Musicians,events,anecdotes and tid-bits

[R.Latha]

seat yourself at a Carnatic music concert and you will find that, for the first few minutes of each piece, this exercise consumes a certain section of the audience. This rasika, during the alapana, transforms into an intelligence officer gleaning meaning out of garbled transmissions. The music, at this point, isn't a portal to pleasure but an exam question awaiting an answer. Is this Shri or Madhyamavati? Twenty points. Vexed foreheads are uncreased only when the pallavi begins, whose opening words lead those with raga-identification books to rifle through relevant pages. Those without guides may corkscrew their necks in the direction of the omniscient mama behind — him of the fierce, sandpaper-voiced whisper — who is enlightening his mildly baffled wife. This acquired knowledge will then be passed on from row to row, a heaving body in a silent mosh pit, till everyone in the auditorium knows the name of the raga emanating from the stage.

These listeners have, in these furtive endeavours, missed crucial minutes of the piece, but they are not to be blamed. They are afflicted, the poor souls, with what might be called the TOUR syndrome: the Tyranny of the Unidentified Raga. It's a compulsive condition; one that convinces the rasika that the composition they are listening to cannot be enjoyed unless they know the name of its raga. They may not care whether the canteen dosa came off a multi-serve griddle or a solitary skillet, but Sheshachala nayakam, they maintain, cannot be satisfactorily digested unless they label it a Varali. Only after arriving upon this information, whose importance assumes the proportions of a sphinxian riddle to be cracked open in order to be let through, can they begin to focus on the artiste's expressiveness and phrasing, the warmth and colour of tone and timbre, the aspects of a concert that would normally attract listeners.

Technical knowledge is important — to the critic evaluating a performance; to the mature listener looking to sink deep into the music — but it is not the primary aspect of a Carnatic music concert. Like the language the composition is set in — Telugu or Kannada or Sanskrit — these details about raga and tala, korvai and karvai are essentially building blocks, with which the composition is constructed by composer and singer. The purpose of the composition, however, is to transcend these blueprints and transport the listener to a realm of emotion similar to the feeling that arises upon sighting a majestic painting, unaware of its roots in oils or watercolours, or savouring the creation of a chef before whose art the only possible response is to close the eyes. You don't need to acquaint yourself with the contents of the spice rack, just the capacity to surrender to the moment would do.

http://www.thehindu.com/arts/music/a...?homepage=true