Tales of South India

Of Gifted Voice

Earlier this year, I had a most delightful afternoon in the company of Keshav Desiraju, along with my brother and sister-in-law. We were distantly connected - a tenuous familial tie across several marital bridges, the kind that makes sense only in India. His book on the life and music of the great Carnatic musician MS Subbulakshmi, Of Gifted Voice, had just been published, and the time flew by as we discussed our favourite musicians and music and a good deal more. And less than two months back, I presented a review of his book to the Sunday book club of the Madras Club, a monthly get-together of a wonderful assortment of booklovers who talk about a book (or several) that they have read (one that is preferably in the Club’s library, an incentive for people to make more use of its fantastic collection). This meeting was to be a special one, as Keshav himself would be in attendance (all virtually, thanks to the pandemic). I was in equal parts excited and nervous, as you can well imagine.

The Grand Lady of Music and the Young

On a gray, rainy afternoon in May 2017, I gave a talk in New York about what the legendary musician M.S. Subbulakshmi means to the young musicians of today. Here is the transcript of that talk. 

Good afternoon, and it’s such a pleasure being here today while the rain is pounding away outside. Sharing memories and talking about a legendary human being and musician, who I can safely say has left some sort of an impact on every one of us here : what better way can there be of spending an afternoon!

A Culinary Musical Feast!

One balmy evening last July a few of us NMCers were driving home after a rigorous rehearsal for our Drive East performance. We were deep in discussion about how we would present our concert. We prided ourselves on not settling for the usual announcements that accompanied Carnatic music items, but rather, on being fun, creative and different. Our audiences ranged from the complete neophyte to the dyed-in-the-wool aficionado and we needed to engage and capture their attention in a meaningful way. The conversation meandered to another favorite topic - food. Rehearsals made us hungry. Glitzy restaurants  glinted by in the night. Somebody described an amazing meal she had eaten - divinely delicious, but also described in such over-the-top terms that she still got the giggles thinking about it. And then something clicked and I thought - why not merge together NMC's top loves, food and music, and weave in, just for fun, the grandiloquent vocabulary that some of New York's restaurants used to describe their wares?

It was the matter of an evening to turn the idea into a script. What fun we had with it, as NMC's latent thespian talents found full expression! And here it is - our concert, presented as a fine-dining experience, with music as the bill of fare. I do hope you enjoy reading it. In order that you don't go hungry, I have included tasting-size portions of some of the items. Just click on the links to watch the videos.

A Royal Musical Feast

Allow me to take you to Trivandrum.  It is the capital of Kerala, the slender state that stands tall along India’s south-west coast. I love it for everything that my home, New York, is not. It is a world away from the grey skies and cold winds, the fast-paced life, the general over-sizedness of New York, where I live. Unlike so many Indian cities that seem to fizz and soar and sprout and sputter like an assortment of mutant firecrackers, Trivandrum has remained itself, largely unruffled by the winds of change gusting through its sister cities.

Memory, Hither Come, and Tune Your Merry Notes

In November 2016, the great musician Dr. M. Balamurali Krishna passed away. I have written about my encounters with him in my long-ago youth. There was a gap of many years during which I didn't meet him and listened to his live concerts only occasionally.  And then, in August 2012, a dear friend took me along to meet Balamurali, and we spent several hours with him. I was back in his home, where I had spent so many happy hours all those decades ago. The house looked much as it did when I used to visit in the 1970s and 80s. That encounter thrilled and saddened me in equal measure, drove home to me how much both he and I had changed. One day, maybe, I will write about it. 

How NMC Got Its Groove

 

The members of the Navatman Music Collective (NMC) are practicing hard and looking forward to performing at NYC's Drive East Festival on August 24th. Read on to learn more about this group, its members and what makes its music so special.

We are New Yorkers. We are busy. We don’t like to waste time on something that doesn’t excite, engage, or enrich us in some significant way. And so, two and a half years ago in early 2014 when a few of us were told that Navatman was starting a “Carnatic Choir”, we weren’t overly excited. We’d heard Carnatic Choirs before and our opinions of them were, well, unflattering. But we showed up anyway, around eight of us, one cold winter’s night, at a studio in midtown Manhattan for our first session. We went for one simple, but powerful reason: we were interested in Carnatic music. No, that doesn’t even come close to expressing it adequately. We were passionately in love with this music, this glorious classical form from southern India that is timeless and touches and captivates anybody who engages with it.

Untimely Melodies

Tradition can be a strict taskmaster. It requires rules, boundaries, conformity. As the elder statesman in the room it demands acquiescence to its strictures and norms. In its home territory, it commands respect and a certain awe, an implicit understanding that it is not to be tampered with, that it has been honed to perfection over the ages.

The Kutcheri or Carnatic Music Concert

In the pantheon of Hindu gods, music and dance are revered and relished. The Goddess Saraswathi, resplendent in white, plays divine music on her veena; the music of Krishna's flute is loved by man and animal alike; the earth-shaking power of Nataraja's cosmic dance, accompanied by the enchanting rhythms of the dhamaru drums, carries within it the forces of creation and destruction.

An Efflorescence of Salons

Our first salon had been a dream come true for me. For years, I had imagined hosting an evening of music, dance, poetry, literature and animated discussion, and the salon, when it finally happened, was outstandingly fulfilling beyond my wildest fantasies. I could have happily basked in the success of this salon for an indefinite length of time, but then the requests and questions started trickling in. When are you having the next salon? I missed the first salon, could you please have another one? I heard all about this salon thing from a friend of a friend and would love to be invited to the next one. And then, from my fellow salon hosts, much younger and infinitely more energetic and industrious than I was, am, or ever will be, an email which countenanced no excuses, dithering or procrastination. The email presented Salon 2 as a fait accompli, complete with date, and a theme: conflict.

Strange Bedfellows

I have observed the fusion of Carnatic music with many things: Hindustani music, Jazz, Bollywood, Pop and Rap, but a few days back I witnessed its foray into an unlikely arena: athletics. I listened, by turns enthralled, excited, puzzled, annoyed, distressed and vexed, as the music went through bouts of wrestling, racing, jumping and gymnastic contortions, a veritable Olympic multi-event that shook the very foundations of Carnatic music and propelled it into a brave new world.

A Salon Blossoms in Harlem

By day - and often also by night - they are mathematicians, doctors, scientists, researchers, engineers, bankers, students of an exhilarating array of disciplines that probe the vast arc of human interests and scholarship, from Sanskrit to creative writing to spinal cord regeneration to economic policy. And in the precious nooks and crannies, the cracks and crevices of their spare time, a whole other side blossoms into being: that of singers, dancers, writers, poets, actors and artists. They yearn for their yin to harmonize with their yang, for their right brain to achieve balance and symmetry with their left. They seek to synchronize their creative impulse with their logical and rational selves and send shoots and leaves and tendrils towards the heavens to capture the ethereal and elusive pleasures of sunshine and light while putting down roots that snuggle securely into the comfortable security of soil and earth.

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.