The circle of life, or why LP’s must play on

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who while nurturing a deep distaste for everything Christian and worthy of appreciation in the Western world had reserved a keen ear for music, famously said: “Without music life would be a mistake.”

Though it is not known, this author of A Case for Wagner must have heard his music in LPs. Technologically it’s unlikely because LPs came later than Nietzsche’s descent into madness and into death but then on the wings of poesy the connections between the German nihilist and records/LPs are never overwrought with implausibility. Because, the man who played a pioneering role in phonograph history is Emile Berliner from Hanover, Germany. Based on Edison’s tinfoil phonograph of 1877, Berliner experimented in Washington City and developed the flat disc in place of a cylinder, the latter being the dominant record technology that technician John Kruesi made based on the drawing of Thomas Alva Edison in 1877.

In fact, the first demonstration in India of the cylinder phonograph was around December 1878 at, where else, but Calcutta. And soon it had listeners in India, in all probability the European patrons of high and new art, who were hooked on to it. Later, cylinders were also made in India. As Suresh Chandvankar, former Secretary, Society of Indian Record Collectors writes in an article published in 2002, “Professor H Bose, the renowned businessman of Calcutta, entered into this new business of cylinder records under the banner of ‘H Bose Records’ and later ‘Pathe-H Bose Records’. His catalogue of 1906 lists number of cylinder recordings of Rabindranath Tagore. Most of these have been lost to history except the Bande Mataram sung by Tagore. Cylinder records were in the market until 1906-10, even at the same time as the single and double side flat discs of the Gramophone and Nicole companies.”

Coming back to flat discs, once Berliner realised the potential of his product and secured the necessary rights and financers in the US, he sent his agents across the world to take recordings and his nephew Joe Sanders to Hanover to build the record pressing plant. Chandvankar quotes Michael Kinnear’s 1994 publication The Gramophone Company’s First Indian Recordings to illustrate that the first-ever Indian voice was recorded in London in 1899. They were 7” records with one side recorded by Captain Bholanath, Dr Harnaamdas and Ahmed. None of them has been found but was listed up to 1904. But Calcutta, the then capital of British India and the megapolis with an irrepressible thirst for inventions and edginess, was at it again. Chandvankar writes, “In 1901, JW Hawd came to Calcutta and soon a branch office was opened. FW Gaiseberg arrived in 1902 for his first recording expedition and recorded about five hundred songs. These were then sent to Joseph Berliner’s pressing factory at Hanover in Germany.”

In the next few years, while the incredibly talented ‘fallen woman’ recorded music on the records, recording medium changed from zinc to wax and record copies were pressed in lac, agro produce that was abundant in India, especially Bengal, a fact that hugely contributed to the city becoming a base for recording and making records from the early days. This helped in setting up the pressing plant for records in Sealdah in 1908, a plant that workers called Bajakhana. In fact, there was a rush of new companies to produce and market records in India in 1916, recorded history says that there were about 75 different record labels of which some were Nicole, Universal, Neophone, Elephone, H Bose, Beka, Kamla, Binapani, Royal, Ram-a-Phone (Ramagraph), James Opera, Singer, Sun, Odeon, and Pathe. Recorded music had very much arrived in India and Indian social, public and private life was never the same again. The companies closed or merged and only HMV remained and came out with its first record in 1916. In the next few decades, records graduated from rpm microgrooves to EPs and then LPs. And with the setting up of the HMV plant in 1959 at DumDum, the vinyl by the British company, like Britain two hundred years ago, consolidated its music Empire.

Anecdotes abound as to how singers and musicians recorded what they considered ‘live’ music and hence an offering to the god. Collector and archivist Kushal Gopalka narrate a story about Ustad Rehmat Khan, who like many others was so intimidated by technology that he felt that if he recorded, he might lose his voice; because music, like prayer could be rendered in only full-throated gaiety. Later, it was the unprecedented reach of a recorded song that seduced musicians and singers, though buying records was still not a mass culture till late into India’s march into modernity. The introduction of talkies in Indian cinema in the 1930s, says, Gopalka, was another watershed moment in the history of records in India. Records made stars out of singers and the list includes Miss Angurbala, Indubala, Miss Gauhar Jaan of Calcutta, Bal Gandharva, Ustad Faiz Khan Sahib through Dinanath Mangeshkar, Tagore, Nazrul Islam to Kesarbhai Kerkar, KL Saigal, Begum Akhtar, to SD and RD Burman and right up to AR Rehman. Rehman? Yes, Rehman and he is why we are looking back at the records. 

LPs, however, were to make room for changes one day, because technology and lifestyle are never in service of monopolies. Vinyl represented a time and era that was unhurried and could extract a fair amount of time and attention from the connoisseur and listener alike. The entire gramophone paraphernalia — the contraption — took possession of an entire corner of the living room. Throughout the countercultural ’60s and the restless ’70s, records ruled the roost, to be suddenly and unexpectedly dethroned by cassettes in the ’80s — that devil of a device — that killed the fun and aura of music in order to give it wheels. People were more and more outbound and cassette players helped them carry their music along. Thankfully cassettes did not have a long run and by the mid-nineties, CDs came and when we all thought that CDs were a far improved way you store and listen to music, MP3 and digital music came in a huff and music became more abundant and movable than ever before.

This briefest possible history of music technology hides one pleasant surprise — the LPs are making a comeback. EMI has released, beginning this year, a whole new catalogue of albums available on LP and next week HMV is releasing the music of Jhoota Hi Sahi, by the redoubtable AR Rehman, on LPs — along with CDs of course. It is touting the LP as a collector’s item, a retro-chic collectable of a new album and officials in HMV believe, like EMI, that there is a small but dedicated and passionate group of collectors who would want to lap them up because it’s been a decade that HMV last did a new LP.

 Is this a trend? Is this a fad? Is this an appeal to the retro-chic in you? Perhaps all that and more. Because LPs, say people associated with the music industry, like former sound recordist and music dilettante Arish Dasgupta, are a delight. “See, usually we associate sonic technology with the improvement of clarity, tone and texture. In that sense cassettes or CDs should have been a marked improvement on the LP. But they were just the opposite. Cassettes were a monstrosity anyway but even CDs have their limitation. LPs were so much the better. That LPs are making a comeback is great news but I am still not sure why LPs were done away with in the first place.”

Musician and founder of alt-jazz band Kendraka Mainak Nag Chowdhury (Bumpy) went a step further. He was visibly elated to know that LPs are making a comeback, whatever be its size and scope. “My childhood was full of the sound of the LPs. When I was learning music I listened to a whole lot of them and even when CDs arrived, I would go back to them again and again to learn the riffs and the notes. Records are forever. They are infinite in their dissemination of sound. I have seen my teacher Monojit Dutta (founder of Latin bands Orient Express and Los Amigos) used to stack hundreds of records in his room. Whenever he remembered one song or part, he would take it out, dust and lightly wash it under the tap and play. No wonder they call records indestructible. And the warmth, the richness of tone is not producible elsewhere. I find it only a matter of celebration that LPs, even if sneakily, are making a comeback. And if for any of my next albums I am offered to cut an LP, I would be honoured.”

Another great enthusiast of records is Susanta Chatterjee, the secretary of Bengal Record Collectors’ Association. He is one of those who have clung to EPs and LPs through sad times. “You can’t imagine what people do to get their hands on records of their choice. I personally have travelled to places across India to get hold of records. And there are genres and artist. Our association has the Lata collector, the Manna Dey collector, the Hemanta collector etc. We cannot build an archive. But we can build a collector chain to satiate our fetish to listen to that right record. I personally have records dating back to 1902.” But collecting is one thing and being enthused by new records is another. “It’s great news. But for it to really happen, the entire ecosystem must gear up to change. Especially the pins and changers must be readily available. Even players are rare. If only the industry gears up to change, the comeback of the LP may be successful, otherwise, it will remain just an elite fad” says Chatterjee. 

The change in the ecosystem is echoed by composer Shantanu Moitra too. “The technology for music has changed irrevocably. Earlier you would revolve around your music. Now, the music revolves around you. You carry it. I am happy about LPs coming back but that’s not going to be a norm. The norm is to go digital. It’s all about hits and downloads these days. And honestly, digital music transformation is getting better by the day. So that thing about analogue music recording being better and hence LPs being better is a myth. If I mourn anything really it is the artwork that came with the records. But records themselves are passé and best suited for the collector’s table”, says Moitra. 

Perhaps this is true. Perhaps not. Perhaps desire for LPs is in the mind of the dilettante rather than the regular listener. But in the glinting eyes of Md Azim, who sells records at Free School Street, in the eyes of the beholder of the new LP rack at the Park Street Music World or in the septuagenarian group who clapped because LPs coming back coincided with the Puja whose music of yore always came packed in the best LPs, the unbearable loveliness and nostalgia of the LP are hard to not to be awed by. Or hard not to desire at some corner of the room.