The young student of music says apologetically that his colloquial Tamil isn't good. However, he has no problem with ‘Sentamizh,' he says. In an hour long conversation, Aaron Paige breaks into Sentamizh every now and then!
It was his love of music that led Paige to Tamil. Drawn to Indian percussion instruments, he began learning the mridangam. He later enrolled at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, for a Bachelor's in Music. Although a thesis is not mandatory for an undergraduate student, Paige did submit a thesis on the mridangam as an accompaniment, which helped him pass the course with honours. He came to India in 2001, under an exchange programme, and studied Tamil at the American College. While in Madurai, he happened to watch a Kaniyan Koothu performance. One of the percussion vidwans played a tani avartanam in five nadais, and Paige was amazed.
The dichotomy
The folk artist told Paige that he loved Carnatic music and honed his skills by listening to recordings of Karaikkudi Mani's mridangam and Palanivel's tavil. Bowled over by the charms of folk music, Paige decided to focus on it, for his Master's thesis. Music scholars from the West and also from India had seen classical and folk music as dichotomous, looking upon classical as great, and folk music as simple, a classification that Paige objects to. The problem, as he sees it, was that folklorists looked more at the lyrical content and less at the musical content. He also resents the suggestion made by some that folk music evolved into classical music. Evolution suggests that folk music somehow lacked refinement, and had to progress to a higher level. “This binary classification of music as simple and complex is a facile one,” says Paige.
There has been very little documentation of early folk music. While we have 78 rpm records of classical and film music, there are none of folk music. Paige is interested in doing ethnographic research into the genre.
“Folk musicians are good at adapting themselves to suit the different tastes of the audience,” says Paige. “They cannot sing the same song at a political meeting and in a temple. They keep political affiliations and caste loyalties of the audience, and other factors in mind, before they decide what to sing or play. The fact that folk artists are able to please people with varied tastes is testimony to their skills. “These artists include film and classical songs in their performances. Many thavil and pambai artists have now enrolled in to Government colleges to study Carnatic music,” Paige observes.
Why Carnatic music? “To enhance their repertoire and also to overcome the stigma that is often attached to folk music. A tavil player once told me, ‘When we play folk music, people refer to the nagaswara player as pi-pi-karan , and the tavil player as kottu-k-kaaran . But when the same people play classical music, they are referred to respectfully as kalaignars.'”
Adopting with ease
Talking of how folk artists adopt the classical genre to their music, Paige says, “Some pambai artists are clever in kanakkus and sarva laghu, which they pick up by listening to recordings, and they adapt these in naiyyandi melam.”
How do film songs help? “Artists appropriate film songs and make them vehicles for self-expression. If you take Ilayaraja's ‘Annakili' song, you will find that it is a sombre tune, sung at a slow pace. But I've heard naiyyandi melam troupes, who play the same tune in such a way that it becomes a light-hearted tune.”
A few years ago, Paige was at a temple festival, and the nagaswaram player in the naiyyandi melam troupe was playing a Carnatic tune. A person in the audience said the artist was playing a song from the film ‘Thillana Mohanambal.' The song that was being played was in fact Tyagaraja's ‘Nagumomu.' The kriti had been played in the film. So, although the person did not know anything about ‘Nagumomu', it had him through a film and a folk artist!
“The inclusion of film songs in folk music is not of recent origin. Even as early as the 1930s, folk artists had begun to include cinema songs in their performances,” Paige clarifies. Paige has seen ‘Thillana Mohanambal' so many times, he's lost count. He saw ‘Thiruvilayadal' six times, just to listen to KBS's ‘Pazham neeyappa.' ‘Bhaaga Pirivinai', ‘Nadodi Mannan'… Paige's list of favourite films is huge. He is also fond of M.K. Thyagaraja Bhagavatar's songs. Paige has studied Tiruppugazh and Thevaram and also lectures at the National Folklore Support Centre. He is currently doing his PhD at Wesleyan University, and needless to say, his research will be on Tamil folk music.
