“There is
nothing as great a music system in this world as Carnatic music. There may be a
few others that are pleasant to hear. But none of them have the greatness or the
importance of our music system.” This is no sooth-saying of an ordinary person!
It was no less than the Guru of Carnatic music, Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer! Most
of the people here will contend that this opinion of the omniscient Guru is
indeed correct. Is it possible that the venerable Semmangudi reached this
conclusion after attaining a complete understanding of all the other music
systems in this world? If he has reached this conclusion only on the basis of
his understanding of Carnatic music, is it tenable or credible?
Melissa
Holliday is an Australian friend. She can sing very well. On an occasion I
presented her a record of Madurai Mani Iyer’s rendering of a Swati Thirunal krithi
‘Saarasaaksha Paripaalaya’ in Raag Pantuvarali (Kamavardhini). After listening
to it, the question that she asked me was, “Is it some tribal chant?” We can
dismiss her question as a matter of ignorance. My question is, “Isn’t there a big
mistake somewhere in claiming, with just an understanding of a music system
that is native to a few provinces in India which is a small part of the world,
that our system of music is the greatest system in this world?” We Malayalees
have for long been fostering an attitude very similar to this, that what we
know is great and everything else is trash.
By now, we
have a long history of writing in Malayalam that regards Western music with
varying degrees of revulsion and buttresses it with ‘scholarly’ evaluations
like ‘Over doing of Western music’ and ‘Noisy Western Music’. If this is the
standard of evaluation of the classical system of music that has developed over
a millennium and spread to all parts of the world, then I can imagine nothing
more absurd! What Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi or Tchaikovsky created are
not mere ‘noises’. These are wizardries of music that can reach, touch and
transform the most delicate emotions and moments of human heart!
And if these
smug critiques refer to the Western popular music (Pop) then to consider the
prodigious output of the likes of John Lennon, Beatles, Elvis Presley, Michael
Jackson, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder as noise is height of
ignorance. Most of these are sculptures in music that unify light music, the
excitement of beat, incandescent moments of emotions and universal brotherhood
into one moment of creative greatness. This Malayalee thought that seeks to
trash the Western music as noise, when compared to a white woman’s
understanding of Madurai Mani Iyer’s rendering as a tribal chant is a much
greater distortion and very unbecoming.
In Malayalam
film music, in the many songs composed by Salil Chowdhury, M.B.Sreenivasan,
Johnson, Ilayaraja and Shyam, we get to hear the great fusion of tunes steeped
in Indian classical music and scintillating background instrumental scores that
are so beautifully in western music style. But our traditionally handicapped
listening style makes us listen to the lines of the lyrics and then the tune in
which the lines are sung often completely ignoring the glorious background
instrumental music.
To add
insult to injury, we grumble aloud that too much importance is being accorded
to instrumental music. Our complaints then borrow the tones of our innate
beliefs in untouchability to ask why should accompanying instruments, that
should stand with deferential humility well behind the vocal music, be given
such prominence. As far as Malayalees are concerned lines of lyrics are what
count and they should be loud and clear! When we set the sacred lines to tune
we should not stretch, shorten or split them! It is just blasphemous.
We refuse to
understand that the words of the lines need to be stretched, shortened or split
to suit the requirements of the tune to give the whole line the musicality that
go on to make a song out of lyrics. The beauty of a piece in the background
score whether it is a sitar or flute or tabla used with equal or more
prominence in a song barely reaches our ears. If the lines of lyrics alone are
important, why have a song at all. It should be enough to read or recite the
lines as a poem. Why bother to set the poem to music, at all? Or for that
matter, why have instrumental music at all as a background?
How many
among us would have noted how in the song ‘Maanasa mine Varu’ sung by Manna Dey
for the film Chemmeen the Harmony and the Obbligato of the instruments
flute and Oboe in the background gives the song a creative completeness? But
then we are Malayalees and our strong belief is that instrumental music only
‘helps’ to discount the clarity and importance of lyrics.
These kinds
of opinions emanate from the wrong notion that poem and music are synonymous.
As I have already written in a previous article, you need language to create a song.
But you need neither language nor lines to create music. Good music can stand
on its own strength without the lines of lyrics. Take Mozart’s violin
composition Serenade 13 in G Major, for example. You can write lines in any language
any time to the tune of Serenade 13 and make it a song.
I would like
readers to carefully listen to Johnson’s background scores in many Malayalam
films like Thoovaanathumbigal and Namukku Paarkaan Mundirithoppugal.
One can then experience the verity of the proposition that instrumental music
can stir our emotions on par with any song or even surpass it. But then we have
to improve our discerning power from a mere ‘awareness of the song’ to an
‘awareness of music’. We can understand the real creative contribution of a
composer only by listening closely to the instrumental scores of composers in
songs. Otherwise listeners simply lose the finer points of music in listening
merely to the lyrics of the song.
Another
essential stipulation that our listeners prescribe for a singer is that he
should have a ‘bass’ voice. We see Yesudas’ ‘bass’ voice as his very great specialty.
My experience tells me that this belief in the essentiality of a ‘bass’ voice
for a male singer is the peculiarity of Malayalees. None of the great and
famous male singers of western music like Michael Jackson, Barry Gibb, Jeff
Buckley, Jimmy Somerville, Sting and John Lennon can be said to have the ‘bass’
voice prescribed by us. Nor did the great Indian singers like Mohammed Rafi and
Talat Mehmood have the ‘vibrant’ low notes. Look at our great singers before
Yesudas like A.M.Rajah or Udayabhanu. They were such marvels but did not have
the ‘vibrant bass’ voice. For this reason, can we dismiss these greats as not
great singers? Many of them were certainly better singers than Yesudas.
It is
generally said that Malayalees are not given to star worship. But, at least in
the matter of music, I do not think it to be true. I know many Malayalees who
are in no doubt whatsoever that Yesudas is the greatest singer ever to have
been born in this world. Here there is no further room for critical analysis or
evaluation of great music.
Exactly like
our overweening commitment to Carnatic music, we are stuck with an
ignore-everything-else interest in some particular ragas of Carnatic music. The
countless number of popular Malayalam film songs from the ‘Golden Era’ of
Malayalam film music had been composed in ragas you can count on your fingers
like Mohanam, Madhyamavadhi, Aabheri, Hindolam, Ananda Bhairavi, Shuddha
Dhanyasi etc. I cannot help remembering the comment of a musician friend from
Tamilnadu that most of the Malayalam film songs he had heard sounded more or
less the same. As you keep composing the songs in a few ragas, the possibility
of the song becoming familiar faster increases through the process of the song
reminding us of earlier famous songs. The Malayalee tendency of appreciating
only the familiar things and viewing the unfamiliar with suspicion is again
evident from this.
Then there
are Malayalees who make a ‘to do’ about their appreciation of songs with a deep
knowledge of music. Right on top of their menu is the requirement that ‘sangatis’
must have deep and grave import. The more involved and difficult to sing the sangati
is, the better it is! Then they can delight for hours and days, explaining the
unexplainable. They will accept the greatness of a song only when the sangatis
score more on the scale of difficulty. ‘Gangey……and ‘Madhumozhi Raadhe Ninne……………..Thedi’
are some examples where lung calisthenics stretching the lines are called for
and therefore, count as great songs! Delicate expressions and beautifully
portrayed emotions in a song is the basis of good music. But, sorry, it is not so
for Malayalees.
Malayalees
love music programs, but, please, please reproduce exactly as it was recorded.
Omit nothing. And do not add anything as well. My friend, why should you attend
a music program? You will be better off listening to a DVD recording of the
song. Why should another singer and a music troupe go to the trouble of
reproducing the same thing? When a famous song is reproduced in a forum,
everywhere in the world, listeners applaud and accept the changes made with a
sense of musicality. In fact, most listeners come looking for such nuggets of
creative beauty. When Mehdi Hassan sang his famous film songs, audience waited
with bated breath for the creative changes he rang up at every different
concert!
Only those
who know that the music we have not heard is much more than the miniscule that
we have heard can realize that there is no such thing as the last word in
music! No form of art that does not understand the changing times or fails to
reach newer and different audiences can survive. Carnatic music faces this frightening
prospect today. We should be ever ready, without forgetting our tradition or
the path we had travelled, to understand the new world and changing times.
While remaining conscious of the greatness of our traditions, we will do well
to remember that there are other even greater traditions in this world. For a
listener who can in all truthfulness realize the limitations of what he has
heard and therefore keeps both his mind and heart open to newer and fresher
listening experiences, the music will always be the language of the heart and
soul. Beethoven or Thyagaraja, Ustad Amir Khan or Michael Jackson, Mehdi Hasan
or Salil Chowdhury, Madan Mohan or Baburaj, are all but a local dialect of the
universal human language called music.
