He claimed free speech as the right to breathe

Kaapichino

By Gowri Ramnarayan                                                             DNA, 29 AUGUST 2014

We met once in a while as interviewee and journalist, ran into each other at literary seminars, cultural events. Occasionally I consulted him. No, he was not a close friend. Not even the mentor that I longed for him to be, so invigorating were his words whenever, whatever he spoke. And yet, when UR Ananthamurthy (1932-2014) passed away last week, I fearelt a part of me die with him. Is it because he represented with brilliance and panache, those secular, liberal values now getting swiftly replaced by regressive ideologies? Because he claimed free speech as the right to breathe?

A pioneer of the Navya movement in Kannada literature, Padma Bhushan and Jnanpith awardee Ananthamurthy was acclaimed widely for his work, made available through translations in Indian and European languages. He was Vice-Chancellor, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, and head of the National Book Trust and the Sahitya Akademi. A scathing commentator on socio-political and literary issues, he was a spokesperson for the voiceless, the deprived and the damned. He was involved in wide-ranging protest movements from eco-conservation to the medium of instruction in schools.

However, his writings were not manifestos, but metaphoric expressions of multi-layered realities. Didn’t he say to his British tutor Malcolm Bradbury, “You have to go to a library to create classic or medieval times. (As an Indian living simultaneously in the past and present) I only have to look into myself. A straight line for you is a coil for me.” The physical and the metaphysical melded in Ananthamurthy’s vision. He remained a razor-sharp intellectual with a generous heart.

 “He was not afraid to be unpopular,” said friend GK Govinda Rao. Besides on-and-off spats with his fellows, Ananthamurthy invited hate-mails for declaring ‘I will leave India if Modi becomes Prime Minister’. When reminded that no ideological faction ever acknowledged unreserved kinship with him. Ananthamurthy’s amused reaction was, “Well, I must have done something right!”

I asked him, “Haven’t you been trying all your life to expiate the guilt of being Brahmin born?” He responded with one of his good-humoured, irony-tipped, mischief-spiced chuckles: “It is a love-hate relationship.”

Ananthamurthy’s masterpiece Samskara depicts a village Brahmin community, and the troubled journey of Praneshacharya, perfectly etched by a young Girish Karnad in the award-winning film. Here  “rebel” Brahmin Naranappa spurns his legitimate uppercaste wife who “smells of lentils”, preferring the prostitute Chandri, When I disclosed to the author that I was depressed because I suspected that I too was “tainted” by this vacuous aroma, Ananthamurthy riposted, “My dear, didn’t you guess? So am I!”

When I moderated a conversation between Ananthamurthy and BV Karanth, the writer breezed in. The thespian turned up in a glum mood. Their dialogue had to be heavily trimmed. “I will send the edited version to you before publishing”, I promised Ananthamurthy. “Look, I give you full permission to do whatever you like provided you don’t send it to me!” said he, adding impishly, “Karanth has become dull after he stopped drinking.” 

Once, referring to the upanishad image of two birds perched on branches high and low -- one a dispassionate onlooker, the other blindly engaged in action -- I asked, “Are the birds two wholly separate entities, or are they shifting states of being -- in the same person, but at different times?” He countered gently, “When we write we are simultaneously passionate and contemplative. Are we then both birds in one?” Why not? A writer’s job is to sweep cobwebs, sift contradictions, internalize the eternal, beware of the mirage, connect the finite with the infinite, and yes, discover paradoxical, even bitter truths. As Ananthamurthy strove to do, inexorably.

Gowri Ramnarayan

http://epaper.dnaindia.com/story.aspx?id=70090&boxid=20129&ed_date=2014-08-29&ed_code=820009&ed_page=10

Art as therapy 2

Column

V Ramnarayan

Art as therapy has been a subject of much interest at Sruti, and we have tried to get people qualified in the field to write for us on music and dance in treating medical conditions. Experts tell us that music usually forms a significant, pleasant part of our lives, actually enhancing its quality. This is true as much of the internal music playing in our heads as the external music we hear in a concert, film or recording.

Conversely, we have often wondered about the adverse effect of noise or loud, discordant music on the mental and physical well being of most of us. While continuous exposure to noise or loud music can most obviously cause hearing loss or deficiencies, it is less known that it can lead to other, serious illnesses as well.

What is unbelievable but true is that music, even very good music, can have deleterious effects on some people. In his book, Musicophilia, the eminent neuroscientist Oliver Sacks relates numerous intriguing cases of epileptic seizures brought on by music, ranging from ‘reminiscent’ songs to “well-punctuated rhythm,” which according to one patient “was for her the most dangerous feature in music.” Sacks relates the story (with, I suspect, ill-concealed glee) that the nineteenth century music critic Nikonov, who experienced several seizures starting from one suffered during Giacomo Meyerbeer’s opera, eventually went into convulsions every time he listened to any music, however soft. Developing a “veritable phobia” he was forced to avoid all contact with music. (When asked to comment on a critic, an actor once replied that it was like asking a lamppost what it thought of the dog, and I am sure Nikonov’s fate was “a consummation devoutly to be wished” in the opinion of many a musician).

“Musicophilia” deals extensively with musical imagery. Expectedly, it postulates that professional musicians have remarkable musical imagery. Many composers compose in their minds rather than on instruments, at least in the initial stages. The most spectacular example of this phenomenon was of course that of Beethoven composing some of his best music well after he became totally deaf. Sacks speculates that Beethoven’s musical imagery was enhanced by his deafness, much in the manner of the intensified visual imagery of the blind.

Attempting to shed light on earworms or brainworms, the songs that for no discernible reason enter your mind and refuse to leave, Sacks quotes from Theodor Reik’s book The Haunting Melody: Psychoanalytic Experiences in Life and Music:

“ Melodies which run through your mind…may give the analyst a clue to the secret life of emotions that every one of us lives…In this inward singing, the voice of an unknown self conveys not only passing moods and impulses, but sometimes a disavowed or denied wish, a longing and a drive we do not like to admit to ourselves… Whatever secret message it carries, the incidental music accompanying our conscious thinking is never accidental.” So, beware the next time the spouse goes around humming Kolaveri, kolaveri..

Songs of emotion

Seen, Heard Read

PNV Ram

Many of the recent concerts I attended have been emotionally rewarding. The first was a memorial tribute to a rasika, R Venkateswaran, a regular in the Chennai kutcheri circuit for several decades, who was at some sabha hall almost every evening of that period, taking bus rides, share autos and the like to reach his destination from his West Mambalam residence.

A chemical engineer and materials management expert, he was described by a friend as an asura rasika, meaning a monster of a rasika. The friend of course meant it as a compliment, and there was much to commend in Venkateswaran’s devotion to music and literature (I learnt of his considerable interest in the latter only posthumously, though). S Sivakumar, freelance journalist, and Kulkarni, rasika and founder of the very popular music site rasikas.org were among the speakers on the occasion. 

As warmly and affectionately rendered as the speeches was Sriram Parasuram’s vocal recital, accompanied by Sertalai Ananthakrishnan on the mridangam, KV Gopalakrishnan on the khanjira, and Gurumurti Vaidya on the tabla. Rendering both Carnatic and Hindustani ragas and compositions, Sriram Parasuram was at his evocative best in his Marubihag essay, as well as his twin offering of Sriranjani and Bageshree.

This consummate violinist is a marvel in the seamless manner he can straddle the two Indian classical systems, investing every phrase with the appropriate rasa. His exposition of the ragas and the musical and social milieu of the songs was lucid as ever, and he even stopped midway to share a few thoughts with the audience about the honouree of the evening. Sertalai Anantakrishnan’s  nuanced percussion  was a revelation.

I spoke at a recent community listening event of concert recordings of Madurai Mani Iyer at PS Higher Secondary School, Mylapore, in a long series conducted month after month, year after year, by his diehard fans including Venugopalan and Vishnu Ramprasad, who developed and maintains the portal maduraimani.tripod.org. The devotion with which the audience and organizers together participate in a collective celebration of Mani Iyer’s soul-stirring brand of  music is probably unique in the world of commemorative listening, resembled perhaps only by the following enjoyed by the likes of MD Ramanathan.

During my talk, I wondered aloud if Mani Iyer had cracked the genetic code of raga music, sp full of the essence of Hamsadhwani were every swara and every phrase of the raga was the Vatapi Ganapatim bhaje we heard that evening. “What is it about Mani Iyer’s music that unites so many of us here today,” I asked ? “I have been mulling over this question ever since Sri Venugopal asked me to speak here. And the answer seemed to come to me out of the blue, when I was listening to Anil Srinivasan play some gorgeous western music on the piano at Kalakshetra a few days ago. Among other things, he played Mozart’s Twinkle, twinkle little star, Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, some Bach, Chopin, Schubert, preludes, nocturnes and so on. Much of the music was celebratory of nature, tender, even cheerful, but there was no stopping the tears welling up in your eyes. 

Doesn’t the pure voice of Madurai Mani Iyer have the same impact on us, whether he is singing Tiruvadi saranam, or Eppo varuvaro, or Subrahamanyena rakshitoham, Ka va va, or Rangapura vihara, or even the English note. To touch the heart, melt it, you do not necessarily need profound sentiments, words of bhakti, to bolster your singing, though those will obviously move us when rendered in a clear, unsullied, sruti-perfect voice as well.

In the case of a good soul such as Mani Iyer, profound, deeply evocative music emerges not merely from his throat, his lungs or his diaphragm, but from his heart, his whole being. It is an expression of the ananda, the bliss he experiences in music. In Carnatic music, I can only think of one other vocalist who had the same impact on the listener, no matter what the composition or context. And that was MS Subbulakshmi.

Listening to Sanjay Subrahmanyan in concert with S Varadarajan (violin) and Arjun Ganesh (mridangam) for the Vidya Mandir Alumni Association on 17 August at the Music Academy was a similar experience. Sanjay was in excellent voice and mood, probably buoyed by the experience of singing for his alma mater and his old schoolmates. If his Sankarabharanam raga alapana followed by Swara raga sudha was a grand tour de force, the raga in which his handling of the lower reaches revealed a new strengthening of his voice, altogether more sonorous and vibrant than in the past, his variations while emoting the different bhavas of the later songs of the concert like Chinnan chiru kiliye were at once majestic and evocative, without resorting to sentimentality. He was in effect combining the vocal gravitas that Carnatic music demands with the rasanubhava usually more explicit in the popular genres of music than in the classical tradition. The violin and mridangam were a perfect foil to the voice, making it a true concert.

Savithri Satyamurthi: devoted to her music

By Rasika Viswanath

Every once in a while there comes a person whose life and accomplishments touch you very deeply. Savithri Satyamurthy’s life and musical journey touched the hearts of many accomplished musicians, students, music connoisseurs as well as  rasikas across eras and cities.

Born to Meenakshi and Ramanathan, Savithri started learning music in the town of Hosur with violin lessons from Madurai Subramania Iyer. A move to Trichy opened up a whole new world of music for her. She earned her stripes under the strict tutelage of Erode Viswanatha Iyer. Her growing  years involved spending three years as an inmate of the Ariyakudi household, when she also honed her violin technique under guru RajamanickamPillai. Imagine the wealth of musical experience she would have gained in those early years with these stalwarts as her guiding light, RajamIyer, K.V.Narayanaswami, Madurai Krishnan as co-disciples and as a regular accompanist to Dhanammal.

Right from her childhood, Savithri was a meticulous stickler for discipline and punctuality. She learfnt these lessons from her primary school teacher in Trichy and lived by it all through her life. Marriage and a move to Bombay changed the direction of her music career, and the birth of “Teacher Savithri”. Her musical knowledge and urge to keep learning combined with her inherent qualities made her set exacting standards and expect nothing short of perfection from her students.  Her music education continued in Bombay through the visits of stalwarts like Kumbakonam Rajamanikkam Pillai, Madurai Mani Iyer and Ramnad Krishnan, who stayed at her residence in Mumbai. Madurai Mani Iyer was especially fond of Savithri’s special idlis for breakfast.

After seeing her children well settled in life, Savithri came  to Chennai in 1972  and  the move resurrected the concert artist in Savithri.  The musicians she began to accompany in concerts represented the who’s who of the Carnatic music world. M.S.Subbalakshmi, D.K.Pattamal, T.Muktha, Mani Krishnaswami and R.Vedavalli were examples.

The shift also saw her blossoming as a teacher under the guidance of Dr. S. Ramanathan to whom she had also become a regular concert accompanist.  Her students would tremble at the thought of facing her even if they were a minute late to her classes or unprepared from the previous lesson. The quality of her teaching was the same regardless of where when and how she taught. Her students from across generations having learnt from her several decades apart could come together and sing the compositions learnt from her in perfect unison. It was this rigour that produced from among her students a number of concert artists as well as music lovers and connoisseurs. A strict disciplinarian as a teacher, she was a deeply loving person and friend to her students outside of her classes.

Complete devotion to music and her gurus as well as implicit faith in Lord Krishna were facets of her life that really stood out. Her meticulous maintenance of her music notations drew admiration from not only her students but many stalwarts as well. A number of Dr. Ramanathan’s compositions are alive today, thanks to her painstaking notation. She will be fondly remembered by all her students as well as the music fraternity.

(Rasika Viswanath is a granddaughter and disciple of the late Savithri Satyamurthy)

That sixties feeling

By V Ramnarayan

‘Alas the Jam Sahib is fat!” wrote AG Gardiner when Ranji turned forty. Those of us walking wounded of the 1960s who had recently gathered to catch a glimpse of the handsome, fiery young student leader of our generation at Mylapore, Chennai, were relieved to see Tariq Ali had not grown fat, though not any more the dashing, slim figure of the decade of the Beatles and Bob Dylan. The sparkle in his eyes had given way to a thoughtful gaze beneath glasses, a frown made him look almost magisterial, and he fitted in perfectly amidst the collection of grey eminences on stage.

The air of near-anonymity ends the moment Tariq Ali stands before the microphone, his weapon of destruction all those decades ago, when he spewed fire on the capitalists of the world, when he led the occupation of the Sorbonne by over 30,000 students, protesting against the Vietnam War among a host of burning issues of the day. He may not be fiery any more but he does make every word count and grips the listener’s attention from start to finish.

Today, as he addresses students of the Asian College of Journalism and other guests, he speaks in the measured tones of an elder statesman, with every word, every turn of phrase pregnant with meaning and purpose, witty, precise, quietly impassioned. “At Oxford in the 1960s, a distinguished Indian was a couple of years my junior. I haven’t changed since then, nor has Montek Singh Ahluwalia. He remains as deeply conservative as ever,” he took a sly barb at the economist, instantly winning over the young audience.

In a lecture titled ‘The State of Journalism in the 21^st Century: Celebrities, Trivia and Whistleblowers,’ Tariq Ali deplored the assault of the mainstream media by celebrity trivia—which he described as a phenomenon that began at the end of the Cold War—and the rapid subsequent decline in journalistic standards. He had predicted—rightly—at the time of the intense hyperbole over Princess Diana’s death, that in ten years’ time there would be no memorials for Diana, that she would disappear from the memory of the media. In contrast, there had been intrepid, principled correspondents and commentators, he said, who dared to criticise the double standards of the West whenever it went to war against nations like Korea and Vietnam, in total contrast to the capitulation of the western media to their governments at the time of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Describing India’s attitude in the matter of asylum seeker Edward Snowden as supine, he described the likes of Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and Snowden as freedom fighters, and not fugitives as the western press has shown great haste to call them.

It is evident from his writings and utterances that Tariq held and continues to hold the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in the greatest esteem. In his death, he believes the world has lost one of the political giants of the post-communist era. His bluntness and courage drew Tariq Ali to him, as did his thoughtful observations that could at times seem impulsive and “depending on the response, enlarged by spontaneous eruptions on his part.” 

According to him, Chávez lit up the political landscape, at a time when young voters cannot tell the ideological difference between one party and another, with all politicians obsessed with making money. Tariq Ali remembers Chavez “speaking for hours to his people in a warm, sonorous voice, a fiery eloquence” and stunning resonance, his speeches littered with homilies, history, quotes from the 19th-century revolutionary leader Simón Bolívar, pronouncements on the state of the world--and songs, that he sang with great enthusiasm and persuaded his audiences to join in.

A playwright and filmmaker in addition to being a prolific writer of essays, articles and books of non-fiction today, the passionate rebel and intellectual has never been far from the arts, music in particular. Disappointingly for this writer, he prefers the Rolling Stones to the Beatles (“more exciting, more sensual, better to dance to”). The women of his youth, according to him, might have worshipped the Beatles, but the “real men”  followed the Stones. He recalls with something akin to glee how sitar maestro Ravi Shankar dismissed the media hype that his music had any impact on that of the Fab Four.

The first play Tariq Ali saw in England was Joan Littlewood's Oh What a Lovely War, “a moving homage to music hall culture and Brecht.” London was the most exciting place for the theatre enthusiast in the 1960s,with Beckett and Ionescu, Pinter and Peter Brook, all doing or preparing to do monumental work at the Royal Theatre and elsewhere.

His despair of Pakistani politicians—plunderers with no concern for the welfare of the people—is no different from his contempt for its military dictators, just as corrupt and greedy.  Expressing great sadness in an article in The Guardian, soon after Mohammad Amir, Mohammad Asif and Salman Butt were caught cheating in a sting operation, he wrote: “Yes, WG Grace was a cheat on and off the field. Yes, captains of other teams – India and South Africa – have engaged in similar practices. Yes, the betting syndicates are a major part of the problem. So what? Since when has one crime justified another? How many times have I heard apologists for corrupt Pakistani politicians justifying their pillage by arguing that Europe and America also have corrupt politicians. The problem is that in Pakistan that's all we have, with few exceptions – one of whom is Imran Khan, who was also Pakistan's finest and most incorruptible captain.”

The all-round social degeneration has not made Tariq Ali a cynic, or lessened his resolve to try to change the world. At the recent Chennai lecture, he encouraged his young audience to stick to their principles: “It is important for you not to forget the history of journalism and its development.”

Sruti Editorial

FROM THE EDITOR

Fears that some of our senior musicians may go unrewarded as Sangita Kalanidhi by the Madras Music Academy have receded somewhat with the announcement of vidwan T.V. Gopalakrishnan’s elevation to that coveted honour this year. A versatile artist of many dimensions, TVG has been a youthful, energetic presence in the world of Carnatic music, sometimes beyond it, for some seven decades, now. As a mridanga vidwan, vocalist in more than one genre, composer, guru and proselytizer, the man from Tripunithura has been known to be a swashbuckler among the orthodox, a traditionalist amidst the pro-changers, reverent towards his gurus and questioning of taboos, all at once. His admirers and critics may be about equal in number, but no one who has followed Carnatic music closely for a long time will question his credentials. He has been consistently hard to ignore, and many of us who had given up the hope – after he crossed 80 – that he would follow in his guru Chembai’s footsteps, now rejoice in this richly deserved recognition. Knowing his articulation, we can expect him to bring flair to the conduct of the academic sessions at this year’s conference.

Musicians of the calibre of M.S. Anantharaman, T.H. Vinayakram, V.V. Subramaniam, Vyjayantimala Bali (though essentially a dancer, like Sangita Kalanidhi T. Balasaraswati), P.S. Narayanaswami, Suguna Purushothaman, R. Visweswaran, and Tanjavur Sankara Iyer are some other names that come to mind as artists deserving of high honours. While the Music Academy has decorated some of them as Sangita Kala Acharya, there may still be a case for a Kalanidhi or lifetime achievement award for a few of them. Synonymous with the ghatam, Vinayakram, would, in particular, seem to be a perfect candidate for the ultimate award.

It is no easy task to select one honouree every year from a large pool of contenders, we know, and this is no attempt to offer criticism or gratuitous advice to an institution that has been grappling with it and generally giving satisfaction to all but its most strident critics. We must, however, acknowledge the very real danger that among a vast variety of specialists, vocal and instrumental – lead and accompanying, wind, string and percussion – some outstanding vidwans can escape the radar altogether. Some, like M.D. Ramanathan, were ignored for far too long, while others like Rajarathnam Pillai and Ramnad Krishnan perhaps did not live long enough.

The truly great may care little for worldly success. We know from the extraordinary lives of the Van Goghs, Gauguins, Monets and Manets of the Western artistic world, that many geniuses went unsung and unhonoured in their lifetime, but we do not often hear of giants of Carnatic music who led impoverished lives of no reward, and whose greatness the world came to appreciate only after their death. There is a high probability that there were several such instances that went unrecorded, quite literally before the advent of the gramophone, and owing to our lack of rigour in documenting our history, though there may be stories galore floating around in the realm of legend.

V. RAMNARAYAN

Thinking Music (from Frontline magazine)

TM Krishna’s A Southern Music is one of the most important books to emerge in the recent history of Carnatic music. (If the book uses the spelling Karnatik rather than Carnatic in an attempt at authenticity, it should have really gone the whole hog and said Karnatak or Karnataka).

Its importance lies in its earnest attempt to explain a complex system of what it terms as art music to a reader who may or may not be exposed to its nuances, but even more in the kind of questions technical, philosophical and sociological it raises.

The value of the book is further enhanced by the fact that the author is a young musician, a star vocalist at that, some of whose recent actions on and off the performance stage have led to a variety of mixed reactions ranging from amused to angry (not excluding adoring) from his audiences. The book serves to answer some of the questions agitating them as to the rationale behind some of the structural changes he has been attempting in the concert format as it exists today.

Of the three parts of the book entitled The Experience, The Context and The History, the author appears to strike mid-season form in the first part, especially in the chapter on manodharma, the art of improvisation.  

Elaborating the contours of alapana (or raga exploration without the aid of verse or tala), for example, Krishna takes us on a tour-de-force as beautifully crafted as a memorable alapana by an accomplished artist. 

One of the major distinctions Krishna sets out to make from the popular discourse on Carnatic music lies in his choice of the phrase ‘art music’ to describe it, something that Sruti magazine (which is mentioned in the bibliography) tried to disseminate based on the musicologist Ashok D Ranade’s preference for the term over ‘classical music’ for traditional Indian music performed on the formal concert stage. The cutcheri stage is home to art music, according to the author, as different from devotional music belonging to the bhajana sampradaya, though this distinction may not be so clear to many followers of Carnatic music. It is a lovely distinction by which to highlight the beauty of the music per se without the adventitious aid of lyrics or bhakti to the gods and goddesses often hailed in the kritis of the great vaggeyakaras—’bicameral geniuses’ as the book describes them—who compose both words and tune.

The author makes an elaborate case for separating art and religious fervour in concert music, though he says, ‘I will be the first to concede that, in spite of my views on the relative unimportance of textual meaning in art music, certain names of gods and adjectives touch a deep chord in me.” We can hardly argue against Krishna’s assertion in this regard that when a musician presents a composition, “its very presence must inspire the musician to abstraction.” We can agree with his assertion that when the composition is seen as a religious presentation, “divinity becomes the rendering’s principal inspiration” and “limits the melodic and rhythmic possibilities, as the musician is conscious that his creativity must not undermine the emotional quality of the religious content.” As years of listening experience, however, suggest that the more serious—and therefore more impact-making—musicians rarely waver from their pursuit of musical excellence, their thoughts focused on music and not devotion, their religiosity outside music notwithstanding, Krishna is perhaps addressing here a problem that is not core to the world of the practitioners of Carnatic music, even if some of its commentators may suggest otherwise. Again Carnatic music every now and then offers lyrical gems of sublime beauty focusing on the human condition—especially the total surrender of the devotee tossed around by his destiny. Such verses, which can move the listener even without reference to the gods they address, often enhance the beauty of the raga. These would seem to be examples of ‘art’ music even if their original intent was ‘devotional.’

Known for his abundant creativity as a musician, Krishna takes the reader on an exciting journey of understanding the contours of manodharma in Carnatic music in the sixth chapter of the book, an excellent exercise in deconstructing the process of improvisation on the performance stage. While explaining the various steps of raga alapana in considerable detail—as he does all other aspects of manodharma—he says for instance, “The alapana cannot be an aesthetic form unless there is cohesion within every phrase, between phrases and the larger picture that the alapana is painting. The raga exists in every svara as much as it does in the whole presentation of the raga. The alapana is not a bunch of known phrases around which the musician creates newer phrases, melodic lines. It is the distilled aesthetic experience of the raga in its entirety. Thus the alapana leaves at the end of its rendition a wholesome experience of the raga and of the creative genius of the musician.” Several similar passages of lucid exposition of the many components of the whole Carnatic music experience add weight to the book. They—and the descriptions of the many compositional forms—are so well thought out and helpful to the reader in augmenting his understanding of the art form that they could well have added up to an independent book by themselves.

The great merit of A Southern Music is its transparent public-spiritedness. Evidently a man of admirable social conscience, Krishna comes through as a forceful champion of what is ethical and moral in his field of endeavour and a vehement opponent of its ills as he sees them. Caste, the place of the nagaswaram and nagaswara vidwans, gender, the diasporic influence, technology, fusion, the connection with Hindustani music…none of these issues escapes his piercing gaze. His views on fusion, the role of overseas Indians in promoting the art, the suitability or otherwise of foreign instruments, and the appropriate use of technology in propagating music and learning/ teaching are particularly well articulated and reflect deep thought on the subject. He has also dared to go where angels fear to tread while dissecting the history of caste and gender discrimination. These, especially the caste dimension, are a poorly documented part of the history of Carnatic music, and it is hard not to wonder if Krishna oversimplifies their complexity by making the male Brahmin out to be a rather more deliberate architect of its trajectory in the last hundred years or so than he has actually been.  There are no easy answers to these ills, but Krishna is absolutely right in asserting that it is time for our musicians and the people who call the shots in our music—predominantly Brahmin males as they are—to examine the troubling legacy of Carnatic music and take corrective measures even as its reach expands to include greater numbers in its fold.

Over the last couple of years, the TM Krishna concert format has been a hotly discussed phenomenon, and in chapter 9 titled The Karnatik Concert Today: A Critique, Krishna has made an elaborate presentation of his views on the Carnatic music cutcheri as it is performed today, and the way he prefers to approach it. He explains for instance why he sometimes does not follow an alapana with a kriti—going against the norm so far—by saying, “At the experiential level, after rendering an alapana, I have often felt that I had finished all that I could present all that I could present of the raga on the day…” It makes “the whole experience laboured” when niraval and swara singing are made de rigueur during the kriti that follows. The structural changes Krishna has been experimenting with in his concerts often polarize the audience between diehard fans and vociferous critics. So long as the quality of music remains high, audiences are likely to accept the changes in time, even if his explanations do not convince the orthodox listener today.

In his epilogue, Krishna says, “Are all the thoughts I have expressed accurate, perfect? They are not, and I am glad they are not.”  He concludes with the sentence, “As for me, as I write the last words of this book I know of only one thing: my next question.” Admirable as such a hint of self-doubt is, the tone of the book is sometimes dogmatic, its text often clothed in language that leaves little room for doubt. More expert editing than it has apparently received would perhaps have made the book more consistently readable, and less heavy as it tends to be at times. All in all, a truly commendable first book by one of our leading musicians, full of thought provoking questions vital to the well being of Carnatic music. It resonates with the amazing clarity of thinking of an obviously brilliant mind.