The ball is in the rasika's court
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By their response, the audience should pass judgment on the merit of a performance, says P. S. KRISHNAMURTI
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CHANGE IS a fact of life which has to be accepted — change in the order of political concepts and strategies, teaching and learning methods, social values, perceptions of morality, philosophies, art forms and presentations. Changes have always taken place, over centuries. The music concert patterns have been varied, from simple singing of the sahitya in tune, through raga alapana, niraval, kalpanaswaram, ragam, tanam and pallavi, tani avartanam, jugalbandhi, percussion ensembles and East-West fusion.
Carnatic music has for a long time been adopting several north Indian ragas in its fold. Lately the inverse process is also being seen.
Dance developed from folk, through classical forms like Bharatanatyam, Kuchipudi, Kathakali and so on, to abstract and "contemporary" styles. The dancer, however, is more under pressure to reveal her individuality, the accent being on interpretative skills and training than the singer. The dancer cannot draw much mileage from a mere selection of an inspiring varnam, tillana or javali. Admittedly, Muthuswamy Dikshitar's ``Roopamu Joochi" or the Thanjavur Quartet's ``Sakhiye, inda velaiyil" can help launch a dancer on her concert powerfully, but neither of these, by its own weight alone, can serve the dancer as handsomely as ``Chakkaniraja" or ``Akshayalinga vibho" can aid the singer take off to cruising heights.
Drawing material from the myriad genres and cultures, this urge to change or innovate brings about new "products." These range from being, on the one hand, a blend, union, marriage or fusion which can inspire one to contemplate the Sublime, or on the other hand, to a forced binding, a hackneyed joint, or a mechanically riveted contraption masquerading as an original art form. It can be a subtle and delectable delicacy or just tasteless dishwater. It will depend on the composer's mind and training.
The threat to intrinsic worth, in the wake of a change, is particularly significant in Indian dance. Here the artiste or programme composer has to "innovate" and make her product "stand out" as in a market economy. In this age of dominant concern with commerce and material advantage, a singer or dancer on stage often works in an entrepreneurial style rather than artistic - a situation engendered by the wide opportunities made available by patrons, sponsors, sabhas and TV.
The focus of the performer shifts to what is likely to appeal or can be palmed off to an unquestioning public - not what she is moved to express. While in music, long strings of bombastic kalpanaswaras with thundering flourishes take over from mellifluous renditions of inspiring creations of inspired composers, there is a different development in dance. In TV shows, for instance, the temptation to draw inspiration from film songs is quite evident — an easy path to the superficial minds among the viewers — or resort to the abstract and mystify the audience, who dare not speak up lest they be labelled as being bereft of appreciation of an original art theme.
A current TV serial purporting to stimulate interest in dance among the younger generation sadly disappoints the discerning viewer. Starting from the title music, which should appropriately be in classical form, but sounds much like the death-throes of a person being stifled, the programme does little to bring out deeper or finer values. Just about 25-30 per cent of the total time is all that is earmarked for this part, the rest of it being devoted to reinterpreting some film romantic duet in dance and to choreographing a piece of vague and wordless music. The poor contestants come out poorer after all this effort!
What chance does classicism get in such a scenario, when parents and gurus from near and far (away in the districts) vie with one another, craving for their protégé's representation in this, and respectable teachers succumb to the "honour" of being invited to be a judge, never raising even a mild murmur about the value of such programmes? How long are quality and tradition to be subordinated to glamour and publicity? It is sad that certain classical singers and instrumentalists import into the kutcheri TV programmes some silver screen culture. I refer to music contests on TV, which make it a point to honour film music. Have not movies always resorted to classical tunes to enhance their appeal and thereby their own cultural value? Why then do we need to borrow from films for a classical concert?
Overdose of bhajans
Again we notice a recent tendency to load a Carnatic music concert with an overdose of bhajans and abhangs. Why is this thought necessary? Why inflict on the discerning section of the public (or indoctrinate the gullible ones with) an incongruous mix? One hopes the public will not need to listen to ghazals and qawwalis, too, in the future, along with varnams and kritis! Doesn't all this smack of a consumer marketing strategy, in which one trader is ever trying to be one up on another? Have we ever heard of a north Indian musician taking up a varnam or padam in his concert?
What could help stem the tide of such inanities is the strength of a frank mind, that can come out honestly, like the boy in Hans Christian Andersen's story, who declared that he could see the Emperor was wearing no clothes at all! With the high level of appreciation that the average Chennai rasika possesses, he can make an eloquent statement of disapproval, if only he recognises his own merit. The rasika is one who takes pains to sit through concerts, has a sense of appreciation, can discriminate between cadence and noise, melody and cacophony, natural grace and mere drill, genuine feeling and robotic expressions of face, gait and stance, and rich profundity and brash mediocrity of ethos. He need not be well-versed in ragas and their lakshanas, mudras and adavus or the more mysterious nadais, eduppus, sollus, jatis and teermanams. Aesthetics is not academics. Let not the average audience hand over the authority to distinguish between creativity and monstrosity only to illustrious celebrities and learned critics. The rasika is the judge, and his language is probably silence, at best. Let a few mind-boggling, mindless swara-korvais, devoid of any melodic values, gigantic in their scheme, pass without a murmur or a resounding applause, let the audience show by face its disappointment at a kriti being sidelined to give way to the singer's exercises practised at home, let a vague presentation in a dance, whose meaning is not clear to a rasika pass without claps - and then we would be seeing producers of art taking a serious view and start exercising their imagination properly.
In short, does anyone deplore the disappearance of the lofty values of the music stage of yesteryear, of Maharajapuram, Ariyakkudi, Alathur Brothers, GNB, Madurai Mani and Semmangudi? Is there a nagging feeling that we are losing out in depth and commitment? Then the rasika should not be just sitting back and ruminating! Who is to arrest this inexorable trend towards a widening gulf with tradition? The listening public, of course, not the critics!
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