Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Singing in borrowed spaces
|
In Transit Railscapes, the sound show by Navin Thomas, is actually music from below
|
ZINDAGI IK kirai ka ghar hai, ek na ek din badalna padega... (Life is like a rented house, one has to move on some time or the other). Picture this qawwali by a beggar accompanied by the formless but intense sound of the Ravana hatha (similar to the sarangi) and the rhythm of a moving train... And then imagine the Ravana hatha against the running train or the running train against the Ravana hatha ... Depending on how you look at it, it could put you into a trance. The sound show by Navin Thomas, In Transit Railscapes, at Galleryske, is a marvellous record of the sounds and ethos of the Indian train and its station. At the gallery, you will find sounds/hues from Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, and Bangalore.
The sound show is not an obvious work of art or music. There are no visuals, and a medley of sounds put together may not immediately seem like music. But a Ravana hatha, the moving train, and qawwali put together could easily turn into an aesthetic experience. The putting together is art, the product, music. Navin has done a wonderful job of bringing together the non-vocal and vocal, particularly in his Mumbai piece, Busking The Local Suburban.
Navin Thomas tells the tale of people singing in and around the Indian train.
The record of sounds at the five stations is neither random nor mathematical. There is the hint of confluence. The sounds include those of trains chugging in and out of stations, of automobiles outside the railway stations, announcements of arrival and departure, songs by beggars on a moving train, the strains of the Ravana hatha, qawwalis, and hawkers' calls.
Navin Thomas is looking at sound as an independent medium to convey cultural messages. "I am looking at the capacity of sound as an exercise to stimulate the sometimes dormant auditory imagination." He poses this audio work against a pervasive visual culture, which, he believes, has swamped the public sphere. He contends that the visual has made it difficult to associate art with auditory possibilities. "Significant work has been done on audio-culture in the last 10 years, but not much is known in public as there is no forum to exhibit such work," he says, adding that in the West this was not the case.
The sound show is a record also of communities whose lives revolve around the locomotive. The busking communities (those who sing on the trains) are there because the trains are there. Navin's work throws up interesting questions around these communities. For instance, Mumbai is a city that cannot live without the railway line and the lives of thousands of beggars depend on the suburban network. In the Mumbai piece, one of them sings, observing that the Indian culture that opposed the British then, today had nothing to offer to artists in poverty: "Hum logon ko kalakhar nahin maanthe, bhikari maanthe hain (No one sees us as artistes, but as beggars)."
Similar recitations have been recorded on trains and stations in Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, and Bangalore. Delhi has qawwali from the street next to the railway station and the phat-phatis' sound predominantly, Kolkata has a recitation of historical poetry that is an ode to the first train that comes to a village, Chennai's sounds are purely those reflecting the heat and humidity of the city, while Bangalore has blues guitar chords by a couple residing near the East Cantonment railway station, and lots of conversation in Tamil.
The sounds recorded around the five train stations are similar in a structural sense — the range of sounds at any given time in any of these stations is the same. The difference lies in the languages in which the sounds find expression — Marathi, Hindi, Bengali, and even English. A far more crucial difference, however, lies in the kind of representation the sounds seek to make of the city in question. For instance, the guitar work and Tamil narration mark Bangalore and the sound of the dosa skittering on the hot tawa marks Madras. The value of the work lies precisely in this — trying to say that the life of one city is not the same as the life of another. For this reason, and for the fact it outlines the story of communities that make a livelihood out of the railway line, this sound show is as much a work of sociology as much as it is of art and music (though art and music can be sociological too!).
Questions of accuracy, however, could be asked of representation: why pick Tamil and blues music to talk about Bangalore and not Kannada in the city railway station (assuming Kannada authenticates the railway station)? Realities, however, are many and it cannot be said that one representation is more authentic than the other. There are only several representations of any given phenomenon.
Navin commenced this project when he was granted a fellowship to pursue his interest in documenting urban street music in Mumbai. Part of his presentation in 2003 to the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, contained this docudrama-style soundscape. From Mumbai, he extended the project to the other metros.
In all, a remarkable record of music on the urban railway line. A must-listen if you are someone who loves the rhythm of the train, particularly at dusk, and if you love the qawwali...
The sound show is on at Galleryske, The Presidency, 82, St. Marks Road, till February 28.
PRASHANTH G.N.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
|
