Tales of South India

Over the River and Through the Streets

Over the river and through the streets
To the Brooklyn Museum we went
Past buses and bikes and trucks and cars
For a mu-si-cal event.....

I do apologize - the heat and humidity do strange things to the brain. But let’s move on, shall we, to safer - and saner - territory?

'Tis the Witching Hour of Night

‘Tis the witching hour of night,
Orbed is the moon and bright,
And the stars, they glisten, glisten, glisten,
Seeming with bright eyes to listen,
For what listen they?

John Keats, 1795-1821                                                                                                                          

Years can go by, but the habits of one’s growing-up years never really fade away. I came of age in staid Madras, in an era when the city was dead by 9 o’clock at night. Weekday or weekend, I was dutifully tucked into bed and fast asleep well before 10 o’clock, waking up at the crack of dawn to the raucous cacophony of chants, calls and cinema music from the neighborhood temple, mosque and teashop that each competed to drown the other out.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

My life is a strange paradox. On the one hand, I am gloriously, happily busy, doing things that I love, but, on the other hand, my laziness and disorganization have reached record heights. Ideas for new posts are scribbled on bits of paper that vanish without a trace. What seemed like a brilliant idea while drifting off into dreamland feels tame and lame in the harsh light of day. An overflowing pile of unwashed clothes beckons, demanding action, as does an empty pantry.  There is family to tend to, friends to catch up with. Spring - beguiling and fickle, garbed in bright, sun-splashed colors one day, in damp, sullen gray the next - is knocking at my window, urging me outdoors.

All this means that I have nothing new to share with you right now. But I am not above taking the easy way out. Digging through my hard drive, I found parts of my Croatia travelogue that I have not posted here. A gentle dusting off of virtual cobwebs, a little smoothing out of rough edges, a touch of spit and polish, and voila hey presto! A new-old (or old-new) post! 

Sleepytime Stories

At 9pm on most days I am likely to be eyeing the finish line of a long day - long, alas, usually in hours, not on things achieved. Make it 9pm on a frigid February weeknight in New York, and that likelihood turns into a certainty. And yet, there I was just yesterday, out in the West Village of Manhattan, my bedtime a distant prospect, bundled up against the arctic wind, trying to make sense of a crudely hand-drawn map.

From Court to Concert Hall: The Evolution of Carnatic Music Performance

Now the rich stream of Music winds along,
Deep, majestic, smooth and strong,
Now rolling down the steep amain,
Headlong, impetuous, see it pour;
The rocks and nodding groves re-bellow to the roar.
Thomas Gray, The Progress of Poesy

It is a well known fact that humans have a tendency to view the past through rose-tinted lenses. It is also well known that we dislike most change and are convinced that anything new, anything that is a radical departure from a tried-and-tested way of doing things, has to be treated with suspicion and derision. This is no less the case with Carnatic music, where we have convinced ourselves that its history and evolution from the days of the Sama Veda was one long, glorious golden period of old-fashioned courtesy and graciousness in which its composers and practitioners had but the noblest of intents, were motivated by the highest spiritual values, cared for nothing but the purest musical ideals. Thoughts of money - that crass, degrading, immoral commodity- never entered their minds. And then, alas, this ideal state of affairs crumbled to an ignominious end with the winds of change that gathered force and struck at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Love Thy Neighbor

When you have been involved with something for most of your life, you come to recognize this: the longer the relationship, the more things there are that you realize you do not know. And also: you can meet some people every day, for years on end, share laughter, tears and memories with them, live right next door to them, but there are aspects and areas of their lives that remain complete mysteries to you, lived behind doors that only a select few people have the keys to. Let me explain.

Here and There

North and South, West and East, the cities of New York and Madras would appear to have nothing in common. And indeed, the ways in which they differ are too numerous to list here, and would serve perhaps as a useful exercise to while away time on a rainy day. Yet, both these places, founded as early-modern colonial cities within a few years of each other (New York came into being around 1624, as New Amsterdam; Madras, in 1639), can proudly claim to be among the most culturally vibrant and diverse in their respective countries. And I, resident of one in body and the other in spirit, am the happy beneficiary of this.

D.K. Pattammal: The Meeting that Never Was

Early every morning for a month last year, I pushed open a stubbornly creaky gate and walked passed her home. My steps slowed, stopped for a moment, and my eyes quickly scanned the verandah. Nothing stirred. The only sounds were the raucous caws of squabbling crows high on their treetops, and the muted hum of traffic from nearby Gandhi Mandapam Road. I walked on, up a narrow, curving flight of steps, rang the bell and entered a home that bustled with life and activity. 

A Meeting of Worlds

Recently, I attended an event at the Asia Society in New York, to mark the U.S. release of Namita Devidayal’s book The Music Room. This book – which I highly recommend – is a story of several musical journeys and lives: the author’s, from being reluctantly pushed into it by her mother, to the music becoming something that she could not live without, a source of solace in times of melancholy or trouble, an escape to a zone of serenity and beauty; that of her guru, the modest and reserved Dhondutai Kulkarni, who dedicated herself wholly to her music and never married, blessed with the voice of a nightingale, bearer of the keys to the magic, riches and glory of the Jaipur gharana of Hindustani music, yet who struggled to make ends meet, uncaressed by fame and fortune; of the flamboyant and theatrical Kesarbai Kerkar, she of dazzling musical brilliance, beloved and worshipped by hordes of admirers, male and female, inheritor of a precious musical legacy from the hands of the great maestro Alladiya Khan, who brought this style to life; of Alladiya Khan himself, and his gharana, distinguished by its lilting eloquence, seamless melding of double ragas, serpentine taans of filigreed intricacy and beauty, and variety of swara patterns.

Balamurali Redux

I know, this is my third post on Balamurali on this blog - the last two hot on each others' heels. (Here are the earlier  ones.) But, after listening - repeatedly, obsessively - for an entire morning, to a sublime jugalbandi between Balamurali and Hariprasad Chaurasia, after concocting a fresh set of excuses for not writing something new, after I "discovered" this piece, languishing on my hard drive, I decided to put this up, with the promise (which, of course, comes with the usual caveat that promises are meant to be broken) that this will be my last post on Balamurali. 

If you ask any connoisseur of Carnatic music about Dr. M. Balamurali Krishna, chances are that you will get one of two reactions: impassioned praise and declarations that he is the best singer of all time, a genius who is Lord Krishna reincarnate;  or downright scorn, and assertions that he is a charlatan, a disgrace to the ancient, timeless traditions of Carnatic music. It is very unlikely that you will encounter a tepid or indifferent response. Such has been, and continues to be, his impact, on Carnatic music.

Close Encounters of the Musical Kind

I am sure that most of us remember our adolescent years as some sort of a long-playing horror show. Mix together mood swings, temper tantrums, unreasonable parents, pimples, a body that sprouts strange things, sniggering siblings, and the whole wide evil world that seems intent on taking you by the scruff of your neck and rubbing your face into the muck, and whirl all of this at a blinding pace around a sullen, glowering teenager, and it seems a miracle that most of us somehow emerge unscathed.

A Heavenly Magic Carpet Ride

Come with me, let us travel together on a magic carpet ride. It is a beautiful evening, all soft light and gentle breezes.  All we need is some music to make it perfect.

The Curtain Descends.....Temporarily

Dear Readers,

This blog will fall silent for several weeks. I am going on a voyage, to a place called Groznjan, in the Istrian Peninsula of Croatia. It is, I am told, a small, medieval, hilltop village, charming and picturesque, with cobble-stoned streets and old stone houses. Gazing across the hills over the Mirna River, there are vineyards and olive groves and glimpses of the Adriatic Sea glinting in the distance. For centuries, Groznjan was ruled by Venice, and the Italians call it Grisignana. The Slavs and the Austrians wrested control when they could from the Venetians, and little Groznjan flourished with all the attention. Today, there are remains of town walls, ramparts, a renaissance loggia, churches, stone cottages and other Venetian influences that still survive.

After the geopolitical juggling and wrangling of the post-World War II years, Groznjan became part of Yugoslavia, and life bled slowly out of the little village as people deserted it for more prosperous shores. The streets lay silent and forlorn. Then in the 1960s, it had a rebirth - as an artists and musicians colony. The Jeunesses Musicales International Cultural Center was born, and the cobble-stoned streets of Grozjnan have been ringing with the sounds of music ever since, and painters, potters and sculptors grace its homes and many art galleries. 

This will be my home for the weeks to come. I will be teaching at an international vocal workshop, and I think I can safely say that the hills of Istria will echo with the sounds of Carnatic Music for the first time in their storied history! For those who are interested, go to this link: http://artsynergy.net

So, farewell, and I will be back next month with many tales to tell, many pictures to share with you.

Till then,

Kamini.

'Tis the Season for the Season

The city of Madras is magical in the months of December and January.  The blazing heat of the summer is but a dim memory, and the monsoon-lashed skies have calmed into a brilliant blue. The days are perfect, mild and sunny, and the city goes about its business with a cheery spirit that is infectious.

To Fuse, or Not to Fuse?

When it comes to the fusion-is-good versus fusion-is-evil debate (be it of music, dance, food, you name it), I am one of those with one foot firmly on either side of the issue. A bit of an awkward position, considering the size of the barrier between the two camps, but I have managed to keep my balance. No, I am not a wishy-washy, undecided, please-and-agree-with-everybody person, some freakish mishmash of clashing impulses, or a bizarre mutant born of a marriage of incompatibles. It’s just that I have heard (and seen/eaten) the best and worst of fusion. And so, I support both sides. It’s that simple.

An Afternoon in Long Island

I am such a devoted fan of Balamurali's, that I will go almost anywhere to hear him sing. Sadly, this includes such towns as dot the over-manicured and annoyingly perfect  landscape (which many find pretty) on either side of those abominations that scar Long Island from end to end, the Long Island Expressway, and the Northern State Parkway. Let me curb myself firmly before this becomes a full-fledged rant against Long Island or its ugly step-sister,New Jersey. They don’t deserve a place in this blog.