A date with Mouth Organ Maestro Madan Kumar

Madan Kumar is humility personified. Maestros are like that. The greater heights they achieve in their profession, more humble they become, just like a fruit-bearing tree which bows down as they are laden with fruits.

When I called him up to say, "Sir, I am coming to Pune", he said, "Hop over to my place on Sunday." Madan Kumar lives in the central business district of Pune in a studio apartment on the MG Road.

Both his children, a son and daughter, are married. Son lives in San Fransisco and daughter in Mumbai. In their Pune apartment, only Madan Kumar and his wife live. Having spent 60 years playing mouth organ, Madan Kumar, now 67, cannot live without music. So, he has converted his living room into a small make-shift recording studio.

He squats on the ground on a matress, offering me the sofa to sit on. Like a child, he shows me his collection of harmonicas - all from M Hohner, Germany, except one from Hering. Some of the harmonicas have become collector's pieces as Hohner has stopped making them. There is a harmonica with solid silver body, weighing 300 grams. There is a double bass harmonica and a complete set of CX-12 in G, C, Bb, E and F scales.

Madan Kumar has mastered the various techniques of playing mouth organ - vamping, chording, tounging, vibrato, bending notes to be able to become a one-man orchestra. "I have become a sound engineer by experience," says Madan Kumar, who had to give up his studies after matriculation to take up a job in the construction industry as a labour supervisor.

To complete a song, Madan Kumar, while playing the lead, also records on different tracks chords, octave playing, special effects in the form of vibrator and vamping, which he then mixes on a digital editing device.

Past few years, Madan Kumar has been teaching youngsters. "Only if the new generation takes up playing harmonica that this little instrument has any chance of surving the onslaught of electronic synthesizers," he says.

On one of his visits to his son in San Fransisco, Madan Kumar had presented his five-year-old grandson Pranav, a harmonica. The little one, after blowing into the instrument for some time, had kept it aside till he saw his grandpa's video on the Harmonica Club of Gujarat blog recently. "Look, that's grandpa playing mouth organ," he exclaimed excitedly to his dad.

Pranav fished out the mouth organ his grandpa had given him and began playing. "Why are you moving your fingers like that?" the dad asked. "That's the way grandpa plays," the boy explained non-challantly.

Nostalgia - II

Madan Kumar believes in exploring and experimenting with all possible techniques - tonguing, vamping, bending, chording - of playing harmonica. "There is no fun if you play harmonica in single reeds. What is then the difference between playing a harmonica and playing say a flute?" he asks.

He also believes in innovation and improvisation. "One need not necessarily copy the exact tune of a song composed by someone else for a film. One can always make improvisation," he says. When he plays, the full impact of this tiny musical instrument is felt as if a full-fledged orchestra is accompanying his harmonica.

Enjoy one such number:

Mouth Organ Maestro Madan Kumar

It was world friendship day. Also a Sunday when members of the Harmonica Club of Gujarat assemble in a public park in the morning to practice and play.

"Madan Kumar is in Ahmedabad." This was Ramakrishna Sabnavees on the telephone. He had called up me and Tapan Bhatt to wish us on friendship day.

Tapan grabbed the opportunity that had come the way of the club and informed Sandeep Patankar to bring along Madan Kumar to the park.

Excitement ran high among the club members as the word spread that the doyen of harmonica was on his way to the park. Members surrounded Madan Kumar with the plea to play a few numbers. "I have heard so much about your club. First, please play all of you, one by one. I want to hear you," said Madan Kumar. So ernest was his request that the club members suppressed their desire to listen to the mouth organ maestro live and asked Aditya, the 12-year-old youngest member of the club to play a few numbers.

"It is Aditya's generation which will bring back the art of playing mouth organ into the mainstream of performing arts. I am glad to see that boys like Aditya are so passionate about mouth organ," said a beaming Madan Kumar.

"I too had picked up mouth organ when I was seven-year-old. It was 'Echo' from M Hohner, Germany, which my elder brother had brought home one day but would not allow me to touch. However, he forgot to take with him the instrument when he left for work. So I grabbed the piece and started playing to my heart's content. Since then, mouth organ became a part of me," said Madan Kumar, recalling his childhood days.

Over the next 60 years, Madan Kumar and mouth organ became synonymous. The HMV brought out more than a dozen of his records and noted music directors like Laxmikant Pyarelal and Khayyam have made him play romantic numbers for their films.

Nowadays, Madan Kumar teaches children in Pune.

The Harmonica Club of Gujarat could not resist its greed of listening to Madan Kumar live. Club trustee Bansi Gajjar called him over to his residence to spend an entire evening with the club members. We will be bringing you Madan Kumar live through rare videos on this blog.