SANJAY PANDITA
In the stillness of a valley that has always lived in melodies, where every stream murmurs a tune and every mountain echoes a song of longing, a voice has fallen silent. Gulam Nabi Bulbul, the unparalleled minstrel of Kashmir’s folk traditions, has sung his last note. The sarangi, once his eternal companion, now rests against the silence, mourning the loss of hands that gave it life. The news of Bulbul’s passing is not just a moment of sorrow for Kashmir—it is the quiet collapse of a grand era, a chapter closed not with finality, but with aching reverence.
He was born in 1949 in the pastoral village of Batsum, a place swaddled in nature’s grace and known, even then, for its devotion to music and folklore. It was there, in the hushed cradle of the valley, that Bulbul first heard the melodies that would later course through his veins. The pulse of the rabab, the mournful ache of the sarangi, the rhythmic patterns of folk dance—all of it became part of his bloodline, as natural to him as breath.
But greatness seldom announces itself with grandeur. It often begins with a whisper, a coincidence, a divine orchestration of events too delicate to script. In the early 1960s, during a cultural reawakening in Jammu and Kashmir under Prime Minister Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed’s Jashn-e-Kashmir movement, the foundations for Bulbul’s ascent were laid. It was in a school in Dangiwacha that the prodigious boy, with no formal training in voice, stunned an audience—and more crucially, the then Education Minister Sham Lal Saraf—with his haunting rendition of Kral Koor. The performance drew not just applause but prophetic recognition: here was a voice that did not imitate—it evoked. A talent that did not perform—it summoned. From that day onward, destiny gripped Bulbul’s wrist and led him into the very soul of Kashmiri culture.
But music is never born of applause alone. It demands apprenticeship, pain, discipline, and devotion. Bulbul found his guru in Khazir Mohammad Shah, a revered rabab maestro whose own soul was woven into the music of Kashmir. Under his tutelage, Bulbul did not merely learn music—he inherited it. Every note Shah played became a lesson in emotion; every silence, a study in restraint. What emerged from this communion was not just a singer, but an artist who could make the sarangi cry, who could make a glass of water balanced on his head mid-performance seem like the stillness of divine ecstasy.
Bulbul’s was an art inseparable from the body. His voice did not merely rise and fall—it danced. Each nod of his neck, each lift of his hand, was choreographed not in any studio but in the quietude of practice and the fervor of inspiration. He mastered Bacha Nagma, that rich Afghan-inflected dance form once emblematic of Kashmir’s syncretic culture, not just as a revivalist but as a visionary. In his interpretation, Bacha Nagma was not a fossil exhumed from history—it was breath revived, alive again in swirling motion and song.
He brought to the stage something more than performance—a communion with the divine. Audiences were not mere spectators; they were pilgrims, seeking solace in his voice. His signature act of balancing a glass of water on his head while singing and dancing was more than theatrics—it was a metaphor for balance itself, for holding onto one’s center amid the chaos of applause and expectation. In every swaying movement and vibrating note, Bulbul reminded Kashmiris of their cultural nucleus, their rootedness, their ancestral rhythm.
Yet, his brilliance lay not just in the act, but in the act of giving. Bulbul never allowed his fame to outgrow his humility. He remained accessible to those who dared to dream, generous with his time, his wisdom, and his melodies. He mentored young aspirants like Gulzar Ahmad Ganai and Manzoor Ahmad Shah not by imposing a doctrine, but by offering a sanctuary in which they could discover their own song. He once said in an interview, “The song is not mine. It has passed through me. I only hope I sang it well.” This simple line carried the weight of his spiritual modesty. He knew music was a river, and he—a devoted carrier of its current.
There is something of permanence in the way he sang. His songs like Tresh Chete Shah Kule Jigar Phule lu lu were not merely lyrics and melodies; they were heirlooms passed down not in silk or gold, but in sound. Through Radio Kashmir, his voice glided across meadows and hilltops, through curfews and festivity alike. In homes where television never reached, his voice arrived, wrapping evenings in gentle ache and morning in hope.
And yet, like every guardian of tradition, he stood before the slow erosion of his art form with a heart full of grief. The invasion of popular and commercial music, often devoid of roots and history, pained him. He lamented the loss of authenticity, the vanishing rigor of traditional instruments, the growing irrelevance of the Bacha Nagma in a digitized era obsessed with spectacle. But unlike the bitter purist, he never condemned—he countered. He preserved. He taught. He sang louder.
His resistance was graceful. He remained loyal to instruments that bore the aroma of Kashmir’s soil: the sarangi, the rabab, the harmonium. He refused to replace their warmth with synthetic sound. In an era of autotune and algorithm, he sang from the gut, from the memory of forests, from the hush of snowfall, from the bruised soul of a land that has seen too many silences.
Bulbul’s music was, in every sense, an elegy and a celebration. It carried the grief of displacement and the joy of belonging. It encapsulated the paradox of Kashmir itself—a paradise caught in perennial ache. When he performed in cities like Delhi and Bombay, audiences may have clapped for the skill, but what they truly applauded was the honesty. For in Bulbul’s art there was no pretension, no varnish—just an unbroken line to the village he came from, to the culture that birthed him, and to the collective longing of a people scattered across the world.
Even when the stage lights dimmed and the crowds dispersed, Bulbul did not cease to be a performer. He was the song even in silence, the rhythm in stillness. The twilight of his career was not a decline but a mellowing, a deeper tone in his repertoire. Age did not rob him of agility; it gave him gravity. Even as his voice grew frail, it acquired a new timbre—one that vibrated with memory, with pain, with wisdom.
The news of his passing today is more than personal loss. It is cultural bereavement. For what disappears with Bulbul is not just a voice but an ethos—a philosophy of art that placed emotion before embellishment, tradition before trend, and soul before surface. In a world increasingly enamored by the superficial, he stood as a quiet reminder of depth. His was not an easy path, but it was a necessary one. And he walked it not with arrogance, but with barefoot grace.
Today, in the hush of Batsum, the air must feel heavier. Perhaps the trees are listening for a tune that won’t return. Perhaps the hills are echoing with his last song. And perhaps somewhere, a sarangi lies cradled in sorrow, waiting for the fingers that once made it sing.
Yet, as grief settles, one must remember: Bulbul may have left the stage, but he has not left the song. He lives in the archives of Radio Kashmir, in the memories of concerts under the open sky, in the trembling notes of a student practicing under a willow tree, in the voice of a young boy humming Kral Koor, unaware that the song he sings was once sung by a legend.
Artists like Gulam Nabi Bulbul do not die. They become the silence that follows a beautiful song—a silence full of presence. They become the pause before the next note, the breath before the next verse. And in that sense, he remains eternal.
The valley will remember him not just for what he sang, but for why he sang. For the love of a place, a people, a past. For the aching need to hold on to something true. For the belief that music could heal what politics broke. And above all, for the conviction that even one voice, deeply rooted and fiercely honest, can keep a culture alive.
As we bid farewell to Gulam Nabi Bulbul, let it not be with finality but with gratitude. He gave us not just music but a mirror—to see ourselves as we once were, and as we still could be. Let us hold that mirror close. Let us sing what he sang. And when we do, may we remember that somewhere in the silence between our breaths, Bulbul listens still.
Rest in music, maestro. The valley will echo your name for generations.
The writer can be reached at sanjaypanditasp@gmail.com
