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When sabhas turn second home
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As the cool Margazhi air sweeps Chennai, the city vibrates with music and rhythm. It is interesting to see the rasikas and artistes sabha-hopping, decked up in silks and glittering gold...
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THE MYLAPORE Mami walks up the sabha aisle in nine yards of Chungadi, diamond nose ring glittering, oiled hair coiled tight under mallipoo strand, armoured in baby blue sweater against the Chennai winter. Cane in hand, hearing aid resolutely anchored, a Mama in monkey cap and muffler taps his way through the theatre foyer. What a perfect start to the music season!
Once again festival fever is upon the city, the annual phenomenon that makes the impossible possible: it bewitches people into forsaking ``Anni'' and ``Marumagal'' for the concert hall. Not once, but right through the season. Not in the evening alone, but throughout the day. True, many a noon session performer finds himself in the void, but fine/promising talent at a reputed venue does get a hearing.
Some things haven't changed though. The Chennai rasika can recognise Andolika and Kedaram with the first phrase, grasp complex rhythm cycles in three speeds, identify poetic nuances in Muthuswami Dikshitar or Gopalakrishna Bharati, melt in the bhakti of Andal and Tyagaraja. But an amazing forbearance makes him continue to turn a blind eye — and ear — to matters of aesthetics and acoustics.
Take T.M.Krishna's concert at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan for Sriranjani at the start of the season. Not just deafening, it also had voice, violin (R.K.Shriramkumar), mridangam (J.Vaidyanathan) and kanjira (B.S.Purushothaman) see-sawing through volume fluctuations. Did anyone complain? No. Neither did the clamour affect their intuitive team work, nor the singer's expansive Kalyani, resonant, aglow with old gamakas and dattu prayogas lovingly rediscovered with sheen intact. In a pace that retained their tension and lingering power, and with the length which ensured plenitude without surfeit. Admittedly, the uncontrolled volume magnified each vocal flaw as well. However, the unhurried search proved that in classical music, freshness is not trendy adaptation, but the recasting of tradition from one's own infelt understanding of its grandeur. Then heritage reinvents itself through the individual imagination.
Humming and chattering remain part of the concert scenario, as are rustling bags, and noisy exits at soulful moments of alapana or tani avartanam. Judging by initial sorties, audiences continue to be confined to grey haired citizenry; the few young listeners armed with book and pen are invariably budding musicians and students, comparing news and notes on J Vaidyanathan's marriage to Vijay Siva's sister, and the end of Vijay Siva's rivalry with Lord Ganesha in merry bachelorhood.
Literary/socio-historical/ethnological scholars will find the Chennai sabha the best breeding ground for post-colonial manifestations. ``We are happy and proud to welcome one and all to the feast of music under the hallowed auspices of this sabha ...''All speeches and announcements are in angilam of course, with Tamil an occasional scared rabbit scuttling into the wings. The artistes are no exceptions, differing only in their accents, redolent with Tamil roots from many regions among musicians, and sterilised convent school diction in the dancers.
All for the edification of a few pale faces scattered in the hall, from Tokyo and Italy, or Germany and Finland, to whom English is as much a mystery as Dogri.
As always, Carnatic music goes hand in hand with pink-n-gold plastic streamers, banners of virulent yellow, their red-n-blue letters — in English of course - blaring forth names of sabhas-n-sponsors. (Among the featured ads was a prominent logo for herbal soap and shikakai - metaphoric reminder of the purity we demand in our arts?) Even the suave Arangham Trust showed thoughtlessness. The picturesque Museum Theatre was festooned with tacky banners for the Other Festival.
Visit Kalakshetra some morning and you are in another planet altogether, as young students practise and rehearse under the banyan tree ornamented with berries and birds.
You ``offer felicitations'' (see how catching sabha lingo can be!) to past principal S.Rajaram, whom the Sangeet Natak Akademi has finally decided to honour this year.
A caring teacher and seasoned composer, he deems it his greatest honour to have scored the music for Rukmini Devi's Ramayana series, completing the work left unfinished by his grandfather, the legendary Mysore Vasudevachar.
Do you believe that Carnatic music means moist eyes, lump in throat, sighs in nose? Watch Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan's sight-and-sound spectacle (as at his recent Kartik Fine Arts concert), and you will know this is the jolliest show on earth. After deceptively soulful phrases of Gowlai, all too brief, the music swung into rhythms as irresistible as techno and trance. Shepherding a mini orchestra (tabla, mridangam, kanjira, ghatam and morsing) with a single, formidable violin, Kunnakudi had the audience mesmerised as much by his Third Eye as by the bow.
Soon he moved into top gear, almost compelling his captive listeners to zip into a fast-paced Salsa. Well, good practice to limber up for the rigours of the season.
G.R.
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