Custodian of golden voices

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Versatility is Vikram Sampath’s middle name. The 33-year-old Bengalurean is an engineer, mathematician, management graduate, writer and a musician.

And now he has launched the first Archive of Indian Music (AIM), that gives access to the voices of the past in digital format online through old and rare gramophone recordings. From the voices of great leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Subhash Chandra Bose to dancer and singer Gauhar Jaan, poet Kazi Nazrul Islam and yesteryear actress Devika Rani; the archive is a gateway to a bygone era.
“Music and literature have been a part of my growing up years. I have been learning Carnatic music since the age of four. In 2007, I wrote my first book Splendours of Royal Mysore based completely on my research of Wodeyar dynasty. After this book, I started working on my second book that dealt with the life and times of Kolkata-based dancer and singer, Gauhar Jaan. It was while researching for this book, that I realised it is immensely difficult to get hold of recordings of her musical recitals,” says Vikram. It was then that the idea of creating an archive first struck him.
Soon his research on early gramophone recordings took him on a visiting fellowship to Berlin. Eventually he visited archives in Vienna, Paris and London and was taken aback by the records of Indian voices they had.
“I heard recordings of voices of Indian prisoners of World War 1, Tagore’s voice from his visit to Berlin University and Jawahar lal Nehru’s speeches. They invoked tremendous nostalgia and I felt it was time that we also had an archive that would have voices and music from our past,” he explains. From 2011, he started working on the archive and drafted elaborate proposals for the same. The proposal got much appreciation and positive response from the highest echelons of power and politics. However, as the proposal went from one ministry to another for clearance, Sampath’s enthusiasm started waning. “At a book launch in Bengaluru, I was casually chatting with entrepreneur TV Mohandas Pai, who then was a part of Infosys. He liked the idea of the archive so much that he decided to become its chief patron and thereafter, the process speeded up,” reveals Sampath.
The earliest recording with the archive dates back to 1902. The collection ranges from Hindustani and Carnatic classical music to patriotic speeches and folk songs. The digital library will house close to 10,000 records, with plans of scaling it up to a lakh in the next few years.
The archive is at the moment headquartered in Bengaluru but he soon plans to create hubs in Delhi and Mumbai. “I have sourced the records from various places — old connoisseurs to kabadi shops and flea markets. But discovering the long lost voices has been a fulfilling experience and I will continue this endeavour with more rigour now,” smiles Sampath.
He adds, “Digitising the gramophone plates is no easy task. They were all in the original analog form of a 78 RPM or a Vinyl disc (EP or LP). We had to import special equipments for the digital transfers.”
Sampath also plans to add interesting trivia, information nuggets and biographies of artists on the archive so that people gain ample information. He also plans to host audio exhibitions where people can hear old voices through latest android applications. “History has to be made accessible to the present generation in every which way possible,” he concludes.