Carnatic music jazzes up

Travelling light: a journey in Carnatic music

By V Ramnarayan

Chapter 6

Both Krishnan and Guru completed their degree that year. Expectedly, Guru exerted just enough to pass the examination, actually walking out of the hall as soon as he knew he had answered the bare minimum of questions to ensure that, such was his indifference to academic achievements. He was also impatient to leave the exam hall, go to his hostel room and start practising tabla for an important concert a week later at Hyderabad. Krishnan, in fact, missed the exam coming down just the day before with a virulent attack of typhoid. He took the exam in September and did very creditably.

Guru never returned to Chennai from the Hyderabad concert. There, his tabla career took off, as it was the home town of his guru Shaik Dawood.  As he was keen to expand his Hindustani music horizons, Guru looked for a job that would allow him time for talim and riyaz. He got selected as a clerk in State Bank of Hyderabad. The work was child's play for someone of Guru's intelligence, orderly mind, and calm temperament. His boss and colleagues soon became admirers of his music, even demanded impromptu demonstrations of his percussive skills on the office desk and huge ledgers. Enjoying a light workload--somewhat in the manner of the heroes of PG Wodehouse novels--he spent at least as much time in the staff canteen as at his work table.

But Guru's Hyderabad saga will have to wait for now. Back in Madras, Krishnan's music education was proceeding rather erratically, by fits and starts. By now, college and cricket were taking up much of his time. He was also becoming a huge reader, discovering so many new authors. Again, with the advent of 70mm and stereophonic sound, watching movies in well appointed theatres like Safire and Anand was proving to be a pleasant pastime. Still, Krishnan did not neglect music. He regularly listened to radio broadcasts of both Carnatic and Hindustani music. When MS Subbulakshmi became in 1968 the first woman to receive the Sangita Kalanidhi title from the Music Academy, he started following the list of awardees. Palghat Mani Iyer had won it in 1966, and there had been no award in 1967. DK Pattammal followed soon, receiving the ultimate accolade in 1970.

It was around this time that instrumental music really came to the fore in Carnatic music, with three violinists belonging to three different, but distinguished, schools of music, hitting the headlines regularly--Lalgudi Jayaraman, TN Krishnan and MS Gopalakrishnan. One of the greatest legends of Carnatic music, Mali, was still around, but his concerts in India were rare. Mali's disciple N Ramani was a star in his own right, and a charismatic young veena vidwan Chittibabu emerged on the scene. Lalgudi Jayaraman and his sister Srimathi made a brilliant duo of violinists, while Jayaraman also collaborated with Ramani and veena vidwan Venkataraman in a novel trio. The violin-venu-veena combination was a riotous success. This was also the time Jayaraman began to withdraw gradually from his role as violin accompanist to the stalwart vocalists of the cutcheri scene. From Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar, GN Balsubramaniam, Madurai Mani Iyer and Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer to later stars M Balamuralikrishna, KV Narayanaswamy and MD Ramanathan, he had accompanied the best in the business with distinction, but now it was time to move on, striking a solo path. He did play second fiddle to the new generation of singers of the likes of TN Seshagopalan and TV Sankaranarayanan, but not for long. Of course, like the mridangam maestro Palghat Mani Iyer, he refused to accompany female artists (the subject of a later chapter).

A sensation in the cutcheri circuit around this time was the arrival of Higgins Bhagavatar, from the USA. A trained vocalist in Western classical music and a researcher with a PhD in ethnomusicology, Higgins Bhagavatar as he came to be known first learnt Indian music from T Ranganathan, a brother of the Bharatanatyam dancer Balasaraswati, at Wesleyan University, Connecticut, came to Madras for advanced learning from flautist T Viswanathan, another brother of Bala. Higgins had a rich baritone voice which helped him capture the imagination of south Indian audiences when he started giving concerts like a seasoned bhagavatar.  More than just a novelty as an American vocalist in the Carnatic music tradition, he impressed the sternest purists, who naturally pointed out his occasional shortcomings in pronunciation and raga alapana.  He did achieve a rare proficiency in his field through dedicated practice and reverence for the Dhanammal school of music, including the padams and javalis the bani was famous for in his repertoire, as well as the great kritis of the tradition.

Krishnan had  a few encounters with Higgins Bhagavatar--one of which was personal--that he would not easily forget. The first was an AIR broadcast advertised as a concert by Jon Higgins, to listen to which he sat along with his stern eldest uncle and other family members. The programme was a huge success with the family, with everyone marvelling at Higgins's extraordinary mastery of an alien music system, his excellent diction and his amazing raga sense.  The eldest uncle was as enthusiastic a listener as the rest of the audience. Unfortunately, there had been a last-minute change of programme, and the voice they had heard belonged to M Balamuralikrishna, not Higgins. A disgusted uncle, no fan of Balamurali, was quick to dismiss the performance as mediocre. 

The second incident gave Krishnan a chance to meet Higgins personally at a wedding which the bhagavatar was filming on his movie camera. It was a brief meeting, but gave Krishnan a glimpse of Higgins's very pleasant personality. He spoke of his great admiration for the members of Dhanammal's family, the wonderful legacy of Brinda-Muktha's music, the superb teaching methods of Viswa, and the generosity with which the family embraced an American student. This was an eye-opener for Krishnan, who had hitherto been completely unaware of this parallel universe of Carnatic music.

Concert music in Madras was changing rapidly, though it continued to adhere to the format pioneered by Ariyakudi. New kritis were becoming de rigueur in concert after concert, though  they were not really new songs but songs recently rediscovered after long disuse from the traditional repertoire. The epic ragamalika composition Bhavayami Raghuramam by Swati Tirunal that had been tuned by Semmangudi was quite the rage in cutcheri big and small, and an intrinsic part, especially wedding concerts. Ragas of the lighter variety with inadequate scope for manodharma were competing with the grand major ragas for listener preference. The lilting Raghuvamsasudha in Kathanakutoohalam was another hit, especially when a popular instrumentalist like Chittibabu displayed his variegated gifts playing it.

Artists like Chittibabu and Balamuralikrishna forayed into film music, the former as music director of such movies as Kalai Kovil and the latter as a singer in the film Tiruvilaiyadal with his exciting swara singing in the song Oru naal poduma. The film industry sheltered many talented musicians, especially instrumentalists, who found it a more lucrative avenue than the concert platform. Vocalist Madurai GS Mani as an assistant music director, violinist VS Narasimhan and sitarist Janardan Mitta were examples of accomplished classical musicians making a livelihood in cinema. MB Srinivasan was a talented music director, too, with his knowledge and adaptation of Western music.

Krishnan was to leave Madras in December 1970 to pursue a banking career in Hyderabad, where he rejoined Guru, who had migrated there three years earlier. It was there that his informal education in Hindustani music took root and grew. 

Muttuswami Dikshitar (1775-1835)

Travelling light: a journey in music

Link from Chapter 1

Born on 24 March 1775 at Tiruvarur to Ramaswami Dikshitar and Subbamma, was the youngest of the three great composers hailing from his home town who went on to be celebrated as the Trinity of Carnatic music.

Named after the temple deity, Muttukumaraswamy of the Vaitheeswaran temple, Dikshitar had two younger brothers Baluswami and Chinnaswami and a sister Balambal.

Belonging to the priestly Dikshitar tradition, Muthuswami learnt Sanskrit, the Vedas, and other religious texts, and music from his father, who was an accomplished musician and composer, besides discharging administrative duties at the Tiruvarur temple.

While he was still in his teens, Muttuswami’s father sent him on a pilgrimage with Chidambaranatha Yogi, a wandering yogi, to learn both music and philosophy. The duo visited many places in north India before settling down for a long stay at Kasi. Dikshitar’s eclectic sweep of thought as reflected in his grand compositions was a result of the north Indian sojourn.

His five years at Kasi exposed Dikshitar to dhrupad, India’s ancient form of classical music. Many of his slow songs known for their grandeur and relatively straight notes show a remarkable resemblance to the dhrupad tradition.

A Srividya upasaka, or follower of the cult of devi worship, Dikshitar was a deeply religious person and mystic, who visited several temples and composed songs in praise of the deities there in a spontaneous expression of his devotion. Thus most of his compositions are marked by a deep sense of reverence and calm. Trained in veena playing, he developed a combination of the vocal and instrumental styles in his compositions—around 500 in number—marked by rich gamaka, a majestic gait, and a general preference for the chauka kala. He employed the signature Guruguha.

Muttuswami Dikshitar taught the four dance masters from Tanjavur who came to be known as the Tanjore Quartet. Dikshitar passed on to them the 72-mela-raga tradition of Venkatamakhi, which (unlike Tyagaraja), he followed. Sivanandam, Ponnayya, Chinnayya and Vadivelu were the star foursome who spread the Muttuswami Dikshitar legacy all over the south.

Evidently fond of Mayamalavagaula, Dikshitar composed several songs in such ragas. and ragas derived from it. Many of his songs were in Sanskrit, and were of the samashti charana variety, opening with a pallavi, eschewing the middle section or anupallavi, and ending in the samashti charana section. His songs can be divided into several groups, with the major Guruguha group including such sections as the Kamalamba Navavarna kritis and Navagraha kritis. He composed as many as 26 songs in praise of Vinayaka or Ganapati.

During his travels, Muttuswami Dikshitar was fascinated by the music of the British military band, which he heard at Madras, and inspired by them he created some 40 songs, of which 36 have survived as nottu swara sahitya. Some of the songs are set to familiar English numbers like God Save the King, but are odes to Hindu deities, including Saraswati, the goddess of learning. Some of these songs are taught as early lessons to students of Carnatic music.

Baluswami Dikshitar is credited with adapting the violin to Carnatic music, which was further popularised by Vadivelu. The descendants of Baluswami Dikshitar are said to be responsible for keeping alive the Dikshitar sishya parampara.

Krishnan's Hindustani guru

Travelling light: a journey in music

By V Ramnarayan

Chapter 5

Krishnan first met Guru in 1963, when he was doing his Pre-University Course (the equivalent of today's 12th standard) at Vivekananda College, run by the Ramakrishna Mission at Mylapore. Facing the college was a dhobi settlement advertised by the slow moving traffic of donkeys carrying laundry. The college itself  was located in a fairly large tree-shaded complex of buildings constructed in a non-descript style, but cool and reasonably friendly with its spacious classrooms and high ceilings serving to keep the heat out. Except for the Monday morning religion classes, there was no attempt at indoctrinating the students into the teachings of the mission. The teachers were generally of a high standard, but other than the general emphasis on academics, there was no overt pressure on the students to perform.

Krishnan, his old schoolmate Bala and Guru hit it off straightaway, all three in the Natural Science section, as they found many things of common interest to share with one another.

Bala was the most studious of the trio, though he wore his industriousness lightly, never showing off his academic superiority over the other two. Krishnan was the middle-order batsman and Guru the tailender, so to speak, in order of effort put in, which all showed in the results. Bala topped the class, and Krishnan was not very far behind, while Guru did just enough to pass tests and exams. Though all three were close to one another, Guru and Krishnan forged a special bond thanks to their common interest in music.

The bonus was that Guru was an accomplished tabla maestro, taught by the eminent percussionist Tabla Nawaz Shaik Dawood of Hyderabad.  Krishnan had always been fascinated by Hindustani music ever since he heard Nikhil Banerjee and Ravi Shankar as a boy, and he was proud to call himself a friend of Guru. He regularly went to the concerts in which Guru performed. He was thrilled when Guru was introduced before a concert at the SGS Sabha as The Young Man with the Magic Fingers.

That was the time Krishnan got to listen to some LP records of Hindustani music and such devotional music as Lata Mangeshkar's renderings of Meera bhajans, and the non-film music bhajans and ghazals of Mohammad Rafi, another great Hindi film singer. The Meera bhajans by Lata Mangeshkar had been set to music by her brother Hridaynath Mangeshkar, and many of Rafi's bhajans and ghazals by such iconic music directors as Khayyam. These the two youngsters listened to at the T'Nagar home of Guru's cousin who had been named after the Rajasthani songstress of yore. Meera, her mother and her siblings were lovely hosts in whose company the truant friends spent many an afternoon talking nonsense and listening to great music on the radiogram in their spacious, gracious home. In what was proving to be a completely unstructured if eclectic initiation into Hindustani music, Krishnan started listening \not only to the likes of Amir Khan, Paluskar and Bhimsen Joshi, but also to Lakshmi Shankar, A Kanan and Malabika Kanan, Bismillah Khan, Ali Akbar Khan, Omkarnath Thakur and N Rajam.

From Guru, Krishnan learnt some Hindustani music basics, and also tried to share some of his amateur knowledge of Carnatic music with him. He not only introduced Guru to the music of some of the leading Carnatic artists, but also made an attempt to explain the history and rationale of Carnatic music as well as the structure of a typical concert.

If we stitch together the bits and pieces of Krishnan's intermittent explanations to Guru over a period of about a year in college together, and flesh it out with the knowledge he acquired through reading and listening to through the years, it would read somewhat like what follows:

Carnatic music or karnataka sangitam is the classical or art music of south India—the area covering the four states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala.

Traditional followers of Indian music believe that it is of divine origin. In this, people who listen to north Indian or Hindustani and south Indian or Carnatic classical music, are united. In particular, the 

Vedas, more specifically the Sama Veda, are said to be the wellspring of what has evolved through the millennia into Indian classical music.

Carnatic music, like its northern counterpart, is essentially raga music—raga and tala music, to be more precise—with a vast number of songs based on an austere structure of melodic and rhythmic fundamentals. In short, every Carnatic music composition is rendered in a particular raga and a definite tala or rhythm cycle.

In Tamil Nadu, ancient Tamil compositions such as the Tevaram or Devaram and Tiruvachakam have been sung for centuries by a community of temple musicians known as Oduvars. The music they render is based on melodies called panns, which predate raga music.

A raga is a unique arrangement of the seven swaras or solfa notes—sa, ri, ga, ma, pa, dha and ni, with the microtones in between distinguishing it from western music. In practice, 12 such srutis are identified—with two ri-s (rishabha), two ga-s (gandhara), two ma-s (madhyama), two dha-s (dhaivata), and two ni-s (nishada).

In the melakarta scheme of ragas, 72 parent ragas are identified, and divided into two sets of ragas, based on the two types of madhyama—suddha and prati—with 36 suddha madhyama and 36 prati madhyama ragas.

All 72 parent ragas are complete ragas, with each raga containing all seven notes in both ascent and descent. In other words, each melakarta raga will have the scale sa-ri-ga-ma-pa-dha-ni-Sa in the ascent and Sa-ni-dha-pa-ma-ga-ri-sa.

The two subsets are further divided into 6 chakras each, consisting of 6 ragas each. Each of the suddha madhyama and prati madhyama ragas is differentiated by the positions of the other swaras, with only the shadja and panchama constant.

While the parent ragas are known as mela or janaka ragas, their offspring are known as janya or offspring ragas. A large number of permutation-combinations is possible, with such variations as 5 swaras in the ascent and 6/ 7 in the descent or vice versa, 5 and 5, or 6 and 6, so on and so forth.  

Thousands of ragas are the result.

A tala is a rhythmic cycle with a specific number of beats. Carnatic music uses a comprehensive system of talas called the Suladi sapta tala system. It has seven families of talas, each of which has five members, one each of five types or varieties (jati or chapu), thus allowing 35 possible talas. In practice, a small number of talas are regularly used.

Sophisticated, arithmetically intricate rules govern the elaboration of tala patterns. Once the tempo of a song is decided, the musician can accelerate. The vilambita is the slow pace, while madhyama is double that pace and the durita four times the vilambita kala. The singer maintains the tala or tempo by slapping his hand on his thigh, while instrumentalists may resort to tapping their feet.   

This is Carnatic music in a nutshell, though it is an oversimplification of a complex, sophisticated system.

Travelling light: a journey in music

Chapter 4
The Chennai Season

The veteran violinist on stage is a picture of composure. He coaxes the most transcendental sounds out of his ancient violin. His opening salvo stirs the soul as only a great raga at the hands of a great master can. The concert is not all about total surrender in the best bhakti mode. It offers joy and playfulness as well, when the artist moves from worshipping at the altar of an omnipresent, compassionate god to marvel at the pranks of the little blue god, playing the perennial favourite, Krishna nee begane baro. As the concert progresses, you realise it is a master class for aspiring musicians.

The reverie is unfortunately broken by a cellphone going off in the second row. Soon a middle-aged man is engaged in loud conversation on his handset. You try to give him a dirty look and shame him, but he closes his eyes and continues his conversation. Another cellphone rings two rows from you. A couple have an equally loud conversation about the concert, with the man getting a free lesson in raga-identification.

At another venue, the same evening, a young woman is playing the flute with the mastery of someone years senior to her. Ten minutes into the concert, a young man walks in and occupies a seat in the front row. Seasoned listeners can identify him as the husband of the flautist on stage. Now what does he do to encourage his wife? He stretches his legs, leans back and spreads out the afternoon issue of Kutcheri Buzz--the tabloid avidly consumed by the hordes of music lovers who throng the auditoria during the famed Chennai music season, now covering almost all of November and December.

People constantly walk in and walk out. Videographers and photographers occupy vantage positions, unmindful of the people whose views they are blocking. Children wail. Mothers run out in panic.

The Chennai Season has arrived. People, who never so much as peep into an auditorium during the rest of the year, now invade all the well known halls of Chennai. Banners and hoardings mar the aesthetics of the concerts as much as the loud and often erratic amplification. When the musicians are not asking the mikemen to increase the volume of the “feedback”–invariably taken to be a signal to raise the decibellage of the speakers aimed at the audience—the senior citizens in the front rows shout “Not audible” in a chorus.

This is the time local Carnatic music buffs as well as the NRIs who descend on Chennai every winter go from concert hall to concert hall to take in one or more of the thousands of “cutcheris” organised in a marvel of logistics and time management. Various sabhas, a ubiquitous, uniquely Tamil Nadu institution, vie with one another to bring the best of Carnatic music to the city’s audiences in a frenzy of programming. Lecture demonstrations and concerts are held throughout the day, starting as early as 7.30 a.m. and ending around 10 p.m. for two weeks. Because each sabha starts its festival on a different date, the whole frenetic schedule nowadays stretches to a couple of months.

Kitchens are closed at countless homes, as there’s no time to cook and clean or even stop over between concerts. Delicious ‘tiffin’ and aromatic ‘full meals’ in the temporary eateries specially put up for the season draw rasikas from all parts of the city, but those who are there for the food alone and not the music far outnumber the music-lovers.

The unique atmosphere of the season has to be seen to be believed. All the great and aspiring artists of Carnatic music perform at different venues. Many of them overdo it, accepting literally every invitation to perform for fear of offending the sabha secretaries, their lifeline to a successful career in music. This season, some of the stars have decided to limit their appearances in order to preserve their voices (or instruments) and retain the freshness of their music. (One hugely popular star has gone on record saying she is really taking it easy, she is only doing 15 concerts during the season)!

Every newspaper brings out special supplements on the season. Some TV channels even conduct their own festivals. Critics damn or praise the musicians, but today’s musicians are often well educated and extremely tech-savvy, perfectly capable of striking back at the pen pushers.

 “Carnatic music is alive and well”, seems to be the verdict of most critics, but old timers predictably lament the inability of today’s practitioners to equal the class of the stalwarts of the past.

Among the musicians themselves, opinions vary as to the state of Carnatic music today. Some say, ‘Those were the days when the rasika-s were really serious about attending season concerts and it was not just a fad. Today, we miss the serious rasika.’

Others say, “The audience is more demanding now. It inspires us through the year to do well, give of our best.” 

Everyone who has ever been a part of the Chennai Season will however agree on one thing: There is nothing in the national music calendar to beat it for sheer excitement.

Our man in Madras-Chennai

Having been away from Chennai for a whole decade, Krishnan tried to attend season concerts at a feverish pace, going from sabha to sabha for the first couple of years since his return to the city in the early 1980s. That was the time the great men and women singers of the 20th century were in their ripest bloom, but there were also emerging superstars in the likes of TN Seshagopalan, TV Sankaranarayanan and Maharajapuram Santhanam. This was at the cusp of the era of the new kids on the block, like Vijay Siva, Bombay Jayashri, Sanjay Subrahmanyan and Unnikrishnan. The mandolin sensation U Srinivas was wowing audiences ranging from geriatric to juvenile. Ravikiran, the child prodigy, was making a second coming as a gottuvadyam tyro, still uncomfortable in dhoti-kurta, while another child prodigy Veenai Gayathri continued to play sensational music .

But all this was some two decades after Krishnan had had his first taste of the festival. The first time he had attended a concert that formed part of the Music Academy's December season was in the early 1960s, when he was around 17. Earlier, He had once or twice been part of the audience at the grounds of his first alma mater PS High School (before his father's transfer to a small town), where the music was performed in the very special atmosphere of a thatched roof pandal, as the Academy was yet to build its own auditorium.

By this time, he had been fully involved in his passion for cricket, followed closely by his interest in Hindi film music and Hindustani music. This was also a time of voracious appetite for reading what he considered great literature and philosophy. The inspiration came from a number of sources--his parents, cousins, friends and teachers. The range of reading was wide, and included Charles Dickens, RL Stevenson, Alexandre Dumas, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, JB Priestley, Terence Rattigan, Noel Coward, AJ Cronin,  Albert Camus, Somerset Maugham, Jerome K Jerome, Stephen Leacock, Aldous Huxley, RK Narayan, Manohar Malgonkar, a whole lot of American playwrights, and above all, PG Wodehouse. He was no longer into Tamil fiction by the likes of Kalki, Jayakanthan and Devan, a childhood interest that would resurface years later, though he did make an exception in the case of Sujatha's thrillers, and the novelty of Indira Parthasarathy's writings.

In the 1960s, he continued to savour the concerts of the giants of Carnatic music, whom he now heard at the Music Academy's premises on the rare occasion some elder spared him a ticket, but caught up with the concerts he missed via All India Radio, which broadcast season concerts by regular arrangement.

The high point of that first season that Krishnan attended was Ravi Shankar's concert, which ended at the stroke of midnight. Panditji and Ustad Allah Rakha gave the audience much to cheer, with their exquisite music, and exciting sawal-jawab exchanges. Though Krishnan heard great vocalists like Amir Khan, Paluskar and Bhimsen Joshi in the few film songs they rendered, Nikhil Banerji's sitar had been the only Hindustani music he had been exposed to. He only got to hear that great sitarist as an elder relative was his disciple. With the Ravi Shankar concert began Krishnan's life-long love of Hindustani music.