November was a feast for music lovers in Bengaluru. First, the three days of The Hindu Friday Review November Fest –an eclectic medley of music. Next, three days of Carnatic music at Ganjam’s ‘Flights of Fancy’ festival. I attended one Hindustani and two Carnatic concerts and the difference could not have been more marked. I speak not of regional or stylistic differences, but of experience.
To get to the point, is Bhakti a rasa? In other words, does religiosity provide an art experience. A question Carnatic musicians need to address seriously among themselves.
Secondly, I always thought it wasJazz that Carnatic music shared common elements with. For instance, a certain idea of improvisation is common to both, only Carnatic music takes it to a higher degree of sophistication for manodharma boasts a grammar not just usage. It is both spontaneous and conscious. Today, why does Carnatic music sound like Rock music?
The children in Super Singer Junior have a finer ear for nuances than some of the Carnatic musicians I listened to recently. This is not because Tyagaraja is a lesser composer than Ilaiyaraaja, though if we continue the way we are going, the coming generations may well begin to think so.
Are we listening to ourselves any more or are we creating this din precisely so we don’t have to? The problem is, once the vocalist sets the tone everyone, including the ganjira player, has to match the decibel level, the pace and the (I’m sorry but I have to use the word) exhibitionism. That is one step worse than even pyro techniques because it’s a matter of soul.
Sanjay Subrahmanian began his concert with the Vachaspati, Ata tala varnam of Tiger Varadachariar. It immediately brought to mind M. D.Ramanathan for he has talked with his inimitable humour of how the varnam was composed. It seems that Tiger had promised to compose a new varnam for Rukmini Devi’s 60th birthday and then forgot all about it. Just a week before it was due, he remembered and asked MDR, as they walked beneath the Adyar banyan, what ragam he thought it should be composed in. So MDR mentioned all the major ragas such as Kalyani, Khambodi and so on, all of which Tiger dismissed and then said finally, “Amma is a great orator. Lets make it in Vachaspati !” And so it was.
When MDR sang this varnam, he intercepted his own flow with comments. When the line mentioned a ‘sashtanga namaskaram,’ he stopped to clarify in an aside, “I’ve never seen Tiger do a sashtanga namaskaram.” He laughed as did his listeners. And, he simply added the word, ‘Manaseegam’. Then he resumed the song, absolutely on beat, which incidentally no one was keeping, for the mrdangam had also paused. That too was manaseegam.
As I write now, it seems to me that the other function of MDR’s asides, which were largely self-deprecating in their humour, was also his way of cutting himself down to size so that the music prevailed, rather than the musician.
All music is heady. Our tradition is so strong and resilient that the inspiration it provides seems inexhaustible. And for any musician capable of cresting the wave of this rising groundswell, the exhilaration must indeed be enormous. But an excess of Veera rasa palls, if it is not inflected with Adbhuta - the wonder towards that which is greater than oneself.
The other duo that sang are extremely popular. The hall was packed. The advantage of singing together is that the wildnesses – and I mean this in the best sense of the term – the irrepressible mental dexterity of one is counterpointed consistently by the restraint and graciousness of the other and so a balance is maintained. Yet the unhappy echo of a Republic Day parade persisted as float after float of costumed and decorated kritis were offered for our delectation, each one erasing the memory of the previous.
As for the final abhang, which the crowd incidentally loved, I for one would be happy hearing it in a temple not on the concert stage. I know comparisons are odious especially with reference to contemporary musicians, but when Aruna Sairam sings an abhang what we get lost in is the nadham not the sentiment, where word merges with and gets lost in pure sound, and there is no more content, just abstract form. B.S. Purushothaman who was on the ganjira that evening smiled rather beautifully the minute the abhang began and picked up the tambourine – I refer to the ganjira with the metal plates – and reduced his play to just the basic beats of a chappala kattai . He seemed to do it quite innocently but to me it was a true critique of the performance context that day.
I am sorry to have to mention so many names. I wish it were possible to speak of these ideas in a general way and it is not my intention to offend anyone. In fact I think of Sanjay as a family friend. These are really larger questions. It is possible that T.M.Krishna too is raising some of these same questions both on the concert platform and elsewhere, and we are merely humouring him as a maverick.
The Hindu, meanwhile, seems to have moved on to the ‘Jasrangi,’ with Ashwini tai Bhide and Sanjeev Abhyankar singing together, which was both in concept and execution a truly exalting experience. There are many levels at which we can understand the concept of the Jasrangi. At its simplest, a raga that takes the ‘ma’ of another raga as its ‘sa’ and proceeds to build its scale on it, sometimes, becomes another raga. It is a question of another set of pleasing intervals. Pandit Jasraj apparently invented this form so that a male and female singer could sing together at their own natural pitches without having to compromise mutually towards a least common denominator.
The second level of understanding of the ‘Jasrangi,’ as was mentioned that evening, was the Siva-Shakti principle. It is interesting once again that what is being invoked here is neither the concept of the Lasya and Tandava, nor that of the Ardhanariswara. There is neither a sense of competition nor of attempting completion. It is the coming together of two wholes not two halves, purely for the sake of collaboration. Dare I say this is a more politically stable (not merely politically correct) evolutionary principle than any we have known thus far? Indeed it was the silences that coalesced not the notes. They remained true – and supremely differentiated, and therein lay their integrity, both musical and human. It was inordinately pleasing to hear at every sam, two notes not one.
I’d like at this point to mention certain basic differences between the two systems of music, from a listener’s point of view. Simply as a musical experience, the kalapramanam of a Hindustani alaap is not all that different from that of the composition. There is a seamless continuity, with the speeding up so gradual and so organic that for the listener there is still a unified experience of time. We don’t feel alternately pulled and pushed by the demands of what seem merely concert protocol. Nor do we feel like we’re watching a runaway train with endlessly hurtling bogies, all the way upto and including the Mangalam.
To put it simply, a Hindustani concert is designed, a Carnatic concert is structured. Their reference is a point, the sruti, ours is a line, the scale. Theirs allows for radial expansion. We are stuck with the linear, climbing up and down with amazing dexterity like clever trapeze artists, which, of course, is also a skill.
Let's ask ourselves some basic questions. Is Hindustani music profane? If not, where is its classicism coming from? And where is ours? What constitutes grammar and what mere convention?
There were times in Carnatic concerts, when the raga alapanai exceeded its conventional constraints, to emerge into pure time and space. The possibility clearly exists. Then why are we so afraid of the free float, we who have such strong moorings that the ravages of time that have snapped many a tether asunder, have not managed to uproot us. Or when it has, we have always recouped.
More and more, Sanjay’s music has begun to dwell, when he will allow it, in the long held note, which is both sruti and swaram, creating a fabulous reenkaram. In our own ragas. So it is not so much about learning from another tradition, though where is the harm in that, as much as it is about coming more fully into our own. For then, we rule !
