Art and audience: Finding the balance
GOWRI RAMNARAYAN
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Five artists gave their views and two musicians responded. Encapsulating the discussion held as part of the Friday Review November Fest.
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If we cannot experience bliss in the union of music, musician and audience, where else can we do it? – Neyveli Santhanagopalan
Photo: R. Ragu
CONFERENCE: (From left) Neyveli Santhanagopalan, Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, R. K. Shriramkumar, Mani Kaul and Leela Samson at the November Fest Symposium.
The Friday Review November Fest symposium brings performing artistes to address musicians and music students on issues relevant to the practice of Indian classical music. “Finding The Balance: Art And Audience” (Taj Connemara, November 17) was the subject discussed by five speakers who brought different perspectives into play: vocalist Neyveli Santhanagopalan, film maker Mani Kaul, Carnatic violinist R.K. Shriramkumar, santoor maestro Pandit Shivkumar Sharma and Bharatanatyam artiste Leela Samson. For the first time the symposium invited two artists to respond to the speeches – Carnatic vocalists Nithyasree Mahadevan and T.M. Krishna. Mr.N.Murali, Managing Director, The Hindu, welcomed the gathering. Young vocalist S. Lavanya sang the prayer.
Excerpts from the speeches:
N. MURALI
Indian music is now part of global music. However, the most insistent question the musician and the serious rasika, ask is this: how does the artist find the balance between the demands of art and the demands of the audience?
We have often heard the criticism that the democratisation of music inevitably brings dilution in that high quality. But the artists of today do not perform for discerning maharajas and zamindars. They perform for a lay public, a heterogeneous audience, often among listeners of a wholly different race and culture.
We ask again — does serious art, whether music, dance, cinema or theatre, have to compromise on quality to reach out, to become popular? Does the dissemination of art also inevitably trigger a downslide in standards? Or is it possible to share the best without attrition in quality? How does the artist manage to preserve intensity, subtlety and sophistication, while also reaching out to more and more minds and hearts? How does he or she satisfy the needs of diverse listeners without turning art into a consumer-drive?
The questions are troubling. They affect the future of our music. Fortunately, we have a fine array of experienced artistes to give us answers based on their own personal experience. All of them have had exposure to worlds other than their own. With their wide exposure, layered experience and involvement in related art forms, I am as eager as you are to hear what the five speakers are going to say.
NEYVELI SANTHANAGOPALAN
Let us ask ourselves - are we offering the best music to audiences? Is audience taste bringing down the level of the performer or is it the other way round? Is it not true that the energy of the deity can reach devotees only if the priest performs puja with total dedication? Can he do so if he sees this as just another profession for his livelihood?
What do we see in concerts? Listeners come and go, eat and drink, chatter, gossip. We know that music has therapeutic values, it is meditation. How can listeners receive these benefits if they do not focus? I suggest we keep a notebook outside the hall and record why any one leaves in the middle of a concert. If they come to a concert despite access to music from so many gadgets, the vidwan should value their expectations of live emotional interaction, understand the pulse of the audience and satisfy it. Ariyakkudi showed us how to achieve this balance between art and audience. Listeners too must help the artist to give his best. If they become visibly impatient for their favourite tukkadas, send impertinent requests for “Madu meikkum kanne” or “Adu pambe” when a grand raga is being presented, the singer begins to doubt whether he is a cowherd, snake charmer or a vidwan. Why not ask for Saveri? “Sri Rajagopalam” is also about Krishna minding the cows!
Shoudn’t a classical concert have an identity? Often musicians have to perform on a dais that looks like a political platform with maladjusted mikes. He begins to shout rather than sing. How can shantam, the ultimate goal be realised when concerts are presented as commercial shows?
It is not easy for an artist to grow and mature. Rasikas too need to grow with the musician. Sabhas must provide audiences with regular exposure to quality. If we cannot experience bliss in the union of music, musician and audience, where else can we do it?
MANI KAUL
I asked my guru Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar, “When will the new Tansen appear?” He gave a simple, surprising answer, “When there is an audience for him.”
But when audiences don’t accept an artist and the artist is not swayed by the audience but follows his own thoughts, he becomes a voice in the wilderness. What is it that he is trying to protect? A small ego? Or something he venerates as the core of art that he doesn’t want to compromise?
My ustad explained the swarup, the inner form of a raag as a knot in the air. If I play his Malkauns for two hours or ten seconds, we can still recognise it as Malkauns. What is it we call Malkauns that pervades every note? It is unknowable, unnameable, unchangeable. Of course something else has changed around that core. Nobody in the family of Dagars played like my guru. Two people will play the same raag differently, not just in the pattern but in its soul. That ultimate self is not describable.
Siddheswari Devi said when I sing I don’t know who is singing it. That is the greatest spiritual realisation.
We live in a new world. We are not faced with audiences, but with consumers interested in commodities. If I don’t get instant gratification in a concert I have no use for it. Consumers are not audiences.
Artists who compromise lose depth. They don’t want to extend into metaphor, or ellipses that spark thought, vision. From the unknowable, unnameable, indescribable they come to the surface as all commodities in the market must be superficial, reduced to an unthinking sensation. By naming the unnameable they merchandise it.
The ninth century Anandavardhana said that when it resonates, the word takes on its actual meaning (dhvani). And only the sa-hridaya (one with a heart similar to the poet) can find oneness (tadatmya) with such a work of art. The audience must be of absolutely the same quality and calibre as the musician. That is why Tulsidas said that the story of Rama is not about the prince who went into exile and lost his wife. When narrator and listener are equally gnanis, that untold story is actualised.
R.K. SHRIRAMKUMAR
Classical music is spiritual in orientation. Azhwars, nayanmars, haridasas and other saint poets had one single thread of thought — attaining the divine with music. Purandaradasa gave up wealth, Tyagaraja refused court patronage, Dikshitar dismissed the patronage of mere mortals, Mira gave up a kingdom. It is ironical that today, the compositions of these saints who shunned wealth, royal patronage and self praise bring the best commercial results and applause.
How did this change take place? It happened when music was served to the audience for materialistic returns. When musicians accomplished in virtuosic skills and technicalities discovered that music could bring them gold, land and boost their egos, they sought patronage for their art. Thus was born the kutcheri. As entertainment and lucrative profession, popularity becomes important in music. It is possible to accommodate the needs of changing times without compromising values. A good musician strikes this balance.
He is totally responsible for grooming audiences. He initiates, cultivates and defines taste. Brindamma’s conviction did not allow any playing to the gallery. We have descended from that ideal striving for spiritual union to a relatively low level called kutcheri singing. We must understand that someday we must get back, and we have the additional mission of transporting audiences to that level. Music sans bhakti (bhakti to the art form itself) is like flower without life or fragrance.
In the past great musicians etched their names in the hearts of listeners because they did not compromise values. Today self centred musicians who tamper with values argue that they do it because the audience wants it, without realising that they are lowering music and musicians. Why not establish a rewarding partnership with the audience and move together towards higher goals?
PANDIT SHIVKUMAR SHARMA
When emperor Akbar heard Swami Haridas in Brindavan he asked Tansen why he did not sing like his guru. Tansen replied, ‘He sings to please God. I sing to please you.’ Not all of us can become Swami Haridas. But without a Tansen, this music would have never been heard by the people.
As a performer of five decades I know that riyaz or sadhana at home is very different from stage performance. But am I an entertainer to cater to everybody’s taste?
When I started performing there was an ambience for classical music of older, knowledgeable rasikas and musicians. Then the audience started changing. If I think I am an entertainer, my whole concept of presentation will change from time to time, city to city. What I play in Trivandrum will be different from what I play in Tokyo. Where do I stop? The artist has to decide whether he is entertaining or sharing something with the audience. We should connect. How?
There are three kinds of listeners around the world. The majority don’t know gandhar or pancham. But they connect with their ears. Others come to be seen, and a minority of technical experts miss the soul in technical analysis. I play some complex things for them too. Music is intoxication. If you keep on listening you are trapped! Eventually you begin to understand the difference between Bageshri and Malkauns.
Every musician who goes deep into his art feels that music is something given by god. Sometimes I’ve played something which I never figured out before that day. Who was doing that! Not I! I didn’t know I knew this! What’s happening to me?
Traditional art forms cannot be sustained without patronage. It is good that the corporate world has come to support them. But they come with their own demands and funny ideas. I know from experience that if we want, we can play our music the way we want and bring the audience to that level. It takes time but it is possible.
LEELA SAMSON
Our arts receive their impetus from religious thought, philosophical and mystical practices. Although wholly individualistic our arts are strongly contextualised in the past, in our historical religious beliefs, in mythological circumstances, in societal behaviour and continuously changing norms. Our consciousness of the ever changing circumstance within the larger primary givens surely impacts on who we are and what we choose to do.
If society changes I change. If I change my art changes. Live performance is necessarily a participatory activity, a sensorial experience of sight, sound and feeling, what some call a cool medium, a dialogue in presenting a vision and allowing the audience to interpret that vision. Artists must ask themselves, what experience are we trying to gain for ourselves and elicit for others, ultimately about values. Entertaining is not a bad word about pandering to the lowest common denominator. It is also about having fun yourself. First touching myself, my contemporaries, my peers, my students, my guru, my society, my God. Audiences must allow this journey, in bringing with it sustained belief and maturity, refinement to your art form.
At the end of the day how do I stay relevant and sleep in my own bed at night? I have to be comfortable with what I have done, not simply do what others want me to do. I love the Vedic description of the two birds on a tree — the active bhokta and the seemingly passive drashta.
As bhokta we grapple with nature and technique of form, we learn and unlearn. At some point we must become the drashta and observe, examine and elicit the essence of art according to the zeitgeist, link our work to the cosmic principle.
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