My plight at concerts

I'm no learned musician but I do have some affinity to Carnatic music. I do listen to it every now and then and enjoy it enough to attend concerts on a regular basis. I'll rant about a lot of things that I've noticed about the concerts, my escapades prior to and post the concert and during it too!

I've been to two major kinds of concerts:

a. concerts organized by some corporate event management company or something that goes on the lines of 'keeping India's great traditions alive'. These events cost a lot to attend, sometimes more than what I can afford. These usually aren't centered around one central performer and in the recent past have started the absurd fusion ideas with the pretense of cultures coming together. No, a jazz clarinetist cannot team up with carnatic violinist and make some meaningful music together, impromptu. I've seen instances when one of them keeps feeling left out because he has no clue of what the other guy is doing. There is nothing cool about two very different forms coming together with the artists never jamming together. They don't even know what the other guy's sound is! Now to the people who attend these events. I've been to 3 of these and they have always been sold out. And they have been pretty big venues. I've seen people there who think BSB is still awesome or think Pritam's Punjabi rip-offs are the greatest music after Green Day. Is it feigning the social acceptance or is it the so-called 'high society' where people eat one piece of chicken kabab topped with 4 onion shoots in a perpendicular fashion? The amount of arrogance in this crowd is absolutely astounding. This arrogance, sometimes, permeates into racism/regionalism. It is music; people should come there to listen to it, not to socialize and act prude.

b. concerts organized by some cultural association. These, in my opinion, are the real Carnatic concerts. This form of music is mostly improvisational. So, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that they have to be long enough for the essence of the form to seep into the audience. (Yup! That is a real thing!) That is usually about 2.5-3 hours. Unfortunately, these are really sparse populated. They charge nothing to very little for the entry and I think they can barely recover the operating costs. Hence there is no superfluous advertising in the local editions of the news papers. These are the ones that I truly enjoy going to. 

I used to tell a few people about the concerts I intend to attend with a hope that I can, in my small way, support the art-form I believe in. And sometimes I do enjoy their company. Sometimes it has turned out to be a fucking mistake. Well, this is the part which pisses me off. Why the hell do people think people can change my bloody plans to go to an event that I told them about? No, they've never driven in this city before. No, they haven't taken the sodded public transport at that time of the day. Ergo they have no clue how long it takes to get there. No, if they have not heard this before, these people don't have anything so damn important thing that will prop up 5 minutes before the scheduled start. No, I don't care about the paranoid girlfriend/boyfriend who misses them then. I can share their concerns but not paranoia. Goddamn, how the hell do these people manage to piss me off 2 minutes before something important? That is not a rhetorical question, albeit a real one for which I'm expecting a real answer to.

Now to the rant about the conditions in the auditorium. It is a very serene setting; all pervading calmness with some genius spinning out his web of music around. And then there is one damned snotty, constipated devil's incarnate kid who starts crying, causing the much needed distraction for the hundred other people in the gathering. A one year old baby who has to be fed god-knows-how-many-times a day, shouldn't be tagged along to the concert. Oh! People with kids have the right to enjoy the music too?! Too bad, I want to slap them right across the face. But I'm not going to. So why can't a consensus be reached that people don't bring their kids and I DON'T FUCKING LOSE IT. Then there are people whose phones don't have the much needed functionality of the silent mode. Garnishing that, is the awesome cringe-causing ringtone that everyone at the gathering noticed before it even started ringing. But the caller has to be ascertained before pressing the silent button. Nope, the call has to be attended to right then, right there to definitely discuss the dinner plans or the rate of steel in the market. Because, they must be so volatile compared to the music going here, right? And then there are the spontaneous music critics who decide that the best time to critique the concert and the music is while it is going on. Our comments on the music are not as insightful as the music itself. I'm not going to talk about the kinds of rasikas, as they are called, but going to post a video with the great BMK explaining the various kinds with a very funny undertone.

Please, there are some of us who value certain things. I'm not judging your priorities and expect you to not judge mine. Some of us don't have the awesome lives that others have. In some cases it is even a massive suck-fest and the only respite is events like these. Don't spoil it for the rest of us there. And sometimes some nice things happen too!

Why I think music is the only art form I enjoy

I agree that the title might be infuriating or even offending because of the mildly bold statement. I should clarify, right at the outset, that I'm only talking about the famous three art-forms i.e., music, dance and painting, disregarding the rest of the 60-odd art forms. I know nothing about them, nor do I claim mastery in any of these. I'm simply a silent spectator of the musings of various artists and fartists alike. I'm just de-abstracting my impressions of these. That, I hope, qualifies me to rant. That and having a blog of my own.

Music, to me, is as simple as a succession of pleasing sounds. I might have to add that each individual sound needn't be pleasing at all. The notes on the higher octave of a violin are nearly as grating to the  auditory system as an old printer trying to burn some ink onto a paper.  It is in this sequence that the beauty lies. This idea is shared in the form of a raaga, which is a set of rules on the sequences of the notes and not the notes themselves. This, to me, seems to be the only art form which requires no prior knowledge of it, though a basic understanding can only enhance the euphoria it might create, in a sense that there is a better cognizance of what is to be paid more attention to.

I've been forced to attend the dance programs of various famous artists by parents and friends. Dance, to me, is a representation or portrayal of a scene. It is not an abstract set of attractive limb convulsions. The scene being described should be subjective to the perspective of the dancer. Thus a perfectly reasonable assumption that the same song or setting can be danced to in several ways. An inverse mapping on this leads to the condition that, the movements have to be understood to understand what the happenings are. This does sound like domain knowledge to me. This seems to be main reason for me to losing interest in that field.

Painting! Oh god! Someone please explicate (ELI5) what the hell happened to painting after the 19^th century. No, seriously. That is not a rant, albeit a genuine question. I don't seem to understand what the mopping of colors onto canvas that usually results in a pukish looking montage of various shades of semi-random colors is supposed to mean or show.

Again, let the hatred flow!

Swathi Thirunal Rama Varma

As a Carnatic music listener from the state of Andhra Pradesh, I usually get to enjoy the music of only a certain group of musicians/performers. This is usually dictated by the language of composition, artistes who popularised them and so on. Most of these great composers whose music I get to enjoy are usually people who predominantly composed in Telugu, Sanskrit, Tamil (I'm guessing this is because of the fame of MSS, DKP, Semmangudi and their mastery and fiefdom (in a good way) over the kingdom of Carnatic music). But every now and then, there is one song by a not so famous composer which gives me felicity and blitheness that I've their songs on loop. One such composer whom I've discovered fairly recently and have been hooked onto is Sri Swati Thirunal.

I've been listening to Sri Rama Varma for both his vocals and mastery of Veena. He comes from a very illustrious lineage of Sri Ravi Varma (the painter) and apparently(!) brilliant musician, composer Swati Thirunal. I also came to know of the fact that he organizes an annual music festival called Swati Sangeetotsvavam and decided to dig deeper. My astonishment when I heard of this king from Kerela who had prolifically composed songs in Telugu, Hindi, Malayalam and Sanskrit, was absolutely boundless! http://www.swathithirunal.in/compo_language.htm lists all (atleast most) of his songs.

I've been lucky enough to listen to a few of his songs being rendered by some of the stalwarts of the our times. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Saramaina matalento- Telugu- TM Krishna http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMJHE1We5lI

Aaj Aaye shyam mohan- Hindi- Balamuralikrishna http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9_VA8eaxZM&list=UUTXkniglO_WdBkq03s_wE-A&index=178

Nanamakilesanu - Sanskrit - Balamuralikrishna http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9602J0Ua0M&list=UUTXkniglO_WdBkq03s_wE-A&index=233

Bhogeendra Sayinam - Sanskrit - MS and Sanjay Subramanium http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_Zi7fdoNcw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDtJ4Xb9rUE

Cheers!

One of my intital trysts with doodling

I wrote this piece sometime in November 2007 after being enthralled by a concert of Kadri Gopalnath.

            As a kid, I have always revered Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan a lot. I used call him thata, connoting my admiration. There was a period of time when I disliked him, because I felt that he was blemishing the whole essence of music with the games he used to play with his miraculous violin. Recently, when was watching a pre-recorded concert of his, a very old one, I found that I was wrong. The songs that his violin sang with melody and also with the astounding command over the instrument, which a I always craved to learn. Idi kada anandamu, tattvamu teliyaka and so on the songs went on. Enthralled by that, I sat down, with the songs still ringing in my ears. Magic it was, really mesmerizing!!

           

            I suppose I was still in school, when I first had the chance of listening to the saxophone maestro, Kadri Gopalnath, in his album ‘Dream journey’. Tears of joy roll down my eyes, when I listen to the Vatapi Ganapathim in that. The exact gamakas and the masterly blend of the western music into it have rocked me. The didactic uses of the drums and the key-board have always engrossed me.

           

            One other violin wizard I would like to mention before I get into the main phase is Kanyakumari. With the perfect rhythm and the clockwork of musical sense and the beautiful perfectly sounding violin, she is always a show winner, if I can put it that way. I had the privilege of listening to her music along with 27 other violinists. The beautiful rendering of Nagumomu, must have made Tyagaraja exultant.

            On the eve of the telugu basha brahmotsavalu, I had the great opportunity to listen to both of them playing. It started off with the beautiful krithi on Vinayaka in Hamsadhwani. The next song was an enthralling masterpiece composed by Tyagaraja, Endaro mahanubhavulu, in which Tyagaraja quotes “Chandra vadanuni anda chandamunu hrudayaravindamuna juchi brahmanandamanubhavinchu varendaro mahanubhavulu” in the context of exhilaration people get on catching a glimpse of Lord Rama. Nanati baduku natakamu by Annamacharya was no way less enthralling than the previous one, in which he says the whole world is a theatre and we are all puppets. After I listened to this, I find that Shakespeare saying the same thing in his one of his best plays “as you like it”. The main song, of course was “Nagumomu” also by Tyagaraja, in which he is desperate to see Lord Rama and says ‘vagachupaku, taalanu, nannelukora’. The stage, on it had three persons felicitated by the Tamil Nadu government by the famous Kalaimamani. It was the first time, as far as my knowledge goes that a carnatic music concert had a tabla accompaniment, which even blended the Hindustani and carnatic music making it much more beautiful. The engrossing concert ended with one more Annamacharya’s masterpiece “tandanana hi”, leaving us spell bound. I hope I get to listen many such masterpieces rendered by wizards like these.