Music is universal. It can survive even without a medium of communication, a language. It is the aesthetic consequence of a mind that is at peace and ease. A reaper in his or her solitude sings, a sparrow in the forest whistles, a shepherd blows his flute as the cows or goats graze peacefully. Over time, the intent and the mode of music production has kept changing. A variety of musical instruments were conceived and made to produce music, and orchestration was modified to cater to the ever-changing taste of audiences.
Consider the basic intent of music in any society, for an audience in any corner of the world. If the basic intent is known, then the musician’s task becomes simpler.
Music creates a mood, changes or modifies mood, tranquillises moods as varied as sorrow, excitement, happiness, love, longing and desire. But all of them may come under creative emotions. Sorrow may not be a positive emotion? It could be, for many occasions, an eye-opener.
Indian music has its basic intent of nadayoga. Our ancestors, thinkers and scholars finally converged on the intent of music as a means to become a yogi. Yogi is a person who earnestly longs for a merger and
union with the supreme. Music takes one to a state of meditation. Good music takes a listener to the exalted state of a yogi for some time. This of course is only for a short time, and may perhaps last for a couple of hours. But the results are always creative.
If the producer of music, the musician, the singer or the performer is able to transform the mood of the audience to an exalted state, if the incremental effects are positively visible, as expressed by the audience in real time, then the performer is successful. At the end of a concert, if the singer gets applause, he or she is successful to that audience. Visible signs of communication through music is noticeable from the audience. It is normally through clapping, nodding of heads, quiet utterances, even smiles. If music is treated as a medium of communication, the sender is the producer and the receiver the audience. Here the receiver is king. The efficiency of the act of communication depends on the amount of music received after any loss in transmission. For very good results, one needs to address both efficiency and effectiveness separately and also together.
For the efficient transmission of the music produced, the producer should have a soul or mind of music, the musical intelligence. He should be in the right mood to produce good music. It is often said that the producer can maintain consistency of performance only with the right mood on a given day. The mood is only the software part, but the physical conditions, such as sareeram, which is a rare combination of the functions of the throat, sound and health, are all related to the hardware.
The mood is affected by internal and external reasons. The internal mood is the result of the personal make-up and the experiences accrued, as on the day of a performance. Of these internal reasons, fear can be a mood-killer, and it is usually present at the beginning of a performance. All musicians face this to a varying extent. It may last for the initial two or three krithis. The external reasons are many. These will include the musical accompaniment, the ambience, the kind of audience, the support system facilities and the environment in general.
The producer of good music has to overcome all the hurdles smartly, and still maintain a good stage presence. Good music essentially has the basics right, namely, the sruthysudham, laya and kalapramana. For effective transmission, a smart producer should read his audience and adjust his production accordingly. The microphone control, the rendering style, the modulation and voice culture, getting along harmoniously with accompaniments, the homework or the sadhakabalam, all affect the effectiveness.
Finally, the reaction matters, the applause matters, the positive increment in the mood of the audience matters. Because these are the only visible signs, an artist can very well sense them. Theoreticians, musicologists, vidwans and ustads have codified theories on attaining this exalted state for the audience, reflected through applause. The effectiveness lies in relying on the signal loss. Extraneous noise causes signal loss in any communication. In musical communication these losses are due to the incapacity of the audience to receive and grasp the musical pieces produced. If produced as pieces that are short in length
and content, the losses too will be minimum. On the contrary, if the pieces are long and complicated, it could induce stress not only on the producer but also the listener. Hence, keeping sangathis, phrases and kalpana swaras short and simple, is an assured winning combination with any kind of audience.
Too much jumbling in kalpana swaras and koruvais, and too much arithmetic in the rendering of swaras, could lead to a stressful state for the accompanying artistes as well. Indian music is heavily reliant on creativity and manodharma. Too much mathematics may disturb the creativity of performing artists. Being too stressed due to arithmetic for music to be rhythmically and precisely executed, artists fumble in their creativity, which is not mathematical, but often limitless and spontaneous. The accompanying artists too are stressed when put to unexpected rhythmic patterns of koruvais and kanakku. The singer prepares for it, but the colleagues do not. Smart accompanists catch up, sometimes fully or partially. This creates an embarrassment on the stage. The kutchery then goes away from the genuine version of a harmonious concert. Lack of discipline, harmony, team work and chaos may result.
The producer should be mindful of the kalaprmanam in ragalaap, kirthana rendering and the kalpanaswaras too. A concert should be in alternating vilamb and madhyamakala compositions. Ragas and thalas should be selected based on contrast. Rishabham and madhyamam are normally selected for effecting the contrast. Certain ragas cannot be effective in madhyamakala, as their natural aesthetics flow in a slow
tempo. For example, Anandabhairavi, Kedaragooula, Thodi, Sankarabharanam, Bhairavi and Sreeragam. Effective ragalap should respect the kalapranamam. Occasionally vivadi ragas also may be sung to evoke different moods and contrast.
In the ragalap, too, many long phrases of notes or long sangathis make musical transmission less effective. Pauses between sangathis is necessary for the audience to think, react and respond. In literature too this principle is followed. Small sentences communicate faster and more effectively. Sentences that are long enough to be a paragraph, can go beyond the comprehensive domain of an average reader. No doubt there will be intelligent guys around who can do this, but they are in a minority. Hence, music that is small and simple, with the right basics, is the winning combination in all environments.
The author is a vocalist based in Thiruvananthapuram
