… fine music is all very fine but we’d rather have cheese
The debate is raging in my head. Raga-ing in my head, perhaps. What is the music of India that has such a strange and wonderful hold on me, and where is it headed, and where and how can I get an understanding of it?
Much of the clash between new India and old India is musical in nature, and as new and old India jockey for position and adapt to each other, so perhaps are their respective sounds.
I’d come to India with a deep passion for Karnatic music, the classical music of South India. Karnatic music holds to the strictest system of ragam on the subcontinent. Musicologically speaking, it is a fascinating melodic system. It is attached to a complex tradition of slippery decoration, gamaka. A good performer can squeeze the subtleties out of even a basic scale to an awsome extent, and extemporise almost ad infinitum, with a ‘scintillating’ array of emotional colors. Every piece of musical material is milked for all it is worth. As a system of pure melody, it makes the tradition of harmonic Western classical music seem excessive, and perhaps even decadent. With it’s rich history of complex improvisation over subtle rhythmic forms, it makes western jazz seem a bit lazy and simplistic in these areas.
I still hold this passion, but I see many sides to the question. I am not alone. Many modern Indians are finding their own classical music remote from their emotional space, and irrelevant. This blog entry by a modern, educated, middle class Indian covers most of the obvious reasons. The complexity of the system, the fact that there is a percaption that to appreciate the music requires an understanding of the intricacies …. the silliness of many of the singers gesticulations (the best singers and the majority of the instrumentalists avoid this, but a lot of the middle ground indulge in it) … it’s remoteness from modern feelings in it’s focus on mediaeval religious ecstasy … the need for hard working office workers to have light hearted relaxation … the increasing advancement of film music and pop forms … the perception that Karnatic music is a music for the conservative middle classes.
The backbone of the classical music scene are the ‘sabhas’, the music clubs. These stage a large proportion of the concerts. The bigger ones have their own venues. You get the impression that at one stage, they were a lot more consistently filled. Certainly the greater part of the audience for most concerts is older, and middle class. Most of the younger attendees are musicians, western world music fans or musicologists, or are being dragged along by their parents. Those concerts that are held in temples, generally for free, do have a wider attendance in social and economic terms.
On the other hand, Karnatic music is starting to make surprising adaptations to the modern world: bodiless electric violins with effects pedals, the use of saxophone, the use of drum pads triggering samples in a classical concert, other midi instruments such as the yamaha wind instrument (WX4). Going by attendances, it seems that most of the Rasikas (the hard core carnatic music buffs) really prefer the traditions to be kept to. In any case, it seems, in general, that the local scene still has a way to go making use of these resources. The standard of sound engineering is, with exceptions, fairly basic. At a concert by a top flight classical performer, such as Suddha Ragunathan, it is possible to here totally destructive overuse of low grade reverb. Enough to make you want to get out of your seat, throttle the engineer, and turn the powered stuff right off. Most of the synthetic sound sources are pretty basic by current western standards. And it is, to my highly untrained ears anyway, very difficult to capture the complexities of gamaka with synthesised portamento/glissando.
However, the film music scene is a lot more advanced in this progressive westernization of sound sources. A small portion of this scene overlaps the hard core carnatic scene. Unfortunately, most of these musicians tend to shy away from the music associations that form the backbone of the carnatic music scene. The Tamil film music scene is somewhat more ‘progressive’ than the Hindi film music scene of Mumbai, which has become stylistically stuck with the cliched Bollywood sound. In some ways, this is leading the Tamil composers further and further towards slavish imitation of contemporary western pop styles, and away from the hybrid blend of traditional music and pop styles that is a distinctive aspect of most Indian film soundtracks to date.
The impression I get from the very strict classical fans and musicians is that they find the film music a bit simplistic … something of a pastiche. Though the music is raga based, the ragas aren’t developed particularly deeply, and often several ragas will be thrown together quite randomly within a particular song. On the other hand, it seems to be one of the main forms of pop music. More recent films refencing western styles like hip hop seem to be doing it in a very whimsical light hearted Indian way … gangsta rap hasn’t quite got here yet.
Between these two extremes, there is a lot of lighter music, soft classical adaptations without much improvisation, bhajans, ringtones, strangely customized car horns and reversing warnings that sound like techno tracks without a kick, traditional folk music.
Much of the temple music is either nagaswaram group (a long wind instrument that sounds like a deep shennai) or, strangely, a marching brass band. How the brass bands (complete with cheesy uniforms) got into the temples, I still haven’t fathomed. You will often see them in processions. They are generally less concerned with tuning than with volume, though they are often playing traditional melodies … quite often with a keyboard player and lighting rig on a garishly decorated car toting a noisy generator. On key festivals, such as the start of Pongal, several marching bands will be running together in procession… all playing different tunes in different times. The gaps between bands are really mindbending soundscapes.
The nagaswaram groups are really pretty special. Often there are two or three, playing traditional devotional songs in unison. Invariably they’re accompanied on tavil, which is an older form of drum played with stick and hand. Together they are loud, and pretty damn ferocious. Nagaswaram is sankrit for ‘heavenly notes’. It is a beautiful instrument to my ears, but this is a very very fierce and loud concept of heavenly … watch out you cheesy new age types, heaven is coming and it means business…. the nagaswarams are almost always used for wedding bands as well. Next wedding I get to I’m going to see if I can get one to play hava neguala…..
The one pure Tamil folk concert I’ve attended, a traditional one for the first day of Pongal, seemed to bridge a lot of the middle ground, or at least provided a link between this diverse orgy of sound. Most of the music is dance music, a lot of it in threes, nice folksy dance beats … much simpler than carnatic, and split with unaccompanied solo singers, singing in raga (though also somewhat simplified). At times it drifts towards the more complex carnatic sound, at other times it was reminicent of the wedding bands, or even one of the marching brass bands. How much of this is true folk music, and how much a reassembled modern perspective on the good old days?
So what are people listening to? In Chennai at least, the more westernised radio stations currently sound like a cross between the straighter film music, and mtv five years ago. Guitar based western pop music and heavy metal seem to be all the rage in the college/university scene. When you hit folk with this question, they are almost apologetic, and will say something like ‘Its for something different, a change’. The ubiquitous tinny loud speakers mounted on the roofs of auto rickshaws play mainly cheesy film tunes. I’m yet to hear metallica blaring from one of them … perhaps it’s a matter of time, or perhaps this crosses some strange unspecified boundary of good taste.
Is carnatic music adapting quickly enough, or migrating to a new form of jazz, or translating itself into the film music, or is it doomed to become a museum art form? Interesting questions and interesting times. Stay tuned to this channel for the answers as I see them. India being India, the answer is probably yes and no to all questions.
