Preserving music with all its diversities
GOWRI RAMNARAYAN
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A wider understanding has helped Karaikkudi Subramanian maintain tradition and yet try new things.
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Photo: K. V. Srinivasan
PEERLESS VAINIKA HERITAGE: Karaikkudi S. Subramanian.
"From today you are no longer my son," the mother cried. "You are not my mother anyway, you are my sister, and I wash you out of my life," said the young man. He poured water over his head in a symbolic ritual of breaking ties and left home.
"Sounds like a Greek tragedy, but the emotions were turbulent then," laughs Karaikkudi S. Subramanian.
With father Narayana Iyer, a school teacher, and mother Lakshmi, a veena tutor, Madurai-raised Subramanian's reminder of family heritage was a portrait of grandfather Karaikkudi Subbarama Iyer on the wall, holding his veena vertically.
Mother told him stories of how uncle Karaikkudi Sambasiva Iyer sat next to him with his horizontal veena, while Pudukkottai Dakshinamurti Pillai on the right turned his mridangam into a third veena.
She dwelt as much on the rituals-bent religious austerities of the Karaikkudi Brothers as on their musicianship.
Alien realities
These bedtime legends turned into alien realities when the child found himself in Madras, the adopted son of the aged Sambasiva Iyer. Town streets were replaced by the hermitage ambience of Kalakshetra, then in the Theosophical Society's remote groves. Cancer-affected Sambasiva Iyer chose the only veena playing boy in the family, not just to perform his final rites, but to inherit his peerless vainika heritage.
The 12-year old was traumatised when veshti replaced shorts, sandhyavandanam and samitadanam became mandatory. Mother was sister now. The new mother was too old and ritual-ridden for familiarity and comfort.
Forbidding
Spartan Sambasiva Iyer was forbidding in his discipline and silence. At 6 a.m. disciples arrived, and the boy aligned their veenas to sruti.
The guru sat on the thinnai pounding betel leaf and tobacco, vocally correcting Subramanian intermittently through 10-hours' daily practice of sarali, jantai, alankaram and gitam. A single mistake and he had to start from the beginning.
Besant School was on the same campus but the boy could not attend classes. Maths teacher Sivaramakrishnan stopped by to advise, "You can catch up with school studies. But what you're learning now is invaluable."
One day Sambasiva Iyer gave the boy his veena. He also asked him to play the Durga sukhtam at the Kapali temple during his last concert. "I didn't realise what this meant, or even what he meant to me until he died."
Back in Madurai with birth parents, Subramanian taught English in Madurai College after B.Sc (Chemistry) and M.A. (English), while also helping Lakshmi with her veena students.
Leaving home with ruptured bonds, he came to Madras to hear and learn more music.
Tutoring in Vivekananda College for a living, his fascination for laya took him to vidwan S. Balachandar who had developed special exercises for mastering technique. "One day he came home and played on Sambasiva Iyer's veena. Grandmother said it gave her an earache. I defended him," laughs Subramanian. Problems arose when Balachandar claimed sishya allegiance. Subramanian did not want to forsake family tradition.
Fellowships took him to Wesleyan College, U.S., for doctoral research on `Tradition and individual style.' T. S. Eliot influenced prolonged introspection.
Subramanian's thesis analysed Viriboni (Bhairavi varnam) and `Sankari ni' (Begada kriti), rendered by Sambasiva Iyer, T.Viswanathan and Mysore Doreswamy Iyengar, with prescriptive, descriptive and staff notations, as also on the Emotional Graphic Representation he evolved for greater clarity.
As a vainika he knew the 12 swarasthanams and their anuswara links.
"To legitimise myself as a musician I had to know the backbone of our music. I wanted to represent both its melodic and rhythmic content with micro-details and precision, not vaguely say it's all due to bhakti. Then we can preserve our music, with all its stylistic diversities."
Subramanian also analysed Kerala's sopanam tradition, taught in Madurai Samajam, and the Singapore Academy of Fine Arts, before joining the Madras University's music department as Reader.
Dissatisfaction with students' standards, a passion to transmit his knowledge of practice and theory, and the urge to preserve his own tradition made him launch Brhaddhvani in 1989.
"I wanted to implement my ideas in teaching and place Carnatic music in the context of world music. Our system is so complete that many world cultures are interested in learning it. We need a new system to integrate gurukula and institutionalised learning."
The name Brhaddhvani was suggested by mentoring musicologist Dr. Seetha. It anchored the venture in science. "Sound is the basis of all music, the life principle of the universe."
The institute has taught some 400 children so far. "I don't look for a musical background, only interest. My system will develop their talent."
Not elitist
Tradition has not made Subramanian elitist. He has crafted methods for village children to learn Tamil and Maths through melody and rhythm.
The joyful faces of children on the little screen, singing Athichudi and Tirukkural to different gatis and swaras — note and beat intact — are a heart-warming sight.
So far three villages have adopted this system. "The process connects the teacher and student interactively. Children who baulk at learning are also drawn into it."
Playing the veena along with the guitar, harp, violin, French horn, carrillon (church bells) in theatres and cathedrals, has given Subramanian a wider understanding of both the universal and the individual genre-stylistics of music.
"Strong in your own rhythm, you can play with counter and cross rhythms without loss of identity. I feel safe now. I can be very traditional and yet try new things without attrition of heritage."
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