Euphonious jugalbandhi of thoughts

L Subramaniam and Sreevalsan J Menon tune in to talk about classical music, its practice and teaching in the current scenario

L Subramaniam and Sreevalsan J Menon in conversation

One of the sessions held in connection with the fourth edition of the Kerala Literature Festival in Kozhikode was the conversation between violin maestro L Subramaniam and leading Carnatic vocalist Sreevalsan J Menon.

They share many things in common besides music. The former was born in Tripunithura, a small temple town near Kochi but lives elsewhere; the latter was born elsewhere but is settled in Tripunithura.

Both of them are doctors but Subramaniam is a medical doctor and Sreevalsan has a doctorate in agriculture. Both of them hold Carnatic music close to their hearts with utmost pride and reverence. At the same time, they venture out into its myriad expressions and wonders.

The session started with L Subramaniam releasing the book

The Festival Beyond Borders , a tribute to his late father, Lakshminarayana Iyer, who was an accomplished violinist and guru to his three sons— Subramaniam, Vaidyanathan and Shankar.

Father’s vision

Naturally the focus was on the great man as the master of strings waxed eloquent about him. “My father was working with the radio station in Sri Lanka. In those days violin was considered merely as an accompaniment and vocalists grabbed the limelight. If at any time the violinist did outshine the vocalist, it was considered improper. My father wanted that to change. He wanted the Carnatic violin to be listened to globally. He was a visionary.”

Sreevalsan brought the conversation back to Kerala and its contemporary art scenario. As a performing musician who has given concerts across India and abroad, the main feature he has noticed is the high cultural literacy of the audience in Kerala.

The State is fortunate to have successive governments that took an active interest in the promotion of classical art forms including Carnatic music. Though a small state, Kerala can boast a few major institutions spread across its length and breadth, dedicated to the teaching and promotion of art forms.

The alumni of these institutions have played a major role in the development of a huge human resource wealth in the fields of both performance and appreciation of art by establishing several private institutions in every nook and corner of the state. Even in small villages the audience are music literate to ask for a particular composition, he pointed out.

Subramaniam could not agree more. He too noticed the way children in Kerala are taught at least one classical art form unfailingly in most homes. This, in his opinion, improves their inner disciplinary mechanism, which, in turn, helps them innovate better.

Kerala has produced so many gifted musicians such as Chembai, Palghat Mani Iyer, MD Ramanathan and KV Narayana Swamy and so on. It is a matter of pride to say that one hails from Kerala, he added.

Notes on ragas

Trying to point out the intricacies of classical music, he stated that a raga is not just playing some notes. To each of the notes you have to add the typical ornamentations for each raga and keep improvising and emoting.

“My father always used to say”, he said, “if there is no life in the notes your music is dead! Something happens to your inner self too as you give life to a note”.

The subject of ornamenting notes prodded Sreevalsan to demonstrate how a slight change in the same could turn a Sindhu Bhairavi into a Thodi or vice-versa. What makes the difference is the ornamentations and oscillations and each artist is trying in his own way to bring in a new bhava, a new emotion to the notes he/she delivers.

At this point he expressed his admiration for the great violinist’s music. “His experiences and ideas coupled with his exchanges bring out something unbelievably original from within. Imagine, 50 years before he was spearheading a transformation to bring in collaborative innovations that resulted in a distinctively original music, all his own.”

“But we should try to keep this culture alive,” Subramaniam remarked, “We should make sure that the future generation also enjoys this wealth we have. Everyone including senior artists, listeners and organisers have a role to play in ensuring this.”

At this point he put forward a suggestion — senior artistes who play every season in certain sabhas or venues should start skipping one or two years in between so that upcoming artists could also get ample chances to perform.

Being an instrumentalist who totally identifies with his instrument, he also emphasised on the need to produce compositions specific to the instrument like they have in the west, he explained. He added that the advantage instrumental music has over vocal music is that there are no language barriers to cross for the former. Unless we develop a strong instrumental music tradition we will lose our presence in the global arena, he said.

Subramaniam’s mention about the layers of music was taken up by Sreevalsan. There are no hierarchies in these layers as far as music appreciation goes, he explained.

Music sans borders

People tend to confuse upcoming young artists by restricting them from listening to certain artistes or certain genres of music. This is a roadblock in their development. Another challenge the young classcial music enthusiast faces is the huge amount of time to be invested to finally emerge as an established performer on the concert circuit.

Thanks to social media, up-and-coming contemporary musicians get a head start when compared to Carnatic musicians. As for innovations, he had a suggestion to offer to the musicians hailing from Kerala. “Kerala has a rich repertoire of Kathakali music, which is at the moment limited to the ears of Kathakali aficionados. If these padams could be incorporated into the kutcheri format it could reach a wider audience,” said the vocalist and composer. Sreevalsan who consistently brings in innovations into his music has been rendering Kathakali padams as even main pieces with much appreciation from the audience. A balance has to be struck between the self expression of the artist and the appreciation of the listener, he said.

“From the days when artistes hesitated to cross the seas fearing ostracisation, we have travelled all the way to this age of technology-driven music, where you are misinformed that anyone can be a musician,” Subramaniam quipped.

Music is not easy and discipline matters. The institutions which churn out musicians should focus on giving both education and exposure to the students. We have copied the west wrongly in giving more emphasis to theoretical education in music institutions than practical exposure, he felt.

While answering questions of the audience, the violin legend asserted that music is beyond politics and religion. He shared the beautiful incident of 20,000 people joining in to sing the Indian national anthem at the Time Square in New York during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s US visit.

Asking the youth to decide for themselves as to what they really want to be, best artiste or a best known artiste, he passed the microphone to Sreevalsan who chose to end the session by singing the senior musician’s popular composition for the film Salaam Bombay! to a cheering crowd.