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Music & Dance
When Carnatic music takes wing
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Homesickness, jetlag, alien atmosphere — musicians have learnt to overcome all the odds to make their overseas tours an enriching experience. SUJATHA VIJAYARAGHAVAN captures the scene.
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Lalgudi Jayaraman
"IT IS exciting, rewarding , satisfying ," says Vijay Siva about his overseas concert tours. Exciting , most certainly. Bombay Jayashree, who is one of the musicians who regularly go abroad, vouches for it. ``After years of travel it is still thrilling to go abroad." The travel bug has bitten everyone and as a consequence, " it has become increasingly difficult to find musicians in the country," grumbles a sabha secretary who is trying to organise the monthly concerts, "They seem to spend more time outside." Carnatic music has grown wings in the past decade as dissemination of art and culture in general has developed a global reach. Until recently Indian music to the audience abroad meant North Indian music, Pandit Ravi Shankar and Sitar in particular. Even today the frontline Hindusthani musicians are greater crowd pullers than their counterparts in Carnatic music. But there is a change in the air and Carnatic music is making inroads into new territories, widening its appeal.
There are organisations, which invite artists annually on concert tours.
East West India, one of the earliest based in New York-New Jersey and later Guha Enterprises were some of the earliest ventures to promote Carnatic music in the U.S. and Canada. Bhairavi, which came into existence later, has been gaining in strength and experience and its offshoot the Aradhana Committee of Cleveland celebrated its silver jubilee recently.
There is IACRF whose organiser is Bhargavi, based in New Jersey and CMANA which operates from New York .There are several other organisers, both individual and institutional, scattered all over the U.S. and other countries in all the continents.
For the organiser it means months of planning, endless correspondence and overseas calls. A typical tour is planned at least six to eight months in advance. The time taken for obtaining a visa varies from days to months depending on the country. The U.S., which used to permit artists to enter on its H1 visa, has changed the procedure and the P3 which is a performance visa takes several months to be issued. The forum of United States Musicians is required to give its No Objection certificate to the artistes from abroad touring their country. Several states have to give their approval for the tour, involving time and paperwork. The artiste enters into a contract with the apex body regarding the number of concerts and payment. Airfare to and fro India and within the country of the tour and local hospitality are met by the organiser. Medical insurance is taken by the artiste at his expense. The remuneration is very attractive and is paid in foreign exchange. The number of concerts range from 20 to 25 spread over two to three months, as concerts are arranged only on weekends.
Long absence from home is a daunting factor, but the artistes accept it as part of the game. "In 1993 when I was in the U.S. I did not ring up home for nearly 45 days," says Vijay Siva. "Now we don't miss home at all as we are on email every day." "
N. Ramani
I have been fortunate so far to have my husband and child accompany me on my long tours. Otherwise I would be worrying about them," says Jayashree.
I don't like to go too often or for too long," says Aruna Sayeeram. Apart from homesickness the problem of filling up the blank of a five- day week with nothing to do weighed heavily on several artistes in the early years. Billeted with Indian families where both host and hostess would be away at work left the artistes in strange quandary at times.
They had to learn to heat frozen food in microwave ovens or sometimes cook their preferences. Confined to the house with no public transport to go out on their own, made life hard. Baseball, sitcoms and weather news on the TV added to the monotony. Artistes slowly found means of keeping themselves engaged and now they welcome the long waits as a holiday undisturbed by phone calls and demands on their time, when they can catch up on their practice and explore music. There is a mine of vintage music on tapes and cassettes, which their hosts throw open to them. Time, a scarce commodity back home, is all theirs to indulge in the pleasures of listening and learning and do creative work. Lalgudi Jayaraman composed the lyrics and music for the dance drama Jaya Jaya Devi, during a concert tour in the U.S.
The hosts take the artistes out for sight seeing and shopping, an experience enjoyed by both. On rare occasions hosts are reported to have had to face awkward situations where the artistes raided the bar or ran up overseas telephone bills running into hundreds of dollars or made demands to be taken out more often. There was also this artiste who is said to have walked away with whatever caught his fancy in his host's house.
K. V. Narayanaswamy
"The problems are not there any more since the artistes are mostly computer savvy to do their emails and equip themselves with calling cards to make their phone calls," says one of the organisers. Moreover unsavoury episodes travel like wildfire and the artiste is quietly dropped from tours in future.
"We have played hosts to almost all the artists who have come to the U.S. in the past three decades," says Gomathi Sundaram who has warm memories of their stay. "We have had no problems whatsoever and the artists are happy to blend with the family." Some artistes conduct workshops for students and when they are on a long stay, conduct regular classes. This supplements their income from the concerts and affords them further opportunities to widen their contacts. Some of the students subsequently visit India for extended periods to continue their training under the same artistes. The number of such students has been on the increase and N. Ramani performed a flute recital with 24 four of his pupils from US during the recent festival at Cleveland. Senior pupils aspire to perform at the December music festival at Chennai and there are quite a few who have made the grade.
Gone are the days when a `foreign tour' meant only the U.S. Today it could be anywhere from Canada to Australia. Jayashree who has been to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore apart from the U.K. and the U.S., casts her vote in favour of Sri Lanka when asked about her favourite country. The Sri Lankan Tamils who have had to migrate to western countries in the last few decades seem to have brought about a cultural resurgence wherever they have settled. It is said that Indians who migrated to the West by choice were prone to get westernised in their habits and customs whereas the Sri Lankans who were forced to migrate, fiercely cling to their roots and try to recreate their motherland on the alien soil.
Toronto has a broadcasting service run by the Sri Lankans and they have made temples the rallying point for all cultural activities. Their homeland welcomes and hosts Carnatic musicians even in the midst of battle and strife. West Asia is another stronghold of Carnatic musicians and there are scarcely any among the frontline artists who have not performed at Muscat, Kuwait or Bahrain.
Bombay Jayashree
Efforts at recreating a home away from home is also evident among the rasikas of North America. ``For them a musical event is a cultural symbiosis," says Jayashree. It is an opportunity to wear their Kancheepuram silks, meet friends, have Indian food and share gossip about India. They think nothing of driving hundreds of miles and of spending an entire afternoon listening to ``Pakkala Nilabadi" and ``Ethavunara." The drive up and down is filled with music on cassettes and CDs in the excellent stereo systems in their cars. There are collectors and connoisseurs exchanging notes on the rare concerts they have in their collections. These are the people who buy 200 to 300 cassettes at one go when they come to India.
The visiting musicians earn an extra income through the sale of their cassettes and CDs, which they carry with them and put up at their concert venues. In the early days the organisers recorded the concerts and made cassettes for sale. A senior musician objected to the practice as it was not mentioned in the contract. The organisers would not yield and insisted that they needed to sell to break even. The musician thereafter performed the same set of songs in the same order for the rest of the tour, successfully thwarting attempts to record his concerts for sale.
At present some organisers record and sell while some desist from the practice. Some do it on the sly in spite of requests from the artistes not to do so. But artistes have now mellowed enough not to make a fuss since it only means that their listenership increases in the long run and would eventually lead to a demand for their concerts.
Vijay Siva is happy that the musicians of today are able to reach out to a wider audience when they go on these tours but feels a slight disappointment to see that they are performing to the same music buffs who undertake the annual musical pilgrimage to Chennai in December.
Aruna Sayeeram, on the other hand, has the rare experience of performing to exclusively European audiences on her tours to Germany, France, Netherlands, Italy, Spain and Switzerland. While she is sufficiently well-versed in German and French to read their literature and to speak the languages, the lingo plays very little role in her concert experience. The organisations which invite her are the University Music Circle, Germany, the Deutche Welle, Cologne,the Harmoniale Festival , Berlin and the like.
They draw up contracts in meticulous detail with clauses providing for all contingencies. Any breach of contract by either party would mean heavy penalties. Once the ghatam artiste who accompanied Aruna on one of the Eurpean tours received the news of his father's demise on the first day when they landed in Paris. He was sent back immediately but at least one organizer raised an objection and had to be put down by the others.
Singing to an overseas audience is a highly satisfying experience to all artists, regardless of the country and creed. Aruna enjoys performing to an alien crowd. She says that her concert fare invariably includes an elaborate Ragam Tanam Pallavi , which the western audience is able to relate to. T. Rukmini, violin vidushi, who has accompanied musicians like Mali, D.K.Jayaraman, Balamuralikrishna, Yesudas, and T. R. Subramaniam on her tours to U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, France, Singapore, Malaysia and other countries has a similar experience which she is happy to share. She did a lecture demonstration for a school in Sydney where the students listened with rapt attention and plied her with questions. After the session was over the students wanted to listen to her again and the principal requested Rukmini to come again within a fortnight to address the students again. She did so and felt gratified with the hearty response from the youth.
Aruna Sayeeram
Jayashree remembers how a 25-year old Vijay who heard her at Botswana was so enthused that he arranged a concert at the remote town of Silebe Phikwe in a week's time for an audience of nearly 800, which consisted of the local population with just a handful of Indians.
The concerts generally last three hours and more and the fare is highly classical in content. The selection of songs is the same as that for the cognoscenti in India, " Nobody walks out during the Thani Avarthanam," Manoj Siva is happy to say, as one who has accompanied several artistes on the mridangam on his annual tours abroad. While there are minor and sometimes major problems which musicians and organisers face in these ventures, the instrumentalists have their unique share. The mridangam is usually the first casualty due to the cold climate.
Manoj Siva plays it safe by taking at least three or four mridangams and takes care to fix the sruti at a lower pitch than what is required. What he terms Vajra pasai, the strong adhesive used in the mridangam, would enable the instrument to last about ten concerts. Jayanthi Kumaresh carries a smaller veena which can be dismantled into several pieces and assembled before each concert. This innovation was designed by her aunt, the veena vidushi Padmavathi Ananthagopalan of the Lalgudi clan. Jayashree on the other hand invariably carries the traditional tambura with the kudam on all her tours. The only concession she is willing to make is that the size is slightly smaller. Electronic tamburas hold sway otherwise and the new crop of performers carry nowadays a CD with a studio recording of tambura sruti of their pitch .
Vijay Siva
On her first tour of the U.S. T. Rukmini walked into a shop in Manhattan that specialised in violins. Overawed by the hundreds of violins on display she wanted to test them out by playing. "Want a student violin or a concert violin Madam?" she was asked. Being a veteran of over two decades of concert experience she replied, ``Concert of course." When she was told that the price range was fifty thousand dollars and above she was shocked and was content to walk out with a student violin costing a few hundreds.
The race is on among musicians to take to wings to the far corners of the earth as the rewards outweigh the hardships. The performer and listener are happy to carry on in spite of the several problems and glitches. The sharing of this great music compensates for all the trouble. The intangible reward of a great concert far outlives the benefits received in dollars and pounds.
Manoj Siva recalls an episode he cherishes as a high point in his life and career. In 1997, he was accompanying Palghat K. V. Narayanaswamy on the tour and they had to reach Cleveland up north the very next day after a concert at Austin down south. After a non stop travel for 24 hours by car and flights they arrived totally exhausted, barely an hour before the concert. KVN could hardly walk to the dais. As people sat wondering whether he would be able to sing at all, he gave a rousing performance lasting nearly four hours, at the end of which the enthralled audience rose as one man and prostrated to the artiste who had taken them on a flight to Elysian fields.
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