Tune with tradition

"WHAT ARE you waiting for," asked Raja Rao. The Indian author was a guest along with David Reck in the "Yadoo" artiste's colony, in upstate New York. The centre gives fellowships to authors and artistes of merit with room and board so that they could enjoy a few months of undisturbed creativity. Raja Rao was advising Western music composer David Reck to go to India.

"The idea began to tantalise me," says Reck who is now visiting Chennai. He and his wife Carol were awe-struck when they heard Pandit Ravi Shankar, K. V. Narayanaswamy and others perform at a concert in New York. Reck was already enjoying a successful career as a Western classical music composer in New York.

"New York is for Western musicians, what Madras is to Carnatic musicians. You have to go there to seek success in the performing arts," he says. Born in South Texas, Reck studied in Houston. His interest in Indian music was further kindled because he had a passion for improvisation in Western music and the way improvisation made Indian music so personal was very attractive.

In 1968 he was offered a fellowship by the Rockefeller Foundation which entailed a trip to India. "In those days hardly anyone went to south India. Everyone went north but, because of Raja Rao's connections and the several introductions he gave us, we decided to go south."

The first concert the couple went to in Madras was that of M. S. Subbulakshmi. Her husband, the late T. Sadasivam, took great interest, enrolled him in the Carnatic College of Music and helped him study music privately too. Sadasivam introduced him to many great musicians as well as to Gokarnam Ramachandra Iyer of the Karaikudi tradition, from whom he could learn to play the veena.

"I played the guitar. Hence, the interest in the veena - also a string instrument." He gradaully got to know the other members of the Karaikudi family - Rajeswari Padmanabhan, Ranganayaki Rajagopalan and Karaikudi Subramaniam and became obsessed with the particular style of playing the veena.

"The experience changed my life," says Reck. "When we returned to the U.S., we suffered a mid-life crisis and seriously decided to change career." From being a successful Western classical music composer Reck switched to World Music and went back to school. He joined the Wesleyan University for an M.A. and then a P.hd., in World Music. There he met several great Indian musicians. Reck and his wife Carol, a visual artist, would visit India every few years for further study. In 1978, Reck joined the Amherst College and built up an Indian Music programme there. It happens to be the only college in the U.S. offering Carnatic music on the veena.

Reck returned to Madras, this time on an American Institute of Indian Studies fellowship, to learn the Kararikudi style of veena playing from Ranganayaki Rajagopalan and has been coming every year now. "It feels so normal to be here and play the veena," he says. He has transcribed over 100 kritis, with detailed notation and gamakas, to illustrate the Karaikudi tradition so that any future student who would like to learn this style will find it easy.

"In the Sixties, Madras was a very different place. I rode a bicycle everywhere I went and always wore a veshti. But with all the changes that have taken place in the city, including the name change to Chennai, I am delighted that Carnatic music continues to thrive and there are so many young and bright stars on the scene."

"A few years ago I practically came face to face with Yama and it was music that brought me back," says Reck with a laugh. He was diagnosed as suffering from cancer and given two years to live. After surgery, he was confined to bed. But though in a prone position and swathed in bandages with pillows for support, he continued to practise on his veena. While he tunes the instrument to play for just the two of us at Brihadhvani, he smiles as he recollects what the musician Sandhyavandanam Srinivasa Rao once told him. "We sowed the seed and nurtured it with water and manure. In its own time the plant has flowered very slowly... in slow motion."

The modesty is touching but the flower has a sweet fragrance.

V. R. DEVIKA

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