will reveal to you the emotions that speech carries in its intonations, instead of words. And at times, the economy of words that dot the intonational will upen up multiple words between speech and silence. It is perhaps this interplay of sound and silence that defines the world of sur in the musico-philosophical conception of Pt. Rajan-Sajan Mishra.
