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CHAT CORNER
‘Indian music has a distinct personality’
While Indian music is considered centripetal, Western music is centrifugal.
Mahesh Vinayakram
In the pluralistic world of music, the likes of Mahesh Vinayakram have created a stir, working with the belief that music communities are an enormous cultural mass which complement, enhance the greater traditions in music with a new identity and put
a world stamp on it. Going by the loud cheers, applause and staccato chorus it is evident that fusion has come to stay.
Apart from being the son of Vikku Vinayakram, the all-time ghatam great, Mahesh is also a brother to ganjira player Selva Ganesh and ghatam player Uma Shankar and a proud co-artiste in the family production “Sapthakshra.”
His traditional Carnatic music album called ‘Sampradaya’ is an exposition of his exceptional training in the hands of H.Y.Narayanan, O.S.Thiagarajan, Savithri Satyamurthy and Seetha Rama Sharma and last but not the least his continued tutelage under Radha Vishwanathan.
Detailed exposition of Kalyani
Mahesh elaborates: “I would give credence to the strong grammar and practice of Carnatic music which has found an expression in compositions such as ‘Pahi Sripate’ in Hamsadhwani, a Swati Tirunal piece which I sang in ‘Sampradaya,’ my album, along with ‘Natai Gauli’ in Ghana ragam. This album also contains a detailed exposition of Kalyani and Vasantha and the tukadas in Sindu Bhairavi also came along quite well.
“The central theme of the spiritual album ‘Souram’ — tribute to the Sun God — was to propound a new and challenging rendition in more than ten ragas of Sanskrit slokas. This could be interpreted as an invocation to prakriti — the creation.
“Indian music has a physical, aesthetic and spiritual aspect to it… a distinct personality, a bhava and a rasa. No other music of the world has a musical form resembling the raga; while Indian music is considered centripetal, Western music is centrifugal.
In the traditional Indian music the tala is a voyage of discovery to the source, to the nada and laya that is implicit in the universe and the world music I believe is evolved out of the interjectional and exclamatory expression of feelings of men as well as animals that is from the language of sound.
“Talking of sound, its being electronically produced these days. Tavleen Singh has developed a software that is connected to the mike and the effect is stupendous.
“Recently I had a concert with him in which Niladri Kumar played on the sitar. This was at an art gallery in Delhi. And we are proposing to do the same in the U.S.”
The joint venture
In the context of fusion, Mahesh speaks of his association with the guitar player John McLaughlin and about their joint venture in which mandolin U. Rajesh also participated.
They conceived a piece in a raga, played it a couple of times together and then improvised individually and finally altogether ending it with a characteristic Tihai.
Mahesh’s contribution lay in alaps and in the delineation of sargams taken with a throw there and a hush here. He also recounted his concert at Brussels when Zakir Bhai was in the saddle.
His experiment with ‘konnakkol,’ vocal percussion, is a passion with him now. These are Tal vedic kutcheris.
When asked to demonstrate, impromptu comes the rhythm, “Ta tak: ta kee t tak-e dheemi, take dhin” — a composition of nine beats he learnt from Zohra from Israel. Mahesh confesses that in trying to modulate his voice to different voices, he has Bobby Mcferen as a model. The European singer could virtually sing any thing in the world. His all time inspiration is of course the incredible Nusrat Fateh Ali, king of Sufi music.
Just as how L. Shankar and L. Subramaniam could bring out khatkas and murkis on the violin, Mahesh would like to approximate them in his human voice and also incorporate the musical notes of Jimmie Andreicks who does wonders with his electric guitar.
He is also into minus one and back track singing which increases his energy levels. Let it be Michael Jackson’s track and his song in Kambhodi ragam. This would really be a topping of Chaat on American pizza. There is a ready audience for this music. Look at Johnashellborg, an icon now.
Any new releases? ‘Bravado Masala,’ an album with James Asher- the world’s best percussion player, is due to be released on March 17. And as a parting shot he says, “Did I tell you about ‘Beat it,’ done with brother Shankar?
JYOTI NAIR BELLIAPPA
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Friday Review
Bangalore
Chennai and Tamil Nadu
Delhi
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
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