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Music & Dance
As literary as Shakespeare...
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The reviewer of any work, be it a music or dance concert, a painting or piece of sculpture, or book, should strive to make his work one of art in itself, says P. S. KRISHNAMURTHI.
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PERHAPS THE hardest part of playing any role in life is understanding it. What is the function of an art reviewer or critic ? In what way do appreciation, enjoyment and appraisal of an art performance differ? What is a reviewer of music or dance expected to do? How is he to equip or condition himself? I think attitude precedes aptitude, knowledge or experience in such matters.
Take a South Indian music recital. A kriti is rendered after a sketch of a raga. It continues into perhaps a niraval and kalpanaswaras. Art is a form of self-expression, and so the one rendering a song of Dikshitar or Thyagaraja is, in his own right, a composer, for just as Thyagaraja and Dikshitar let their souls merge with the deity, concept and environment of their imagination, so is the artist expected to let his soul blend with all these, and in doing so, bring in his own creation, without diluting theirs.
A true Rasika should then empathise with all the minds preceding his. If a Rasika thinks of past maestros all the time he is listening to a contemporary singer, he is doing hardly any justice to him. Yet at times, when the quality of the current delivery is at total variance with the brilliant image painted in his mind, you cannot blame the rasika for turning away ...
The reviewer, on the other hand, has a heavy responsibility. We should distinguish a rasika from a reviewer. The former has neither any obligation nor any business to project his views. (The moment he does this he switches roles with the reviewer.) The latter has to be objective in his approach. He is no reviewer who cannot dot the i's and cross the t's in the artiste's essay. When there are departures in the grammar of talas or ragas or deviations in the form of rendering a song, he is bound to point them out.
The multiple responsibilities of a reviewer relate to many - those who have not attended the performance, but would care to know about it; that section of the audience who may wish to get a better perspective of the concert than what they have been able to get by personal listening; the artiste himself (and of course the rest of the performing team), who would certainly like to have the better parts of his recital acknowledged in print and (in most cases) get an impartial appraisal of whatever innovative efforts he may have made.
In all this the reviewer must distinctly keep apart - not on a pedestal, but just apart - to take a composite view along with the analytic. He acts at once as a music indicating instrument and also like a human being. He must be able to draw from his fountain of imagination (which must be rich) and reservoir of experience (which must be abundant) and make use of whatever language and vocabulary it takes to present a wholesome output which can add value to the perception of the reader of the review and still keep faithful to the actuality. It is imperative that he suppress his ego and still not get his vision blurred.
The pen, being mightier than the sword, demands careful handling by a responsible reviewer. Rapier thrusts at artistes may not be deserved, but can sometimes kill creative minds. Again a reviewer, being human, can develop a favourable bias for a favourite, and then it gets blatantly evident that yardsticks differ. It is this highly conflicting requirement - to be objective and still subjective at the same time, neither of which one can be with consistency, given human constraints - that makes a conscientious reviewer's part difficult. The nearest a reviewer can get to perfection is to cut himself to size (which is often smaller than he can imagine), at the same time holding the mantle which is cast on him, in deep reverence, treating his own views as important for his mission - again a balance between self-effacement and self-esteem.
In this context I would like to mention an incident connected with an acquaintance of mine, a veteran music critic. Chancing upon him at a concert, I enquired whether he was covering the programme. ``No,'' he remarked, ``I am here to enjoy it.''
How many of us can do this balancing trick and still produce a good review, one which reveals the rich and original nuances that the artiste produced in the Kharaharapriya alapana, along with the somewhat disappointing elaboration of the glorious pallavi of ``Chakkaniraja," our ears being tuned as they are to Madurai Mani Iyer's soulful excursions? Are we not prone to stress, one or the other, depending on our disposition to the artiste or on our proud heritage of ``expert'' listening to vintage music? If an artiste's distorted emphasis on one or the other aspect of a kutcheri - such as perhaps excessive use of manodharmaswaras, at the drop of a hat, at the expense of the kriti, marginalised to insignificance - appears to adulterate the composition of a programme, it may prompt you to express unambiguous disapproval; true, but if in that concert there happen to be some flashes of originality or outstandingly mellifluous passages, even in a thukkada, it would be only in order to draw attention to these. Do we achieve that?
The reviewer of any work, be it a music or dance concert, a painting or piece of sculpture, or book, should strive to make his work one of art in itself. Bradley's critical work on the ``Shakespearean Tragedy" stands rated more as a literary work than as a piece of criticism, bringing as it does, the flavour of Shakespeare, more effectively than a mere reading of Shakespeare would give to many.
A review should not be an appraisal; not a business statement of technical values; much less a tirade against a performer or a mindless eulogy. It must be a dedicated essay which highlights the worthy aspects of the recital and disapproves of the lesser ones, in short, one which demonstrates the sincerity and single-minded attention which the reviewer has bestowed on the artistic effort put up by the team, a proof of the genuine pains which the reviewer has taken to go into the minds of the performers (as many as there are on stage) - all the way from Varnam to Mangalam.
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