A rasika’s tribute

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD
The Hindu, 17 December

HERE I am in London and the December season is underway in Chennai. To the unconverted, Carnatic music is staid, forbiddingly technical, repetitive, elitist. And some of its devotees do seem determined to live up the stereotype, preoccupied with tradition, treating the music like a zone of purity, forever besieged by the forces (the temptations) of impurity.

I’ve been lucky enough to pass at least a part of the season in Chennai and I think both parties have got it wrong. At the kucheris I was swept away by the melodic and rhythmic richness of Carnatic music. I have my CDs but in Carnatic music one never steps in the same stream twice; there’s no substitute for the unfolding of the artistry in the present tense, and the December season is like an extended present tense.

Yes, I know the gripes. There’s the competitive social scene, the status seeking and patronage; too many sabhas putting on too many similar programmes, flogging the big name artistes to exhaustion; the drab auditoria, variable sound systems, the long-winded oratory of sponsors and award-presenters.

But there’s no denying the ceaseless flow of virtuosity and invention. Not to mention the stamina, dedication and general graciousness of the artistes. The season is an event that subsumes performers and audience in a larger community. It really is a festival. It’s not Woodstock or Glastonbury but there’s a family resemblance (The jostling of big names and wannabes, the parade of accomplished accompanists whose names are known only to aficionados). Of course the season in Chennai is more sedate. Still, it’s a good deal less restrained than the European classical tradition, where there’s no popping out for a vada, and where persistently slapping your thigh will result in ejection.

Coming to Carnatic music belatedly, and from a long distance in every respect, I tend to find in it echoes of the music I already know and enjoy. I can hear gospel in the bhakti and bluegrass when the violin drives and dives and soars. Most of all, the ensemble, the interplay of individual and collective, the centrality of manodharma, improvisation, remind me of jazz: the way the artist roams far from home but always returns, the space for nuanced individual expression, for wit, for playfulness. I would have loved to hear John Coltrane explore the Pancharatna Kritis.

There’s also an analogy with European chamber music, and the often-made comparison between the Carnatic Trinity and Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. However antique the music’s roots, the Carnatic canon is relatively modern, mostly 19th and 20th century. Its history is a history of innovation and broken taboos – relating to gender and caste, public and private. The kucheri as we know it dates only from Ariyakudi and the 1930s. In a single evening it can include compositions with lyrics in Tamil, Telugu, Sanskrit, Kannada, Marathi and Hindi. I can’t think of another musical culture with a comparable spread.

Despite claims to indigenousness, Carnatic music has not been immune to outside influences – ragas from the north, and instruments from the west. Two hundred years after Baluswamy Dikshitar mastered it, the violin is ubiquitous and integral in Carnatic music. As it is in Arabic, Celtic folk and American country music. There’s a case to be made that the violin is Western Europe’s least equivocal gift to the world, a uniquely supple extension of the human hand, brain and heart.

In recent years, the saxophone, mandolin and guitar have all found new homes in the Carnatic world. Kadri Gopalnath, U. Srinivas and R. Prasanna are not playing fusion music; they’re playing Carnatic music, as much as anyone playing the veena. And to my ears at least they’re playing beautifully. Again, it’s hard to find a comparison. In other classical music forms, alien instruments exist only as sonic novelties.

But where would vocalists, violinists or saxophonists be without the intricate rhythms of the mrindangam? It’s a modest instrument; compared to the tabla, it speaks sotto voce. Or rather, it sings. With its variations of tone and texture, from the leathery to the bell-like, the mrindangam suffuses the daunting mathematics of cross and counter rhythms with a warm, vocal quality.

Finally, one of the special charms of Carnatic music is that, for all its urbanity and sophistication, it finds room for the humble morsing and ghatam. In other musical cultures, the likes of the Jew’s harp and the clay pot are relegated to the nether regions of folk primitivism. In Carnatic music, they’re vehicles for the exquisite.

As will be apparent, I’m very much a neophyte rasika. I’m intimidated by experts in the field, and it’s a field not wanting in experts. No doubt my tastes are vulgar and my appreciation superficial. I do struggle with a ragam-tanam-pallavi. But I’m learning.