WIT IN MUSIC

Dated: January 7, 1963

The concert form of Karnatak music is of a recent origin. One could even date it from about the first or the second decade of this century. Prior to that, Karnatak music flourished only as chamber music patronised by royalty or by the elite in society. No doubt, music performances were arranged in the temples on important occasions, but since the temples themselves enjoyed royal gifts, and since the festivals were arranged under the ‘kattalai’ of the important members of the society, the music fostered by them was eventually related to the patronage of the few.

In its earlier, chamber music form, Karnatak music seems to have developed more in the lakshana side than in the lakshya. This was to be expected, since music, when it is confined to a small but enlightened section of society, can develop only on the lines of alankara and vyakarana. Removed from the broad current of popular life and emotions, music could have thriven only in a competition of improvisation and refinement. That this was so could be gathered from the large number of specialised compositions like varnams, padams, and tillanas and javalis which professional musicians seem to have composed. These were as much in praise of royalty and aristocracy as of the deity of the place where the musicians found refuge and patronage. On the expository side, music seems to have been so wholly wedded to lakshana, that the height of musical genius was supposed to have been attained when against a Pallavi in eight kalai-s sung by one musician, another could sing a Pallavi in sixteen kalai-s. All this, of course, was to the immense credit of the musicians. Elsewhere, they were vidwans who had specialised in a particular raga in such a way as to be capable of elaborating it for days together. One vidwan is even supposed to have mortgaged a favourite raga of his to tide over a petty financial worry, and to have refrained from singing the raga until the debt was discharged.

Those musicians and composers who had not so isolated themselves from popular patronage were either ignored by royalty and by high society, or they declared their independence by refusing to sing the praise of any human. In such a manner had Tyagaraja refused to sing the King of Tanjore; in such a manner had Syama Sastri refused to attend the court of the King of Tanjore until provoked by the impertinence of the “Boolokachapachutti” and commanded by Bangaru Kamakshi. Even when Tyagaraja felt indebted to the generous hospitality of Kovvur Sundaresa Mudaliar, on his way back from Tirupati to Tiruvaiyyar, he preferred to address his praise to the deity at Kovvur in his Kovvur Pancharatna, satisfying his patron also in the bargain, since the latter’s name was also that of the deity.

One cannot conjecture how Karnatak music would have developed, had it been confined to the chambers of kings and wealthy aristocrats. It might eventually have got smothered in the coils of grammatic intricacies or petered out into an adjunct of the more patronised art of dance. All the compositions of the court musicians, it must be pointed out, were subservient to dance.

About the turn of the century came a social revolution that changed the course of Karnatak music. With the migration of the best elements of provincial society to Madras and their induction into the profession of law, whereby they amassed considerable wealth, another class of music patrons came into existence. It was a fortunate thing that this new class had its cultural roots in the highest traditions of the art. They represented scholarship, orthodoxy, worldly wisdom and taste of the rarest type. The emergence of this class attracted, in course of time, the musicians also to Madras. Patnam Subramanya Iyer was, of course, not from Madras at all, but it was there that he settled in his later years.

The new patrons of music in Madras were, nevertheless, not equals of the kings and the aristocracy in their wealth. They no doubt benefited from them because of the latter’s inveterate litigiousness. Hence patronage of music had to be organized on cooperative lines. The practical form which this cooperation took was the establishment of music Sabhas. These Sabhas could not retain exclusive nature for long, for the pressure of their metropolitan public opinion tends more easily to egalitarianism than the public opinion in the province. Thus it came about that by the first or second decade of this century, Karnatak music had changed its loyalties and incidentally re-entered the broad current of popular taste as against the patronage of the elite. In doing so, it had saved itself, probably, from extinction, or what is worse, eclipse.

Of the earlier generations of musicians who thus came to rely on popular support, all that can be said is that they continued the musical traditions they had picked up from their ‘gurus’. The concert of those times, from the reports one gathers of those times, seems to have turned around musical forms which had found acceptance in the period of chamber music. There were ‘varnam’, an elaborate ‘pallavi’, preceded by a still more elaborate ‘raga alapana’, the ‘padam’, ‘javali’ or ‘tillana’ at the end.

But this pattern of concert performance was altered drastically by a singer of imagination who, to this day, has retained his place of pre-eminence among contemporary musicians. This was Ramanuja Iyengar, who to every lover of Karnatak music in any corner of the world, is just Ariyakkudi.

Basically, Ariyakkudi’s revolution is in reorienting music from ‘lakshana’ to ‘lakshya’. He disentangled Karnatak music from the barren intricacies of grammar and glittering inanities of decoration and made it an appeal to the ‘rasas’. He made it vigorous, individual, and mass-centred. He brought verve in the place of virtuosity, variety in the place of monotony, imagination in the place of idiosyncrasy and tempo in the place of tedium. Lakshya music is based primarily on individual vision and not on external tradition. It was this that Ariyakkudi possessed abundantly.

Ariyakkudi possessed the double advantage of being an individualistic artist and an expert showman. The concert pattern of today is largely a thing he fashioned out of his sense of showmanship. A repertoire of not less than eight or nine songs at the least, the alternation of songs in different speeds, the judicious sprinkling of small ‘kritis’ in between larger ones, the introduction of off-beat ragas and kritis, the exquisitely introduced ‘swara’ patterns and above all the crisp and coruscating rendering of ragas, these have been the highlights of a musical soiree of Ariyakkudi’s for the past forty years and more.

There are not people wanting who even now accuse Ariyakkudi of having proletarianized Karnatak music. This, of course should be a warning to many critics who swear by the classicism of Ariyakkudi and look upon others, who are young and different in their approach as untraditional and unclassical.

Ariyakkudi’s style of music was no less revolutionary than his concert pattern. It was witty and epigrammatic like a couplet of pope, and these characteristics his music retains even today. Ariyakkudi’s alapana is one continuous scherzo in spite of the overtones of pathos and epic dignity he can weave into the texture of it. Ariyakkudi belongs to a pre-lapsarian periods, when the earth was glad with the voice of joyous creatures. He might have listened to the tale told by the nightingales to Eve, but one might be sure that the tale was out of Boccaccio. His ‘birkas’ are short and sharp like the thrust of the poniard. His ‘gamakas’ quiver like an arrow hitting the target. His ‘zarus’ trace trajectories like a spear in its descent. Ariyakkudi at his performance is a warrior in panoply.

But this warrior is no knight of the Rueful Countenance. He achieves that rarest thing in music – laughter. It is a laughter which clears the pall of pretension and pedantry. This quality is nowhere more evident than in his swara manipulation. Ariyakkudi has no peer in the manipulation of half-‘avarthana’ and one ‘avarthana’ swaras. He has them in god’s plenty. And each sequence of swaras comes with the clarity and precision of a peal of laughter. And these swaras are a motley lot. You could distinctly see a ‘rishaba’ nudge at ‘gandhara’ and turn its face to a lower ‘nishada’. ‘Madhyama’ would leap-frog on ‘dhaivata’ but before it descends on the other side it has been pushed back to its place, dazed and unsteady. Ariyakkudi understands all of them with that ripe humour which he alone of all musicians possesses.

Ariyakkudi’s concert from AIR Madras last Tuesday showed him still in vigorous command of his faculties of musical wit.

Sathur Subramaniam’s music in the National Programme on last Saturday was a demonstration of sonorous but uninflected type of singing. Sathur’s music has a limited articulation  - it moves between the nasals and the dentals. The labials are just not there. The music issues, rich, open, but unmodulated. The result of this is a flatness that stretches beyond the horizon.

With a voice like Sathur’s there is nothing, theoretically that one cannot do. If it is not stentorian, it misses it only by an inch. It has a sweetness and a perceptible nasal twang that would not be unpleasant but for the unmodulated flatness of the sound. But as Sathur utters it, it is unchromatic. If only Sathur can add colour to his voice, he would be matched by few.

Sathur is a fine and earnest singer. There is nothing spurious about him. But it is his sincerity and earnestness that land him in trouble at times. For instance, the swara manipulation in the ‘Navarasa Yuthakritiche’ improvisation. The sahitya from ‘yuthakritiche’ begins after two counts in the first beat. Sathur did not want to mangle the sahitya and so linked the line with the previous words ‘Navarasa’. Now each letter of ‘navarasa’ could be given the duration of 3, 2, 1 ½ and 1 count, to make a total of 12 counts (3 beats), 8 counts ( 2 beats), 6 counts (1 ½ beats) or 4 counts ( 1 beat) respectively. The swara manipulation had to be so ordered as to coincide with the third count in the first beat, third count in the second beat, first count in the third beat and the third count in the third beat, if the utterance of ‘Navarasa’ with the various durations, could link up with what followed. Sathur, of course, managed to pull all the cards but not neatly. He could have produced a slick effect if he had done it well.

Aeolus

Posted on August 29, 2002

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