| Chennai Jan 04 |
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| Written by Administrator | |
| Thursday, 24 July 2008 12:45 | |
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Chennai Festival of (*Carnatic*) Music This was our second visit, after 2 year's absence. We were surprised by how much the festival has grown in 2 years. There are twice as many venues, twice as many artists, twice as many options (every night there may be 10 or 15 concerts to attend to, not to mention morning events, afternoon events, or lectures and demonstrations, or dance events, or hindustani music events). There is more dance this time; and more Hindustani (north Indian) music. In fact, Narada Gana Sabha, put on a mini Hindustani festival, too (there is no Hindustani equivalent to this, the Hindustani musicians do not have a place to go to, they love to be invited here, therefore). it is also longer -- 5 and a half weeks now, as opposed to 4 weeks then. And it is all private -- the Tamil Nadu government, and the tourism development bureau -- are, thankfully, staying away from it. which makes it Chennai's best kept secret -- if you search the net for "music festivals, India", chances are that you will not find it. Which is great: the festival is by professional musicians for hard-core, professional fans (some even from France, or Poland, or Japan, or Egypt -- but mostly, almost exclusively, from India). and thats great: these are performances by professional artists for hard-core, professional fans. Most have actually received musical training carnatic music is to Tamils what piano instruction used to be to us in the age of our grandmothers; they all know the stuff; they can tell who is good and who is bad; they reward the good and just get up and walk away from the bad. (as a result there is very little bad). This compares favorably with the dance festival in Mamallapuram to which we went later that is pitched almost entirely to foreign tourists; the audience, as a result, is your average tourist with no prior understanding of the art form, poor if any exposure to any other art forms, unable to judge, appreciate, understand. This feeds into the performances the artists are tempted to be perfunctory, to haste through what just needs to be done. Chennai is not like that. Great audience means a great audience-artist rapport. And that means great music. It is of course more than that to the Tamils. They are rightly proud of their cultural tradition classical Tamil poetry goes back to the Sangam age, ca. 200 AD, when poetry was collected and edited in great royally patronized collections, much like the Japanese court poetry collections of the 9th 13th centuries. Their singing is hundreds of years old and sets to music much of that very same poetry. In modern India, where Tamils are the largest non-Indoeuropean-speaking state, with a lot of resistance to what is perceived as dominance by the rough and rude northerners, carnatic music helps Tamils celebrate themselves, their uniqueness, their cultural attainment, their essential goodness. Music here is not only part of being a well-rounded person, a person worth knowing, a gentleman, but also, perhaps more importantly, and more troublingly, also part of national self-defintion. But, eh, what music. It is a classical music because it has a long well recorded tradition some 400 years of it (though the raga form itself may date to 13th century) so one knows what has gone before; and one therefore knows what is new -- and what innovation means; and one can make erudite allusions to the past which is shared common knowledge to artists and audience alike. It is also highly structured all great art requires limitations clear boundaries of what is allowed, so that one can innovate within them, though, we sometimes feel the limitations of Carnatic music may be too restrictive. It is also very complex its not easy on the ear, it takes training and patience and commitment to appreciate it; but since Carnatic music lacks keys (its entirely chromatic and therefore there is no modulation from key to key), harmony (no chords at all), and any suggestion of polyphony (its all strictly melody not even monody as in Hindustani music where lots of instruments can play together, harmonizing with each other even if only one is playing the melody to create the solid gold effect of a shower of sound -- in Carnatic music it is, basicly, a succession of solos: now the vocalist, now the violinist, now the percussionist), the complexity has to come through rhythm (a great variety of very complex rhythms) and ornamentation (when one doesnt just sing CDE but CCBBCCBCBCBCBCDDEEFFEEFFEEFFEEFFEE that is, takes an awful indirect way of getting from A to B, long and complex and technically very very flashy). To a western trained ear this is at first sight a great mystery the complexity s readily appreciated, if not immediately understood the vocal techniques are, for the most part, familiar to anyone familiar with baroque music, for example; but the chromatic nature of the music makes it seem mysterious, otherworldly. As one gets used to it, one begins to pass judgments more in line with what a died-in-the-wool carnatic fan might say. That the focus on technical excellence has led to a loss of sustained note (the human voice is a beautiful instrument and sometimes it only needs to hit a note and sustain it -- without ornamentation -- to please the listener), and with it, the loss of pretty voice if all that matters is how well you can ornament your singing, then it doesnt matter if your voice is soft and well-rounded and beautiful, or if it is harsh and downright ugly (as many, as a result, now are). And that the focus on the improvised performance (thought to be divinely inspired, and, at any rate, as novel -- more interesting) -- the bands are assembled ad hoc, often the musicians do not know each other and have never performed together and their togetherness relies entirely on common knowledge of standards (ragas, rhythms) and techniques -- leads some bands to indifferent performances (the best band leaders, like Aruna Sairam, brief their bands before the concert telling them what effect they want to achieve and how, which results --somewhat counterintuitively in an age when we worship (unduly) spontaneous unprocessed creativity -- in more interesting performances). And that the Asian respect for old age and experience causes singers to continue singing till well past their prime, when their voices have become harsh, vague rasping echoes of their former glory. And that lack of professional coaching, combined with the cult of the technically flashy, is leading singers to ruin their voices early by singing too often, too long, and too hard. Other remarks I wish to make may be more Western in nature. Why not harmonize? Why not play cords? Why not play in parts? The answer is simple: There is a fear among the practicioners that to do so would compromise that which is a definition of carnatic music, that it would make it just another branch of world music. And those who say that have a point: most attempts at modernization or fusion end up a muddle; and they fail to acquire new audience while they lose the traditional one (what happened to Thai Khon). The success of the Chennai festival is proof that to attract large audiences, classical music doesnt have to compromise, but only has to be put on in the best way in which it can be. And that if one plays it right, the crowds will come. But here is another question, a better one, and one which doesnt have a ready answer: why not play the violin as a violin? Violin pieces in the west are composed for the violin to bring out the full potential of that instrument (so Bach composes 4-part fugues for a solo violin). But in carnatic music, all instruments emulate the human voice. So the violin does not play cords; it does not play beyond the range of human voice not higher or lower; and often it rasps, just the way the voice of a great master singer might when he is past his prime. Why? And the final note about the sound systems. Carnatic musicians, like their Hindustani counterparts, and like the Balinese, love their sound systems and rarely perform without them. Which is a great pity: the sound systems are not needed -- we know from western opera that a singer with a good voice can be heard in the last seats of a a vast opera house; and they distort the sound -- as when the singer, moved by passion, nods his head and his voice slips out of reach of his microphone; or as when two mikes are set up to gather and magnify the sound emerging from just two ends of a wonderfully complex instrument like the mridangam (the carnatic drum), an instrument with glorious and complex sonority resulting, to large extent, from its asymmetric shape, and the sound-waves travelling from it in all directions at different speeds and colliding and combining together in the air about the audience's ears. All these peevish comments aside, we enjoyed the festival, and the music, and the atmosphere, tremendously. And will be back for more. For sure. 2005? Anyone fancy to join us this time? |