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I have a quest for tasting music. How did I acquire it?
My childhood was filled with music in a desultory manner. Most of the music that came my way did so because someone I admired was hearing it, or because it was cool to hear this or that troupe. I rarely independently chose what I heard.
When did I consciously start loving music? When did it become a meaningful part of my life and what made me start thinking and questioning about what it does for the listener or the musician for that matter? There is no clear answer to this; the journey, however, has been a sweet and intriguing one.
I have had all kinds of miraculous coincidences that made me fall in love with music and musicians (dead and alive) so many times till I was totally sold to the idea that music can transform, heal and inspire even.
As I write this, I am listening to TM Krishna sing a melodious Kambodhi, accompanied by RK Shriramkumar on the violin. The violin is muted and there is no percussion accompanying the singer — the audience is taken on a meandering, lethargic swim through their inner cosmos, and the experience is unlike any other 'O Ranga Sayee' that I have heard before . The thaanam that follows fills you with a quasi-rhythmic happiness, the feeling falling somewhere between joy and ecstasy — nothing inner about this thaanam , it’s not reflective, more like a dignified revelling.
So that’s what I have learnt by falling in love and bruising myself several times — an appreciation of classical music. Any kind of music that falls into a melodious or rhythmic pattern is fine with me — Indian classical forms, folk, mournful gaanas, parai, rock, Jazz, soul, blues, film music and so on. I have not heard much of the turbulent Bach fugues and so on; yet, even if I am hearing a piece for the first time, I have an appreciation of it.
Some music does sound alien to me or outside my system — especially when genres are mixed and not mixed well at that, my inner critic revolts — as in some remix or fusion styles. That is not to say I don’t like fusion as a rule. I feel it has to be done very cleverly to touch a listener without sounding forced or artificial. It has to be like a conversation or a debate, not like a poor actor’s unrehearsed lines. Having said that, I doubt if I will ever appreciate remixed tunes; IMHO it’s like refusing to accept the death of a loved song — of course, a loved song can live as long as its lover, but it does suffer a physical death. Its style of execution could become outmoded, or its rhythm go out of fashion; still it’s a hopeless effort to give it a new birth by reworking the song’s structure — as incongruous as trying to replace your skeleton with a more pliant, perfect shape.
Initially, I revolted against the classical. Then, at the behest of my friend, whom I greatly admired, I started listening to classical music when I was in the third year of my PhD, a lost soul and a confused physics student whose eyes could not see but whose spirit kept urging her to move onwards. The easiest classical form to follow was Carnatic music — it was all over the place in Chennai.
Being an atheist at that point of time — a decision made by the intellect in isolation — I was a bit worried about the bhakti and the brahminism inherent in this form. But since I did not understand the lyrics, which were mostly in Telugu or Sanskrit which I did not know, I could simply listen to the music and not let myself agonise over the contradiction.
Slowly a wordless unlearned audio structure started to unfold when I heard great musicians. I could understand when the musician sang or played the notes in an aesthetically appealing manner. Dwelling on a note a bit longer than you would expect, sliding over a series of rippling notes to create an effect, approaching a single note in different ways, working through complicated patterns to return to the same phrase within the required rhythmic cycle — these things I started understanding about Carnatic music.
One day, Suneeta and I went for a walk from Matscience to Adyar. We were walking outside the Anantha Padmanabhaswamy temple when we saw a board announcing that TN Seshagopalan was performing in the temple that day. The concert had begun. Since we both liked his music, we entered the temple premises. In the courtyard, a raised dais had been set up and people were sitting around it. The space was packed, and the only places that were free were the ones on the floor just below the dais — at the feet of the singer.
Halfway through a Devagandhari piece we walked in and sat close to the singer. By the end of the piece we were swaying to the beat. Song after song followed — the music flowed, seemingly endlessly — unforgettable was the kriti in raga Varaali, 'Eti Janmam ithiha' — Varali that worked like a chisel in slow motion, carving out a form that, while others only heard it, I could visualise as a statue in ivory white. For the first time, I could associate a colour and images with ragas.
Was this synaesthesia — a defect where senses overlap? I do not know, but it is true that I tried hard listening to other raga s and bringing out the colour in them — I came up with dark moss green for Bhairavi and light intense blue for Kalyani. Many years later — perhaps it was one of those miraculous coincidences — I was to attend a concert of Nithyasree’s at Vani Mahal, and outside the hall, volunteers were distributing little booklets, a segment of which said that raga s were associated with colour and gave the colours for several important ragas. To my shock, my choices agreed on all three guesses I had made for Bhairavi, Varaali and Kalyani.
To come back to the aftermath of Seshu’s concert, a few days later I was in Besant Nagar and on an impulse went into the big Pillayar Temple there. Another coincidence — there was TNS giving a concert. And what was he singing? 'Kaa Vaa Vaa, Kandha Vaa Vaa' in the selfsame Varaali. I sat back and heard the whole concert and went home in a daze.
Falling in love does not happen on its own. It is a coming together of several temporally coincident events. You just happen to be in the way of life flowing in its own accord.
Getting into the musical journey is also like this. A few days went by and I got to hear that TNS was going to teach music in the Asthika Samajam in Tiruvanmiyur. Suneeta and I joined the class immediately. Basically we were taught the sarali varisai , etc., by one of Seshu’s disciples, Kasturi Rangan, but the master would come in once in a way and teach short geetam s. One day he would teach us a little Swaram in Gambeera Naattai, or a little alankaram in Kalyani.
Just listening to him sing the aarohanam and avarohanam was scintillating. The class was a mixture of people — from little school going kids, to a few youngsters like Suneeta and me, and senior mami s. One class when Seshu had come, a mami student got so carried away by his demo that she said: “Why don’t you follow the gurukula method? We will all come and stay at your house… Suneeta and I found this extremely funny and all we could do was to not laugh out loud at the little smirk that played on Seshu’s face.
This was not to last long, but learning the notes accurately did sharpen our listening skills and my passion for listening to music grew and took me places.
