The poet John Keats describes autumn as the ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.’ December in Chennai may come closest to Keats’ autumnal description, but you’ll have to search high and low for mists. As for mellow fruitfulness, that’s a bit of a laugh. The sobriquet ‘Season’ however, has been bestowed upon the final calendar month in Chennai for a completely different reason. It is the music season that takes over the city, enveloping it in a warm and pleasant embrace of Carnatic strains. Reams have been and will be written about umpteen sabhas playing host to innumerable musicians, attended by a record number of enthusiasts from all over India and the rest of the world. The Guinness World Records is better equipped to handle the mind-boggling statistics. Critics will decry the lack of proper infrastructure at the venues, moan about the inadequate sound systems, and cavil at the unhygienic toilet facilities. One or two venues will stand tall, having ticked all the boxes, but these will be exceptions that prove the rule. Oh, and lest we forget, all the sabha canteens will be meticulously reviewed for the quality of their culinary offerings.
Speaking of matters culinary, the Chennai music season is no longer one to be savoured only by those who are actually physically present in the city. Thanks to the ability of the Internet and social media to transfer information in real time — audio and video — people all over the world experience the magic of the season vicariously.
What about the music and the performers? After all, regardless of the quality of the venues or their canteen menus, it is the music that has to be the raison d’etre for a festival that rivals Woodstock and the Isle of Wight for the sheer volume and weight of performances that are on offer, throughout the day, for the best part of close to a month. In more recent times, the season is being stretched pre-and post-December, with more sabhas and sponsors joining the fray. And the music aficionados can’t seem to get enough. Which is why one is hard-pressed to understand why many critics are cynically prepared to write the epitaph for Carnatic music. Decline and fall? You must be joking.
Then there are the lecture demonstrations every morning where academicians, musicians and the average music buff, will hold forth on the technical aspects of music and a variety of related subjects. To their credit, it must be said that most of them are compelling to listen to and can turn a phrase as neatly as a practised raconteur. The mini hall at the Music Academy is always packed to the rafters during these chat sessions.
I felt it would be a good idea to talk to a cross-section of people, cutting across geographies and age groups, in order to gain some insight into what they feel is the state of Carnatic music. . All the respondents were asked the same question: Do you think Carnatic musicians today uphold the finest traditions or has there been a marked decline in standards?
Names are being withheld at the request of a majority of respondents. After an analysis of all the responses and collating them in a meaningful way, the broad body of opinion can be expressed in a few succinct paragraphs.
Contrary to the accepted cliché, the older generation are not averse to the performing abilities of today’s stars and upcoming musicians. The general view being that, if there were outstanding creative performers in the previous decades, we have them now as well. The inexorable passage of time has in no way dramatically altered the cohabiting mix of brilliance and mediocrity — then and now. Those who keep looking back longingly at the past wear the well- known brand of tinted glasses called Nostalgia. And nostalgia, as we all know, keeps you perennially hooked to the ‘golden years’.
Surprisingly, not all members of the younger generation go ape over just today’s stars. They seem to have a deep and shrewd sense of the contributions of the past masters and speak with considerable authority on the music and musicians of yesteryear, while keeping an eagle eye on the present-day artists. On the whole, they take a balanced perspective and show a refreshing lack of bias towards any particular generation.
In coming to some of these conclusions, one is helped greatly by the fact that, Carnatic music as a serious performing art, is less than 150 years old. Which means we can access recordings of most artists, all of them happily digitized and available online, going back to the turn of the 20th Century. It also enables us to make up our own minds about how Carnatic music has progressed over the decades, without having to depend solely on our ancestors’ misty-eyed reminiscences.
As a fresh music season beckons, it would be worthwhile to bear in mind that true excellence will find its own level. Just as mediocrity will be left to wallow in its own mire.You will need to follow your own dictates, which may or may not coincide with the tastes of a legion of others. And the beauty of the music season is that you will come across every hue that this great art of Carnatic music can throw at you. You have to catch it at the right time and the right place.
