Slaying demons of patriarchy

"THE most erotic words are inspired by one's spirituality," says Naina Devi the well-known thumri singer. For the sur, the musical note, to become perfect the artist's spiritual quest has to be complete. And seeking the sur then becomes the search of one's spirit. Kishori Amonkar says she desires to attain moksha with her music and that means the control to achieve a perfect balance between intellect and heart. Perceived by musician and listener alike as a means of attaining moksha, a combination of bhakti and gnana, music has always been a gendered space. A sacrosanct space demanding the weight of knowledge, power of emotion and strength of intellect that no woman can attempt. Even a singer like D. K. Pattammal, the weight of whose performance was accepted as male, had to insist on her right to sing pallavis. Because padams not pallavis were suited for women's tepid voices and frail minds. "Is there a masculine music and a feminine music?" she asks.

And yet women have entered this area that has been considered masculine and carved out spaces for themselves. Not because they wanted to compete with men. Simply because they needed to make music. To enter that spiritual quest which would take them forth on their life's journey. And if in the search they violated norms, if they subverted a culture, they did so in the implicit faith that they were doing their duty. That they were nurturing a divine talent - which was not to be used in search of worldly or material gain. As women and as artists how did a patriarchal society fix them in particular ways? There is a slightly wry note that creeps in when an artist of the stature of Gangubai Hangal remarks that when a male musician is Muslim he is an Ustad, if Hindu he is a Pandit, but a woman remains a Bai whether she is a Kesarbai or Mogubai! Dwaram Mangathayaru strikes a discordant note when she asks,

They hear the music with their eyes,

they don't have ears, no brains, no

heart, no art. Music is not impor-

tant. To see with the eyes - is this

dance?

The note is discordant because it dares to question the wisdom of those who have the power and control over who can perform and who can be applauded. She was responding to the remark that she was not considered for concerts because she did not dress well and use make-up. For a woman finally it is the appearance that counts. Not to make an effort to please, to be indifferent to the gendered gaze of the audience is an unforgivable offence.

How do these different women's voices and views ranging from

Gangubai Hangal to Dwaram

Mangathayaru, from Philomena Thumboochetty to Vidya Rao provide a collage of insights about their lived reality as women in different social contexts?

The Singer and the Song is the first of C. S. Lakshmi's three volumes of detailed interviews with 50 notable women in the arts in India. She recounts the experiences of legendary greats in the field of music, both vocal and instrumental, like Gangubai Hangal, Naina Devi, Dhondutai Kulkarni, Veena Sahasrabuddhe, the Sikkil Sisters, Sukanya Ramgopal, and many others. A labour of love, the book explores the stories of the singers looking at their everyday lives, their art, their families, their choices and most importantly the silencing and silent elements in their lives. The Singer and the Song has interviews with women who have specialised in Western, Hindustani and Carnatic music. Lakshmi's decision to include photographs of their choice from the artists' personal albums has added to the richness of the biography, making it a social history which evokes changing lifestyles and contexts, filling the reader with a nostalgia that makes one linger over the book, reluctant to put it down.

There are different voices and different silences in the book, but the problem with oral history is also how to let the individual be and still allow for what is being said or not said.

Lakshmi uses a dialogue throughout the book without any attempt to erase her presence or her subjective position. But this process works best in an interview like Vidya Rao's where a whole series of assumptions are shared. Often the question is just missed or deflected leaving a gap that leaves one guessing. And this is one of the problems that oral history always poses. Where is it that the historian must intrude and where is it that she must erase her presence? Lakshmi sees the incomplete sentence and the gesture of withdrawal as difficult to prise out of the flow and examine. Almost like a moment of creation. But history is also an act of recovering spaces, erasing silences and eliminating the erasures. To see the politics of shifting spaces and altering language one has to allow the voice of the artist to be heard. And the historian must have the control, the capacity to strike the balance between presence and absence. To keep the distinction between being heard and allowing the question to be heard, a difficult distinction to maintain. The Singer and the Song is more of a jugalbandhi where the voices of both interviewer and interviewee mingle and come together, sometimes achieving the perfect sur, sometimes not. But the quest the important. Interestingly enough although the singers see art as sublime and above gender, the gendering of its practice appears through the interstices of what is stated. And the truth of their struggle - which is as much for legitimacy as for excellence. A struggle to slay the demons across the seven seas and seven mountains. A story that awaits its teller in silence.

VASANTH KANNABIRAN

The Singer and the Song:

Conversations with Women Musicians, C. S. Lakshmi, Kali for Women, p.383, Rs. 400.

Indian Review of Books

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