The Raza Foundation, along with its numerous cultural activities, has instituted a series of Memorial lectures in the name of stalwarts from different disciples like Agyeya, Habib Tanveer, Gaitonde, Kelucharan Mohapatra and Kumar Gandharva where scholars are invited to speak and interact with the invited audience. Introducing the Kumar Gandharva Memorial Lecture, Ashok Vajpeyi, the managing trustee, informed that this was the 4th lecture in this running series confessing that it was a hard task finding speakers for this particular series. The three earlier speakers were Mukund Lath, T.M. Krishna and Vijay Kichlu. Eminent musician and musicologist Deepak Raja was invited this time to deliver the 4th Kumar Gandharva Memorial Lecture at the Gulmohar Hall of the India Habitat Centre.
The evening opened with a delightful film on Pt. Kumar Gandharva by ace photographer Avinash Pasricha. The film screening created not only an appropriate atmosphere for the lecture in his memory, but also brought back nostalgic memories of his magical musicianship. Raja had chosen an interesting topic for his profound lecture –‘Perspectives on ‘Raga-ness’; which he thought was worth discussing because of its centrality to Hindustani music and to the music of Pt. Kumar Gandharva.
The lecture was in the form of a power point presentation so that the collage of perspectives and the connection between them remained transparent. He opened with ‘Raga as a melodic entity’, with a set of rules governing the selection, sequencing, and intonation of swara-s that are relevant to raga-ness, its emotional potency, the notion of rasa.
Explaining that raga etymologically derived from the Sanskrit Dhatu ranj that means colour or tinge, he cited Matanga in Brihaddeshi (800 AD). “A raga is born from the act of colouring or delighting. That which colours or delights the minds through a specific swara (interval) and varna (intervallic transitions) or through a type of dhwani (sound) is known by the wise, as raga.”
These observations, Raja said, have two implications: Firstly, that a raga is a melodic representation of an emotional idea. Secondly, that the melody delivers its emotional charge through the artistic prowess of the musician, and is accessible only to the wise, who possess aesthetic sensitiveness that is needed for being delighted.
Receptivity of listener
The raga’s communicative efficacy is thus attributed to the receptivity of the listener, as much as the competence of the performer. So, a raga is a rule-based system of sounds, used by the skilful musician for communicating emotional ideas to those who are cultivated in the interpretation of the sounds as emotional stimuli. Thus a raga is a melodic representation of an emotional Idea.
Linguistic statement
Raja then went on to the perspective of raga as a language, a medium of communication. Considering music as a language and raga as a particular kind of linguistic statement, he established raga music as a language for activating an emotional trigger amongst those capable of interacting through the medium of raga music.
Every raga may be defined as a “statement”, because it uses a finite set of swaras to construct a finite set of patterns, and arranges them in a consistent and predictable sequence to fulfil its communicative purpose.
Each raga qualifies almost entirely as a linguistic statement, and is understood by the members of the raga music community – just as a statement in any spoken language is understood by its “native” ethnic-linguistic community.
This brought him to the consideration of a raga as a psycho-acoustic hypothesis. The hypothesis, he said, is plausible because it represents society’s accumulated and collective experience of associating certain sound patterns with certain emotional ideas. The question then arises – from where does a raga accumulate the evidence to accomplish a high probability of an emotional response?
A simple answer is – it draws on the cultural memory. Raja reiterated, “My view is that, the associations of the sound patterns of a raga with their meaning reside in the collective unconscious, just as the associations of words in a spoken or written language reside in memory of the culture in which the language has evolved.”
Talking about the performance of a raga, he explained, “A raga is a formless form — formless because it represents only a possibility of an aesthetically coherent and emotionally satisfying manifestation. And, a form because it has distinct and recognisable contours.
A performance of raga music is an attempt by the musician to draw upon the “formless form” of the raga resident in the cultural memory, and translate it into a communicable form with the aim of maximising the probability of eliciting the emotional response latent in its melodic structure.”
Deepak went on “from this phenomenon, we derive the notion of a raga as a dynamic consensual melodic entity. It is like a bank from which a musician draws while performing, and which he replenishes in the process of performing.
Ultimately, he talked about raga as a transcendental entity, virtually divine, which a musician constantly aspires to access by penetrating/ transcending its consensual personality. A raga performance is thus a contemplative act, and the relationship of the musician with the raga is essentially reverential. The evening concluded with a lively question answer session between the discerning audience and the erudite speaker.
