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Behind Chennai's music season

Chennai's annual music festival — led by the Music Academy, which was founded in 1928 following an inspired decision taken at the first All-India Music Conference held in South India — is among the world's largest entertainment extravaganzas devoted to the classical arts, in this case predominantly Carnatic music. For more than a month, it showcases an ever-expanding pool of musical talent drawn from various age groups, signifying the wonderful capacity of a socio-cultural tradition rooted in the bhakti movement to reinvent itself to meet the emotional and cultural needs of millions of ordinary people. From its origins in the devotional melodies and its reinterpretation of ancient legend and myth, Carnatic music has been transformed into a modern-day performing art. Such a process, which tended to spring from masters of humble social origin, involved a creative interplay of tradition and modernity. Tradition is the strength that prevents the purity and core values of the classical art form from floundering, from being swept away by flimsy changes. But a great classical tradition needs constantly to innovate and modernise — in keeping with new creative ideas, technical and technological development, changing audience interests and tastes, and so forth. The tradition-modernity interaction has definitely enriched the repertoire of Indian classical music, imparting to it systemic rigour, precision, and classicism. A certain rigidity of thinking, and resistance to innovation and adaptation, are encountered in this process from time to time, but what they betray is a lack of historical appreciation of the character, method, and pace of evolution of the Carnatic tradition. If the creative importations of British band music in some compositions of Muthuswami Dikshitar spoke of his enchantment with novel ideas, tributes by devadasis to Queen Victoria and the Governor-General when India was unfree underscored a recognition of the changing rules of the patronage game. Subsequent generations of musicians who responded to the call of India's freedom struggle have made sterling contributions to the modernisation of the tradition, and in particular to broadening audience appeal. Together, these historical processes testify to a long period of lively and self-confident engagement with the so-called Other.

The economic sustainability of some of India's classical arts might have been in doubt during the early 1970s, when the abolition of the privy purses of erstwhile royalty seemed to symbolise the end of the traditional avenues of patronage. But there was no need for such apprehension. The scenario has improved vastly with the arrival of diverse sources of support, ranging from corporate sponsorship to the burgeoning middle class market for analogue and digital recording of music and even webcasts of the season's concerts. The "overseas Indian community," to use the Indian Government's new vocabulary, is now estimated to be more than 20 million strong. Although its cultural interests and needs are enormously diverse and complex, it can be presumed that this big diaspora — comprising well over three million people in just the United States and the United Kingdom — offers significant spaces and growth opportunities for India's classical arts. The serious interest in Indian classical music as an academic discipline in some Western universities could be a pointer to the future, provided the efforts can be funded and sustained resourcefully. Bringing some of the rare works of composers and unusual raagaas on to the concert platform is one of the key challenges today, in an environment where performances have shrunk to half their accustomed duration. Besides putting at rest legitimate apprehensions that they may go out of circulation, the revival of rare kritis can imbue the concert experience with much needed variety in the face of what is possibly an excessive number of performances in classical music seasons. Such an attempt can be aided by the intelligent practice of sabhas coordinating with artistes on programme content and by imparting some forethought and transparency in the process. This might encourage the rendering of unheard compositions and act as a counter to predictability, repetitiveness, and staleness.

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