By Kollengode s Venkataraman, at the Annual Tyagaraja Music Festival Cleveland, 1999
In this forum and during this festival, we will once again feel proud of India’s hoary traditions in performing arts. Legitimately, we can be euphoric about the growth of this festival during the last twenty years that partly triggered the annual North American tours of some of best talents in performing arts from India. In the midst of this, let me place my observations before a receptive and discriminating audience, the observations that are nagging me for quite sometime. My intention is to delicately make my point, but without offending readers and listeners.
Often, we organize free concerts for various occasions. For some among us, free concert not only means that the admission is free. It also means that they are absolutely free to do whatever they want to do inside the concert hall. Singing/humming along with the artistes to the annoyance of people sitting close by, sharing with friends juicy pieces of tidbits in others’ lives during the concert, eating/drinking (with the annoyingly crackling noise of the wrapping paper), and of course, moving in and out of the concert hall at their free will. This is the comprehensive meaning these people seem to give for “Free Concerts.”
While we can close our eyes from the moving distractions, our biological auditory nerves have not yet evolved for filtering these extraneous noises during concerts.
Having listened to a large number of concerts, many of us have come to terms with these aggravations during concerts.
Naively, I thought our behavior will be better in the presence of non-Indians among the audience.
Boy, was I wrong.
In February, I attended a double-header concert organized by the Center for Performing Arts, University of Pittsburgh, and the Carnegie Mellon University at the Mellon Auditorium in Pittsburgh.
The unique feature of the concert was that in the first part, Priya Palekar, a young Soprano of Indian heritage who was born and raised in the Pittsburgh area, gave her recital selecting compositions in German, French, Italian, and English, both from classical and contemporary composers. The second part of the program was a sitar recital by Allyn Miner, a music professor at the University of Pen-sylvania, who learnt Sitar living in Benares, India for fifteen years. Obviously, the audience was mixed. Indian immigrants and students interspersed with the people from mainstream America.
Western classical music, in spite of the phenomenal developments in electronics and audio technology – essentially creations of the West – tenaciously sticks to its artistic traditions. Aficionados of Western classical music will be horrified to even think of microphones, speakers, and sound amplifications in symphonies. Consequently, the vocalists have to depend on their lung power. The range of Priya’s voice, the way she modulated it, and her lung power acquired with long hours of practice, were astounding, but are typical among good Western classical vocalists. Needless to say, the emphasis on voice training in Western classical music puts to shame the contemporary training methods of Indian classical music, Karnatic
music in particular. This is another point for another day.
Before Priya’s presentation, the organizer, Dr. Balwant Dixit, made a specific and unambiguous request that Priya prefers not to be distracted by people entering the auditorium once her recital starts. People from mainstream America honored the artiste’s request. But some of the people among the Indian audience were a breed apart. They saw no reason to honor Priya’s request. Not only they arrived late, but having arrived late, they did not have the patience or courtesy to wait at least till singer completed her piece. Trigger-happily they were moving between pieces, but also even as she was singing. This, as we brag about the rich artistic tradition of Indian performing arts!
That traditional musicologists in India from the L Vedic times (Bharata Muni in Natya Shastra, Matanga Muni’s Brahaddesi in 6″ century AD for example have elaborated the virtues of music in our spiritual experience is not surprising. But what is surprising is that even those who are outside the general realm of music also recognized this.
Tirumular (somewhere between the 5 and gth century AD), the author of Tirumandiram consisting of 3000 short compressed cantos in nine sections, is a formidable thinker in Saiva Siddhantam. His work is, perhaps the most important canonical works among the Saivite Panniru Tirumarai. Tevaram, Tiruvachakam, and Periya Puranam are other works in this.
Tirumular describes Siva Poosai (essentially, prayers for calming the agitating mind, and removing the chattering in our thoughts) as important routine for people seeking progress in their spiritual quest. He emphasizes the importance of music in our spiritual journey. Here are two cantos of Tirumoolar:
ஆடியும் பாடியும் அழுதும் அரற்றியும்
தேடியும் கண்டேன் சிவன் பெரும்தன்மையைக்
கூடிய வாறே குறியாக் குறித்தென்
ஊடுநின் றானவன் தன்னரு ளுற்றே.
The loose nonliterary translation of this is: By ecstatically dancing, singing, while overcome with emotion, I recognized Siva’s grace. Revealing His formless form to me thus, He gracefully became an integral part of me. And again:
வேட்டவி யுண்ணும் விரிசடை நந்திக்குக்
காட்டவும் நாம்இலம் காலையும் மாலையும்
ஊட்டவி யாவன உள்ளம் குளிர்விக்கும்
பாட்டவி காட்டுதும் பால்அவி யாமே.
What is there for us to give the resplendent Siva who accepts the offering in sacred fires (such as yagas)?
No much. But what we can offer Him in the morning and evening are songs that are soothing to the soul. Let us offer songs to Siva; they are as good as the offering of milk as neyvedyam.
That is, music and dance are as effective as anything else in experiencing the Infinite. That is why they call the practice of music Nadopasana (meditating on the primordial sound).
In Manikkavachagar’s Tiruvembavai (20 cantos), and Andal’s Tiruppavai (30 cantos), quite a few poems end with “…… padelorembavai,” which literally means in Tamil, “let us sing the praise of [Siva] or [Krishna]” they describe in each canto using vivid imageries of the pastoral background of Tamil Nadu existing in their time (8 to 10″ centuries AD).
Periyazhwar, one of the principal Azhwars in the Vaishnava tradition, has written a large collection of Bhakti poems. His eleven songs (titled Kuzhaloodal Chirappu describing the scene of Krishna playing on the flute are fascinating on several counts: Poetically, they are simply beautiful. Besides, he is a keen observer of his pastoral surroundings and also on how emotive artistes become when they bring out difficult musical nuances. Here are two cantos of Periyazhwars’s pasurams:
சிறுவிரல்கள் தடவிப் பரிமாறச்
செங்கண் கோடச் செய்ய வாய் கொப்பளிப்பக
குறுவெயர்ப் புருவம் குடிலிப்பக்
கோவிந்தன் குழல்கொடு ஊதின போது
பறவையின் கணங்கள் கூடு துறந்து
வந்து சூழ்ந்து படுகாடு கிடப்பக்
கறவையின் கணங்கள் கால் பரப்பிட்டுக்
கவிழ்ந்து இறங்கிச் செவி ஆட்டகில்லாவே.
Loosely translated, it means:
With his tender fingers caressing the flute, his dark iris going to the corner of his closed eyes, his cheeks puffing as he blows air into the flute, and his eyebrows coming together fully arched, when Krishna played on the flute, all the birds leaving their nests, gathered around him, and lay quietly; [even] milking cows spreading their legs, lowered their heads, and stood there without even flipping their ears. Again:
திரண்டு எழு தழை மழைமுகில் வண்ணன்
செங்கமல மலர் சூழ் வண்டினம் போலே
சுருண்டு இருண்ட குழல் தாழ்ந்த முகத்தான்
ஊதுகின்ற குழல்-ஓசை வழியே
மருண்டு மான்-கணங்கள் மேய்கை மறந்து
மேய்ந்த புல்லும் கடைவாய் வழி சோர
இரண்டு பாடும் துலுங்காப் புடைபெயரா
எழுது சித்திரங்கள் போல நின்றனவே.
This means: As Krishna, who was as dark as the dark rain clouds, with his dark curly hair resembling honeybees humming around a pink lotus, played on his flute, the stags and the deer in the surrounding places simply forgot about grazing, and stood there still, like paintings on a canvass.
The first of the pasurams has caught the fascination of Karnatic vocalists. Towards the end of concerts, musicians, mostly vocalists, sometimes use this piece as a slokam by itself, or as a prelude for a Purandara Dasa Krti. Bharatanatyam dancers are not far behind in using this as a prelude for padams, most often without acknowledging Periyazhwar.
Sometime back, in a concert in a temple, an accomplished, talented, young male vocalist was singing the first pasuram as a slokam towards the end of his concert. Even as he was mellifluously bringing out the imagination of Periyazhwar’s poetry with his skillful musical improvisation, a few Tamil-speaking people moved in and out of the auditorium as if they were perfectly transparent. Obviously, they were not only not moved by the music, but were also oblivious to the meaning of the lyrics.
Sitting in the auditorium, I cynically wondered: If Periyazhwar’s birds, cattle, stags and deer can stand still in rapture listening to Krishna’s flute, why can not these educated, accomplished, and resourceful people, with their extra sixth sense, sit quietly in their seats at least till the artiste completes the particular piece he/she is rendering? And walk in and out, if they must, only between pieces?
At the Tiruvanathapuram Padmanabhaswamy Temple, the music festival as part of the Navaratri celebrations is quite famous. There nobody is allowed to walk in and out at will during the concert. And further, the concert starts on time, and ends exactly in 2½ hours.
What do we have to do, so that every one in the audience shows this basic courtesy to the artiste, the organizers, others in the audience, and the art form itself? END