A few months ago a wonderful nagaswaram music festival was organised by a leading sabha in the city in a medium-sized non-air conditioned concert hall, in a high school. For more than a week, the premises reverberated with the vigorous sound of the nagaswaram and the tavil, played by several highly energetic musicians hailing from hallowed, musically-endowed districts of the State.
There was absolutely no need to amplify the natural sound of these powerful out-door instruments. But this was done as a routine procedure, with the result that inside the hall the decibel level was almost unbearable.
This, of course, was nothing new, and I couldn’t help recalling many such past occasions, particularly a nagaswaram concert I had attended in 1971 in a similar Chennai setting, where the loudspeakers were making the formidable drum of a famous thavil master sound like a dozen pneumatic drills! Midway through that performance, The Hindu ’s well-known music critic N.M. Narayanan just picked up the folding chair on which he was sitting, carried it to the lawn outside and sat down. I quickly followed his example and found that the music sounded much better!
Incredible as it may seem, this compulsion of most organisers of Carnatic music concerts to amplify the sound beyond reasonable limits of loudness has actually become part of the tradition itself and the consequent distortions are normally just taken for granted by all concerned. And, as mentioned in this column earlier, the problem caused by excessive overall volume is usually compounded by the ineptitude with which the relative volumes of the voice and various instruments are controlled (or, to put it more accurately, not controlled!).
While the organisers and technical assistants are obviously responsible for operating the sound-mixers properly, there’s often a lot of interference by individual musicians, who tend to pull and push the microphones this way or that, altering the volume of their own voice or instrument. There are even musicians who bring their own sound-mixers and operate them on their own. In all such cases there’s usually no concern for (or even awareness of) the imbalance caused in the overall sound by such ad hoc manipulations.
Also, in the normal course musicians can’t hear the amplified sound as heard by the audience. That’s one reason why the musicians may not be aware of the distortions caused by their intervention.
In the good old days, (which I think extended even up to the 1970s and 80s) it used to be taken for granted by the performers that there was no way they could hear the sound as actually heard by the audience; but they were very sensitive about not being able to listen to their own collective sounds clearly, because the booming echoes from the other end tended to drown them. In order to enhance the quality of the audible collective sound, the organisers provided an overhead ‘canopy’ made of thick cotton cloth, some ten feet above the floor. This practice seems to have served its purpose rather well, as testified by many seasoned musicians, as long as it lasted.
But later on came the practice of providing a ‘monitor’ to face the performing artists, to give them a feel of the amplified sound. This has now become a widely-adopted arrangement. But instead of solving the problem, the monitor actually tends to compound it, because the amplified sound it reflects to the performers is not the same as the amplified sound heard by the audience. As a result, any well-intended adjustments the performers make for balancing the sound may actually be distorting the sound heard by the audience, which probably didn’t even need any correction!
And the technician who sits between the audience and the performers isn’t aware of the sound heard either by the audience or the performers. It’s quite a different sound that comes through the headphones he wears, and he naturally adopts what sounds like a perfect setting!
(To be continued)
