In a small room behind the Woodlands counter at Narada Gana Sabha, three schoolgirls, aged 13 to 17, were sitting on a mat. An electronic sruthi box lay on a table that rose above their heads, and seated in front, on chairs, were P.S. Narayanaswamy and his disciple C.R. Vaidyanathan. Anyone familiar with beginner-level Carnatic music classes would find the scene familiar. The girls began to sing, in clear tones (and in accelerating tempi), the Kalyani varnam, ‘Vanajakshi’.
Then, they stopped singing in unison, and each one, in turn, began to render kalpanaswaras, landing on the phrase ‘Niluparani’. The teachers offered pointed guidance. “Don’t mix mel kaalam and keezh kaalam while singing swaras”. “Sing in sruti.”
As it turned out, the girls weren’t beginners but ‘advanced students’ at the Swami Haridhos Giri School of Music, run by the Sabha. Narayanaswamy told me that in order to qualify for admission, students should have learnt music up to the varnam level, at least, and here, they would be taught the manodharma aspects. I asked them, the girls, the what-do-you-want-to-be question. They all said they wanted to become professional singers, and sing during the Season.
Given this set-up, this doesn’t seem an impossible dream. There is, after all, the aegis of a reputed organisation. There are, as teachers, well-regarded senior musicians. So why is the performing circuit monopolised by people who have trained under individual gurus, as opposed to those who learn at these institutions?
R.S. Jayalakshmi, one of the vocal music teachers at Swami Haridhos Giri School of Music, spoke of the challenges faced by institutions. “You can’t be strict about admitting people, as you need numbers to run an institution, and therefore the skill levels are going to differ.Here, classes are conducted twice weekly, and that’s not enough for concert career-level singing.And even if students are interested, even if they motivate themselves to practice on the days they don’t have classes, their education comes first.”
Then there are colleges where music is the education – like Thamizh Isai Kalloori, in whose precincts Carnatic music speaks only Tamil. I met the Principal – sorry, mudhalvar, as the nameplate on her desk corrected me – Dr. Lakshmi Podhuval, and she listed other problems. “The students here start late. They come here after finishing their tenth or their Plus Two, and they’ve had no previous musical education. So, we have to start with A-B-C-D...” She refers, of course, to the music world’s equivalent of the alphabet, the sarali varisai. And by the end of the third year, students are expected to sing a pallavi in trikalam, with kalpanaswaras.
Another thing. “We have to admit students as per the quota rules stipulated by the government,” she said, and cleared space for the elephant in the room, even if no one wanted to talk about it, wanted to be quoted about it. The closest someone I spoke to got was by referring to the “dominant community” in Carnatic music, which, when acronymed as DC, sounds like a box you’d find in a college application form.
These were the points made: (1) With the DC, children are thrown into paattu class at a young age. This is not the case with other communities. (2) Parents from the DC community are more aware of music, and this atmosphere of music at home, helps to shape the child from a young age. Dr. Podhuval sighed that her students listened only to film songs, and she had to keep nagging them to listen to concert recordings. that would make them better. (3) Most performers from the DC community train with individual gurus, and just hanging around and listening to these gurus helps so much.
A small (or big, depending on how you view this issue) segue seemed important at this point, on this issue, and I asked for the opinions of Dr. Pappu Venugopala Rao, secretary, The Music Academy, that bastion of the DCs. He said, “When you talk about taking up music as a profession, you need the support of your family, and that may not be as easy in the other communities. And the other communities may not be as visible in this field because there’s perhaps an inherent complex – on the part of society, on the part of teachers, and on the part of students. There could also be a financial barrier.”
At least the latter point is addressed by the Advanced School of Carnatic Music (ASCM), run by the Academy with the “purpose of creating performing artists.” It is funded by endowments from philanthropists. “There are no fees,” Dr. Rao said. “Admission is by qualification only. The enrolled students have to be at the performing level – they have to have a stock of varnams and kritis and should be able to attempt manodharma: alapana, swarakalpana and niraval. “ Dr. Rao added that caste/community does not matter when it comes to admission at ASCM. In 2009, the year the institution was started, all five students were DCs, “but now it’s roughly 50-50.”
Still, that pales in comparison to the diversity at Kalakshetra. Karunakara Menon, bureaucrat and art administrator, who was, till recently, deputy director of the institution, said the student community was “not connected to the ‘traditional communities’ that patronise Carnatic music or Bharatanatyam.” He pointed out students from Kerala whose parents were masons, vendors, or daily wage earners in a factory. He pointed out a student from Manipur who’d come to learn the mridangam, and a palliative nurse from South Africa who’d come to learn the violin.
He stressed the importance of alumni. “If the institution is able to produce successful performers, then it draws students who want to become performers. Kalakshetra, during its early years, had an array of gurus who were also noted performers, and they, in turn, produced alumni with exemplary performance credentials, like Mani Krishnaswamy, Rama Ravi and Pashupathy sir. But if you produce anonymous graduates in the performing arts, then you will attract students who are looking for just another qualification to help them in the employment market. They end up becoming other things.” Like a researcher. A curator. A teacher.
Dr.Podhuval said that students who join institutions come under three categories: Those who are actually interested in learning music; those who weren’t able to get admission to any other course, anywhere else, and those who want to become teachers and researchers. Dr. Premeela Gurumurthy, the Head of the Department of Indian Music, University of Madras, said, “In Kerala, every school offers a course in music. So with a degree, you can get a really good job there.”
I spoke to some of the students at the University of Madras. (As with most institutions, the course options here include vocal music, Bharatanatyam, nagaswaram, violin, mridangam, veenai and thavil.) Thamaraiselvi teaches music to children at home. “To be a good teacher,” she said, “I need to learn the theory perfectly.” This, in fact, is something you get only at institutions – individual gurus may make for better instructors, but they don’t teach you music theory. One of the students showed me a first-year textbook, titled ‘Isai Varalaaru – Thamizh Marabu’. It had, as its first chapter, ‘Pazhanthamizh Isai – Silappathigaramum Athan Uraigalum’. Suganthi, who completed a BA in Music, along with music teacher training, in Tiruvaiyaru, came here because she wants “to be a big playback singer. And for that, you need a strong classical base.” Then, as if realising the lightning-in-a-bottle nature of her dream, a practical side asserted itself. “Here, you get a degree. And you need a degree for a job.”
Only Kalaimagan, a first-year MA student, was interested in being a performer. He trained under Nagamani Nagarajan, and then was selected to study at Swami Haridhos Giri School of Music and ASCM. Since he was eight, Kalaimagan has been performing with his grandfather, the famous villupaatu exponent Subbu Arumugam. He said the MA course was helping him learn about “the culture and tradition of music, the richness and meaning of compositions.”
Then there are those like the slight, bearded 26-year-old I met at the Thamizh Isai Kalloori. His name is Perumal, and he is from Tuticorin. “Interest.” That’s what he said when I asked him why he was learning the nagaswaram. There was probably also a genetic compulsion. His mother’s father was Subramaniya Kambar, a nagaswaram vidwan in Nagercoil. But his father, a temple priest, told him to finish his studies first, so he completed his MBA and came to Chennai to learn the instrument. He does data entry at a BPO from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m., and he is at the college between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. He practises in his rented room during weekends. When he finishes his course, he plans to head back to Tuticorin. I asked him if he had plans of performing there, and he said that music could never be a career. He’ll play the nagaswaram when he gets time off from his father’s “business,” which he will inherit. “I am the only son,” he said. “If I had brothers, things would be different.”
R.S. Jayalakshmi, vocal music teacher at Swami Haridhos Giri School of Music, lists some spoke to me about the challenges faced by institutions.
“You can’t be strict about admitting people, as you need numbers to run an institution, and therefore the skill levels are going to differ. A private teacher can group students according to skill levels; here, that cannot be done. Therefore, you can’t expect uniformity of teaching or learning. It is not possible for students to get the individual , 1:1 attention they’d get with a private teacher. There are 10 students. You have 1-1/2 hours. You can only offer general advice. Here, classes are conducted twice weekly, and that’s not enough for concert career-level singing. And even if students are interested, even if they motivate themselves to practice on the days they don’t have classes, their education comes first.”
