New strain in the Carnatic

CHENNAI: Americans say that if something ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Is Carnatic music broken? Does it need fixing?
Most of those who live within that world would say Carnatic music ain’t broke. Those who live without don’t care one way or the other. And thus the show has been going on all these years. Even those outsiders who know a smattering of the music form have typically hesitated to seriously critique the genre and its formats.
So when this insider-par-excellence who was tutored by no less than the venerable Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer — the Bhishma Pitamaha who personified Carnatic music’s myriad conventions and norms — pointed out recently that something was rotten in Denmark, there were murmurs of protests. Through his writings (A Southern Music; The Karnatik Story), speeches and actions, TM Krishna has hammered at something that everyone knew but rarely spoke about — that the world of Carnatic music almost exclusively belongs to the brahmins who constitute a microscopic, but influential, minority.
Continuing the battle on the music front, he has asserted that the structure of the typical Carnatic concert seems to have been put together without a proper aesthetic sense and needs to be fine-tuned. For several years now, he has been innovating with the concert structure. For instance, he would sometimes insert a varnam — typically used to start the concert — in the middle of the proceedings and make it expressive and expansive.
In a recent concert in Bangalore, Krishna added a kalpanaswaram to the chittaswaram of the saveri varnam. Normally, the kalpana swaram that is born out of the singer’s imagination is sung along with a phrase consisting of words — sahityam. But to Krishna, the chittaswaram consisting of just the saregama notes is a musical phrase too. He says that when he was singing the varnam, he saw the beauty of the phrase of swaras and wanted to expand on it.
In this lies one of Krishna’s core beliefs — yes, he does have them despite looking to constantly question all concepts while speaking, hoping to explain from first principles. He believes like most classicists — although he cringes from using the word — that the literal meaning of words does not matter in Carnatic music. As a form of art music akin to say western classical or even jazz, it is more important for the words to have a musical meaning, he says. “Words are very important but not linguistically. The sound of a word is important too. The sound character is important, not the linguistic character,” he says, adding that the great composers — the vaggeyakaras — used words for their musical value.
Herein lies a paradox. For long, Carnatic musicians have tried to popularize the music by stressing on the associations — devotion, clarity in lyrics and use of Tamil songs to convey the meaning better. Musicians would sing more songs during a concert in the name of audience engagement whereas Krishna, much like Hindustani musicians, seems to lay stress on delineating the raga. Some have taken to appearing on television to demonstrate how Carnatic music forms the bedrock of film music, in an attempt to draw in the film-crazy Tamil public.
Critics may say that TM Krishna is making the music more contemplative and moving it away from its adherence to tight rhythmic structures defined by percussion. But he insists that abstract art music — shorn off cultural baggage, religious significance or even the literal meaning of the lyrics — will appeal to a diverse audience.
His strategy to enhance the mass appeal of the music is to actually strip away its associations. Secular songs without brahminical associations would help, not harm, he says. And he plans to take Carnatic music, in its most abstract and therefore basic version, to government schools where the student population is typically non-brahmin. “I don’t know the exact mechanism. But this is the direction I will be taking,” he says.
His says that if two or three boys from different caste groups can make it in the world of sabhas, that would be inspiration enough for others. “Ultimately, it’s a question of inspiration,” he says.