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Chennai on the world map
LIKE THE purple-n-pink Decemberpoo, the December music season too blooms well before and much after the month to which it was confined in the past. The 1990s watched the season being pushed far back into November and limping into a January finale. The cynics like this simile, they believe that like the flower, the season has show minus scent, and colour sans substance.
Why weep for malli when we have chilli, all spice-sizzle at the experts' committee meetings? Here is where kalanidhis and acharyas turn matadors, vidwans and vaggeyakaras wave red flags to fuel the fury. No statement about Manji or Mechabouli can get by unchallenged at these debates. While musicians young, old and middling turn out for these morning frays, to discharge ire or charge through fire, the dancers maintain their civilised grace by absenting themselves from each others' lec-dems, or, at the most, confining disagreements to sotto voce whispers within their own coteries. This prompted the NRI visitor to ask if musicians formed a kibbutz, while dancers lived in penthouses.
The music season may be limited to a few thousand regular concertgoers, and a few thousand visitors from abroad. A tiny pool if you consider the oceanic population of the city. Yet, the impact of this event is out of proportion to its size. Nowhere in India do we have a festival of such dimensions and tiers, conducted entirely by private enterprise. Besides, this is not a matter of synthetic grafting, but an organic growth, asymmetrical and uncontrolled maybe, but full of life. Our festival has put Chennai on the world map along with Edinburgh or Salzburg.
During December tide, classical music finds Stepmother transforming into Fairy Godmother as some television channels allot prime time to the year-round Cinderella. Some channels, like Vijay before it and Jaya now, have started conducting their own festivals featuring top artistes, interspersed with musical snippets and interview clips. A boon to those who can't make it to the sabhas, or won't forsake their own sofas.
The artistes don't care if the Decemberpoo is real or whether it is one of those shocking pink plastic concoctions glittering on our stages. All they want is a bit of the festival on their bio-data, for this proclaims their arrival on the scene, so to speak. A line in some "Madras paper" is the passport to Mangalore and Mumbai, Minneapolis and Milan.
Talking about papers, have you seen how Kutcheri Buzz has become part of the December scenario? The team has promoted the season with a bright poster, logo, fliers for tourists, guide-book, daily bulletin and website coverage. At every concert you see men and women scrambling for this free sheet of season news, finding greater ecstasy in browsing through it, than in the artiste's pouring forth his soul abroad via grumbling mikes and growling throats. The effort sees the music season as an asset to the city, capable of evolving into a spectacular commercial hit, with popular fringe events from karagam to food festivals.
Meanwhile, the food festival is confined to sabha canteens, to onion-rava and adai-morkoottu, poli and jangri for the sweet-toothed. By the way, we know sarkarai pongal and ven pongal, but what in the world is Kalai Pongal? Eager enquiries about this exotica blazoned in block letters on the stage banner at the Sri Krishna Gana Sabha ended in a damp squib. Kalai Pongal is no culinary surprise, just a prefix to their art festival that extends to Pongal day.
As the reader of this column informs me that raga Bhayankarapriya is old hat now, another reader tells me that Ghorapriya is this season's favourite, but thanks to sabha acoustics, it gets its right volume only in some favoured parts of the hall. For the Snoozers' Rows at the far back, it remains as inaudible as every other raga and tala of the festival series...
If music be the food of sleep, nap on...said the Bard of Avon. Knowing commentators usually attribute this metaphor to Shakespeare's visit to the December festival in Chennai. Though the opposing camp avers that today's seasonfare is more battle cry and cannonade, traditionalists continue to hold on to the Lullaby Theory. In any case we know that music is the best cure for insomniacs. At a recital of one of our top rankers, a speaker made this public announcement: she found it so soothing that she slept thrice through his recital. Did you know you have to pay through the nose for such results in Spas abroad, she asked.
There are strong conscientious objectors to public speeches before, after and during the concerts as disruptors of the "mood". But I wouldn't have missed the Registrar's speech at the Senate Hall, Madras University, where he introduced the mridangist as Sangita Kalanidhi Umayalpuram SRINIVASAN's disciple, and discussed the power of music as exemplified by "Deepak Tenzing" of Akbar's court who could light lamps with his ragas. This was at T. Viswanathan's flute recital for the Professor Sambamoorthy Centenary Seminar on scales in the ancient systems of music. Funnily enough, if the morning sought to arrive at definitive theories of scales, the evening Ghanta (gourmet blend of ragas from Dhanyasi to Ahiri) showed that practice had evolved melodies which simply refuse to obey the scholar's prescriptions.
Carnatic music has long had contributions from foreign scholars, from the late John Higgins to Robert Brown. This season saw some experts from abroad at the Music Academy, the Sambamoorthy seminar; and at Brihaddhvani's discussions of notations, devised mainly for teaching Carnatic music to foreign and NRI students. Here Dr.Emmie Nijenhuis showed an amazing knowledge of the subject as she talked of adapting Western staff notation for Carnatic music. Elsewhere Dr.Harold Powers had illustrated tricky panchama prayogas in Ritigowla. As we end this seasonal column, the city continues to resound with dance and music, as also felicitations and oratory on the subject — at venues from Mylapore and Mambalam, Nungambakkam to Nanganallur. But our Mama and Mami have decided to call it quits for now, dyspeptic after weeks of concerts and canteens. They are reconnecting to the forsaken "Anni" and "Marumagal" on the small screen, with early thair sadam and salted narthangai at home.
Mami: Madurai Mani and Ariyakudi were refreshing because they performed only twice or thrice in the season. With concerts everyday, how can a Nithyasree or Aruna Sairam be anything but exhausted, I mean, exhausting?
Mama: That is why the best quotation for cutcheri speakers of all seasons has always been from John Keats, "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter".
GOWRI RAMNARAYAN
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