Carnatic Music and The Chennai Music Season

I am very pro-music. I have learnt music as a kid, and always continue to hope that some day I will resume my learning. I believe that music a lot more useful than being merely a means for entertainment.

I used to (still am, in a way) a Carnatic music aficionado. When in the hostel, I once had an interesting argument with a friend of mine about comparing Carnatic music with Western Classical music. My argument was that Carnatic music is the most refined and beautiful form of music to which my friend disagreed. His point was that if you would ask a naive African tribesman to listen to Beethoven and Thyagaraja and ask him to rate them, he would surely rate Beethoven higher.

This was a difficult experiment to analyze and react to. I couldn't imagine a tribesman with little connection with mainstream civilization, to like a Thyagaraja krithi over let's say Beethoven's 'Ode to joy' or some such. Does this make Western Classical music more beautiful? Tough to say. One would agree that Western Classical music is simpler to interpret and enjoy (I certainly believe so) and in this simplicity lies beauty and refinement.

Carnatic Music is a very specialized form of music whose interpretation and appreciation has some pre-requisites. Of course, there are a few krithis whose melody might cause instant appeal but the real joy and beauty of Carnatic music doesn't lie in the melody alone. In fact, very little of the beauty lies in the melody. The crux is in the rendering, the variations and the depth to which an artiste can explore.

Given all this, appreciating Carnatic Music is a very intellectual exercise. It is thus hardly surprising that Tamil Brahmin families consider this as a very important and necessary element of development. I am sure I am not the only one who has faced peer pressure at home when there is Carnatic Music on tv or the radio and identifying the raaga is the competition.

The high point of Carnatic Music exposition is the Chennai Music Season. I am in complete awe of how this tradition has continued for so long and even to this day (thanks to economics and media buzz) continues to attract a wide audience. It is an annual woodstock. Carnatic Music's growth in popularity in the near future will depend heavily on how the patronage for the Chennai Music Season changes in the coming years

I personally am out of all this. To put it bluntly, I am a very selfish aficionado of Carnatic Music. I want the art form to strengthen and continue but I am not ready to patronize it through showing up for concerts. I have been in Chennai for three music seasons in the last three years and I have attended only one concert (TM Krishna in Ananthapadmanabhaswami Kovil, Adyar, late 2009) I do not see a point in attending concerts. I do not enjoy them. This is not because I do not like the music but because my enjoyment of Carnatic Music comes from learning and improving my own skills.

Contrary to other people's opinions, I find concerts to be of no value in terms of learning. If I were at a stage where I needed to understand the nuances of concert presentation etc, there might have been some advantage in attending concerts. Currently all that I need to do is to listen to krithis. Listen to them repeatedly; which is something concerts cannot offer.

Unfortunately, I do not derive any ego pleasure from announcing to people that I attended X's concert at Y sabha, there was a superb rendition of Z etc. I am much happier when I realize that I can sing W sangathi in V krithi slightly better today as compared to yesterday.

All of us have different roles to play. I am playing mine. Baleh baleh.

Far from the maddening crowd

I have come to realize that most of my blog posts are turning into self-reflective ones. On thinking deeper, I realize that I do indulge in a lot of introspection. In a way, my aim every day is to be a more perfect me.

Was I different? As time progresses, most of us forget to examine how we've changed over the years. Thanks to some advice I received from friends, I make it a point to regularly reflect on how I have changed. It is a very interesting intellectual exercise. You have get yourself to remember what you thought, felt and liked and what your mental make-up was at times in the past.

This is where blogging is helpful. A glance at your old posts would give you an idea of what and who you were some years ago in the past. Here is my old blog (or one of my old ones). When I go through it now, I feel silly. If I knew the log in and password to access this blog, I would have deleted it. How different was I? I used to feel strongly about issues outside of me: traffic, programming, cricket etc. It is not that I do not think about all this now but I certainly do not have any 'feelings' about these things; at least certainly not have feelings strong enough to warrant a blog post.

Somehow, somewhere life has come to revolve lesser and lesser about these things. So there is a Anna Hazare. It is not important that I do not know what he is fighting for. It is important that I do not care to know what he is fighting for. He is just an example. There are so many things that are happening out there in the world which I do not care to know more of. I am, for bad or for worse, far from the maddening crowd.

Sometime during those years when I was able to churn out blog posts about all those 'world-ish' things, I remember to have read an article in The Hindu titled 'Rebels without a cause'. I do not remember anything about the article but the title of the article had a huge impact on me. Anna Hazare is a rebel if you want to call him that. And he is surely a rebel with a cause. So are the thousands who flock to meet and greet him and attend his speeches etc.

But for every such rebel with a cause, there must be a hundred rebels without a cause. These are the millions who have an opinion on something they do are not directly involved with. It is like me having an opinion on Ganguly's batting on some blog post. Pointless.

To me, not having an opinion about something is a strong statement. And personally, it means that that 'something' is not on my critical path in life. I am a rat, wanting to remain a rat. All these 'somethings' which people make a huge noise about, do not show up in my racetrack. I can at best acknowledge their existence. Ask me for an opinion and you will get nothing.

Annus Mirabillis

Here we go again, another new year. Happy New Year to everyone. On new year's day, I am prone to being nervous. Somewhere inside me, I have been made to believe that how you start on day 1 will determine what lies ahead. But over the years, this belief has waxed and waned. This time around, I really didn't think about it too much. Perhaps it was because I had grown up and believed in a 'who-the-world-works' or maybe it was just a result of a long bout of tension and sleep shortage thanks to work.

But since it is a new year ahead of me, I think it is a good time to reflect back on life over 2011 and how I can be better and more effective in 2012. There are a few things which I surely want to do this year and I see a merit in putting some of those down.

1. Exercise more often

I have had the dream of being presentably slim for a long time now. This has to be the year I do something about it and make it count. There are two broad ways of becoming slim and staying that way - exercise ad diet. The latter, I have found is significantly tougher and hence I shall stick to exercise.

2. Write more often

I think dreams come in cycles. There can be a whole passage of time where I don't dream of a particular thing and then suddenly it shows up on my radar. Writing is one such thing. I hope to write more and write more often this year. Perhaps take the first steps towards writing a book or something.

3. Better anger management and channelizing negative energy

This has been among my greatest strengths and in my view the most useful thing I have taught myself. It has been over a decade since I have started experiencing the benefits of this. I wish to continue perfecting this habit and hope to lose my cool fewer times this year.

4. Crunch the time between thought and action

Many times, circumstances get the better of me. In large situations (large being defined by the scale of implications of the decisions that are being complicated) I find that I fret too much about the outcome at the cost of losing my objectivity. This is further affected by self-doubt and your gut's lack of confidence on your brain. It is some sort of 'analysis paralysis'. This year I need to get better at backing my logic and judgement and thinking lesser and acting faster.

5. Do something creative regularly

I have been trying this for some time now and find that it helps immensely in reducing boredom. I just need to be more regular; actually regular creativity is almost an oxymoron. Forget it. I know what to do.

6. Read news more often and have an independent world view

My daily schedule gives me little time to read the newspaper and I am left with relying on the Internet for reading news. Thanks to google news being the way it is, my following the news is at best haphazard. I need to correct this. There needs some method to this.

7. Learn to say No

I think it is the most important skill to have in the world.

Apart from these, there are other minor things -- like cleaning my car more often, ensuring my next shirt is not blue, never wearing mismatched shoes, learning to write fast with a fountain pen, etc.