M. S. Subbulakshmi
Is the core of Carnatic music shifting from meditative brilliance to technical virtuosity?
Mylapore resident S. Sivaramakrishnan, who has been listening to Carnatic music for over 50 years, often talks about the two Thodis he heard in two concert halls within days of each other. The ‘Koluvamaregada’ sung by a veteran musician had a meditative quality to it, filling the listener with peace; while the other, rendered by an accomplished younger artist, stood out for its technical brilliance but lacked the soothing aspect.
This experience brings us to a pertinent question today. Is the core of Carnatic music shifting from devotional and meditative to technical excellence and an overt display of talent?
But views vary on whether it is necessary to hold on to bhakti or just allow music to evolve according to society’s demands. Saint-composer Thyagaraja stressed that music without bhakti could never be ‘sanmargamu’ or the ‘good path’, but few musicians or connoisseurs today pursue a ‘path’; looking more to Carnatic music for entertainment.
Veena artist Balakrishnan Kannan sets great store by bhakti. “Entertainment is the primary responsibility of a musician but,” says Kannan, who begins his concerts with a veda recital, “entertainment should not be at the cost of the supreme meditative power of our music.”
For a diametrically opposite view, we come to R. Thyagarajan, founder of the Shriram group and a big patron of Carnatic music. “Devotion may inspire creativity in a composer but linking bhakti to Carnatic music is “undesirable”, he says. If music, he adds, is entwined with devotion, it will lose its appeal when devotion declines in society. Besides, bhakti deeply connects you to the lyrics, which engenders a preference for vocal music, to the detriment of the instrumental. “Pure music shouldn’t have anything to do with words,” he insists.
Between Kannan and Thyagarajan lies the world of Carnatic musicians, musicologists, patrons and connoisseurs, each with a different, preferred mix of meditative appeal and intellectualism.
Vocalist Sikkil Gurucharan represents the mid-point. “Our music is steadily staying in between,” he says. “I do sing a lot of emotionally charged songs and try to get into the mood of the lyrics.” And yet, while on alapana and kalpanaswaras, Gurucharan likens himself to “an explorer in a forest of notes”.
It might appear logical to assume that while older people prefer bhakti-centric music, the not-so-old love the more cerebral, flashy, splash-on-the-canvas kind of creative music, but such a profiling is not valid.
For Samyukta Ranganathan, a ‘junior’ vocalist and daughter of singer Aruna Ranganathan, Carnatic music has an inherent tendency to be “extremely cerebral”, with alapana, calculations, niraval and other technicalities. “I feel that emotion and devotion, which were perhaps the original purpose of the compositions, may get muddled in the changing style of concert singing today,” she says. For her, the “main emotion” is devotion. “It is hard to sing a song that doesn’t appeal to your soul ,” she says. Emotion should be overlaid with intellectualism (or vidwat).
What does our Sangita Kalanidhi designate Sanjay Subrahmanyan say? Sanjay excused himself from replying to questions relating to bhakti. However, in an earlier interaction with this journalist, he had observed that Carnatic music had always made space for both manodharma (imaginative intellectualism) and meditation. “If manodharma is the extreme left and meditation is the extreme right, I can be described as slightly left of centre.”
While no musician will accept that they have given up the meditative quotient in their music, any regular at concert halls knows that not just Sanjay but the entire world of Carnatic music is shifting towards the ‘left of centre.’ And some believe that the space on the right, vacated by Carnatic music, is being filled by namasankirtanam, which (unlike musical discourse or harikatha) seems to be on the rise.
If artists are finding a niche market in namasankirtanam concerts, is Carnatic music spinning off a part of it into a separate entity? Long-term rasikas shudder at the thought. “You can enjoy a very cerebral music,” says Sivaramakrishnan. “But if you diminish the meditative aspect, you are extracting less value from music.”
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