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Section Synopsis
NEWS & NOTES
Friday Review November Fest Varied, interesting fare
- V. RAMNARAYAN
The Hindu Friday Review November Fest 2008 offered interesting fare, starting with a quaint inaugural 35-minute concert
by Swiss violinist Paul Giger on 13th November. The audience response to this performance of "the haunting sounds of the Swiss
Alps" varied from the appreciative to the amused.
The introduction of a programme of old Hindi film songs was a masterstroke that the Chennai audience welcomed with
great eagerness. Of the four vocalists who took part, Srinivas and Anuradha Sriram came off with flying colours, obviously
familiar as they were with the songs they must have enjoyed growing up. The other two, Naresh Iyer and Chinmayi, could not
equal in authenticity the sincerity of their attempts - not having internalised the old numbers sufficiently, perhaps.
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Suswara Samyuta: Two takes
In a tuneful dialogue - GEETHA & M.S. JAYARAM
When two artists well known for their adherence to the traditional format of classical Carnatic music get
together to experiment or establish a “dialogue” on the stage, the response is bound to be mixed. There is
curiosity as well as skepticism expressed from several quarters. While much is said about how it is not easy to
accept changes – particularly in a classical music format, what one heard and experienced on 20th November 2008 at
The Hindu Friday Review November Fest was uplifting.
Bombay Jayashri and T.M. Krishna were on the stage along with R.K. Shriramkumar, K. Arunprakash, and S. Karthick to
celebrate their music association of over two decades. Jayashri set the tone and mood for the evening, graciously
acknowledging the gifted team. If music is a reflection of the musician's personality, then Jayashri the contemplative,
introspective and supremely aesthetic, was seen in the musical exchange with Krishna, the energetic and passionate vidwan.
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The Symposium: Art and Audience
Finding The Balance: Art And Audience was the topic of a symposium organised as part of The Hindu Friday Review
November Fest at the Taj Connemara, on November 17, 2008. Of the five speakers of the morning, filmmaker Mani Kaul
made perhaps the most insightful, thought-provoking presentation. Carnatic vocalist Neyveli Santhanagopalan and
violinist R.K. Shriramkumar, santoor maestro Shivkumar Sharma and Bharatanatyam artist Leela Samson were the other
speakers. Carnatic vocalists Nithyasree Mahadevan and T.M. Krishna responded to the speeches. Excerpts from the
speeches based on a report by Gowri Ramnarayan in The Hindu.
Mani Kaul
When Mani Kaul asked his guru Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar, "When will the new Tansen appear?" the guru replied,
"When there is an audience for him."
Dagar explained the inner form of a raga as a knot in the air. Kaul said to the audience, "If I play 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 raga differently, not just in the pattern but
in its soul. That ultimate self is not describable."
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Indian Dance Fest at Carnegie Hall
Featuring the best in Indian classical dances
- SUNIL KOTHARI
It was a dream come true for Kuala Lumpur based Odissi exponent Ramli Ibrahim and his dancers of Sutra Dance Theatre,
as it was for Prof. C.V. Chandrasekhar and his dancers of Nrityashree Dance Company, Chennai, dancers of Repertory of
the Kathak Kendra, New Delhi, Vempati Chinna Satyam's artists of Kuchipudi Art Academy, Chennai, and dancers from Houston,
Texas-based Sunanda Nair's Mohini Attam dance company, to perform at the prestigious Carnegie Hall in New York on
September 20th 2008.
The Arch Inc., based in New York in association with the Carnegie Hall, organised this unique evening featuring five
classical dance forms of India, each within a timeframe of about 30 minutes with an interval of 20 minutes. The Arch is
run by Sridhar Shanmugam - Bharatanatyam dancer, choreographer and former member of Chandralekha’s dance troupe, now
settled in New York for more than ten years – with support from Mahesh Naithani, music connoisseur and organiser.
The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) provided airfare for C.V. Chandrasekhar's and Vempati Chinna Satyam's troupes.
The Arch also received support from Jet Airways and local Indian media and Village Voice.
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MAIN FEATURE
Season 2008-09
Voices in the season
- V. RAMNARAYAN
The indomitable spirit of the Chennai music season prevailed over the gloom of the recent past in yet another
demonstration of the city’s commitment to the festival, bigger this year than before. It is no longer the December season,
stretching as it does from November to near-February, leading us once again to question the need for such a packed,
prolonged schedule of events. Does it amount to overkill, a confusing choice of plenty beyond the human capacity to absorb
and enjoy? Is quantity achieved at the expense of quality? Do the performers themselves suffer from overexposure?
The answer to all three questions seems to be an overwhelming ‘yes’, to go by the responses of members of the
Sruti parivaar who set out with enthusiasm and an open mind to savour the wide variety of entertainment on offer,
but soon succumbed to aesthetic fatigue. The critique of the mega event that follows is largely based on the concerts
and lectures this writer attended, though guided also by the observations of Sruti’s roving critics.
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STATE OF THE ART
Keeping dance alive
Problems and prospects
- V.P. DHANANJAYAN
In treatises on Indian theatre traditions, natya has been described as a group effort to educate the illiterate,
to enlighten the literate and entertain the enlightened. ‘Drisya kavya’ or visual media was an integral part of our system
of education. The divine theory of origin of natya enunciated in the Natya Sastra clearly states the concept, method and
purpose of this group activity. Group presentations in any form of art or activity had a positive impact on the human mind
and were common through the ages. They prevailed until modern man started becoming more and more individualistic.
Economic conditions also contributed to the fragmentation of theatre groups. When kings, landlords, feudal society and
temples maintained such groups of artistic activities, the artists had no problem training and maintaining a high standard
of performance. All the members in a group, including the lowest of the lot, imbibed a comprehensive knowledge of the art forms
they were attached to and this spirit of discipline, devotion and dedication elevated the presentation to a sublime level of
spirituality. But when royal and feudal patronage started dwindling for various reasons including invasion and slavery under
British rule, smaller and fragmented groups emerged, giving way to solo performances of classical dance and music concerts.
As a result, in the recent past we have seen Bharatanatyam emerge as a solo presentation, which also boosted the
individualistic calibre of the performing artist. The objective of this article is not to probe into the past, but to
highlight the problems faced now by our performing artists in general, and Bharatanatyam artists in particular.
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HERITAGE
Sangeeta sthalam-s
Kantimati Nellayappar Temple in Tirunelveli - SRIRAM V
Tirunelveli is a town that I have passed through very often but rarely stayed in. So, when an opportunity presented itself,
I made the most of it and spent the better part of a day going around the Kantimati Nellayappar temple.
The temple complex is a large one. History speaks of two separate shrines for the Lord and His consort with an open space
between the two which was converted into the sangili mandapam in the 18th century thereby joining the two enclosures. Both the
subshrines therefore possess independent gopuram-s and unlike at most other temples, face the same direction – east. Both shrines
are accessed by passageways which have shops lining them. Looking up, you see an early example of an arcaded shopping area, for
the passages are covered with a continuous wooden cover which boasts of some outstanding carvings.
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SPOTLIGHT
"Contemporary dance is in a deadlock": Richard Tremblay
- K.K. GOPALAKRISHNAN
Renowned Canadian contemporary dance choreographer RICHARD TREMBLAY, in the making of his new work, was recently in India
under a project of the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, Canada.
Constantly in search of inspiration beyond the prevailing theatre forms of the West, Richard Tremblay first came to
Delhi in 1975 to present one of his plays at the National School of Drama. On that special occasion, Tremblay was strongly
advised by Ebrahim Alkazi, then Director of the National School of Drama, to get acquainted with Kathakali. That was
also the time he was studying yoga at Rishikesh. Soon afterwards, Tremblay went to Kerala Kalamandalam for practical training.
The other side of the story is that the play he performed in Delhi with his eight-member company earned him an invitation to
participate in the Baltimore New Theatre Festival, which made him internationally known.
The Indian influence
"It was my urge to know about Indian culture, and to make acquaintance with pristine art forms that brought me here. To some
extent, there was the incitement of a trend in the Western theatre circles to going East", says the Montreal based choreographer.
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PROFILE
Bahadur Khan
Undeserved oblivion - DEEPAK S. RAJA
Bahadur Khan (1931-1989) was an outstanding, though inadequately recognised, sarodist, trained by his uncle, the
legendary Ustad Alauddin Khan (Baba). By kinship and tutelage, Bahadur Khan was a product of the Maihar-Senia lineage,
a trailblazer in modern Hindustani instrumental music. Interest in his musicianship has received a fillip in recent years,
because of his disciple Tejendra Majumdar's emergence as a front-ranking sarod player.
Bahadur Khan was the son of Ayet Ali Khan, younger brother of Allauddin Khan. Ayet Ali was an exponent of the surbahar
(a large-sized bass sitar). A man of withdrawn nature, he eschewed a performing career and devoted his life to teaching and
the manufacture of instruments. Baba and Ayet Ali Khan had another brother, Fakir Aftabuddin, who was an accomplished musician but
became a religious preacher. Something of a family pattern emerges here: the men had high accomplishments in music, brought up
families, but adopted ascetic, non-conformist, or reclusive lifestyles.
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TECHNICALLY SPEAKING
Kalapramanam in kriti-s
This is the last article written by B.R.C. IYENGAR for Sruti. He passed away recently. He was Sruti's Correspondent and
Representative in Hyderabad/Secunderabad for more than two decades.
Has kalapramanam for each kriti been set by the concerned vaggeyakara? This question is pertinent when we notice that a
particular kriti is rendered in different speeds by different singers. It might not have been so in the case of compositions
composed before the advent of Tyagaraja. They were always set to a designed metrical movement. The structure, design or format
of a kriti gained importance with the advent of the music trinity. South Indian music was earlier essentially bhakti sangeetam
set to a single octave to help everybody, both men and women, to sing in groups. In most cases the structure was simple, the
lyric running basically as poetry and not necessarily with strict grammar or established components like pallavi, anupallavi
or charana. The changeover came up because the trimoorti were not only competent musicians but also vaggeyakara-s.
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OBITUARY
A scholar and a gentleman
- K. K. GOPALAKRISHNAN
l.S. Rajagopalan (LSR) passed away on 17 th September 2008 at the age of 86. He was a popular guide to researchers in
the arts in Tamil Nadu and Kerala and was hailed for his lecture demonstrations at the Madras Music Academy during the
1960s and 1970s.
With his passing, the folk and classical arts traditions of Kerala have lost a scholar of unparalleled mettle and a gentleman
par excellence. Popularly known as LSR, he always preferred to be called LSR or Rajagopalan and did not like epithets of
courtesy. He was a down to earth scholar who believed that he was only a fledgling student of our art traditions.
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BULL'S EYE
Vibrant and flourishing – apparently!
- MANNA SRINIVASAN
The basic stability and strength given by the 'Purandaradasa-Tyagaraja' legacy, seem to be sustained through the
centuries. The leap forward achieved during the 'Golden Decades' has its lingering impact, providing its references
and inspiration. To a large extent, the goodwill and the space created by the trendsetters
and path breakers of that period, are still being encashed.
The spread is multi-dimensional and multi-directional. It accommodates a variety of manifestations from the mainly
devotional genre of 'nama sankeertanam' to the art / concert and even fusion, shedding many inhibitions;
one is not at the expense of the other. There is co-existence, a continuum, as in the case of culture.
The arena has also become global.
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POINT OF VIEW
Sacred silences
- ANIL SRINIVASAN
This is the era of combinatorial sound – of ideas that bounce well together and musicians who go beyond
their established boundaries and seek other souls in search of harmonic creativity. Some of these collaborations
(Bombay Jayashri and T.M. Krishna, N. Ravikiran with Melharmony, to name a couple of these ideas) have resulted in
a stretching of musical thought and sense-perception. They have also led to a furthering of
the way we attend to, and absorb classical music.
In my experiments with musical truth, to misquote the Mahatma, I have found certain basic tenets that apply no
matter what the format. To start with, each merging entity has to listen to the other. Listening is no easy skill either.
There is much restraint involved, a willingness to let go and a spirit of surrender. I especially stress the latter,
since belief in the other, and ultimately in the music, underlies most collaborative efforts. Second, there is an underlying
subservience to the music itself, a willingness to abandon the notion that this new form has anything to do with
promoting your own finesse, virtuosity or is an alternative platform towards showcasing one’s repertoire. Third,
and equally important, is the idea that harmony is an inward driven notion. We have to seek it, it is not a "given" in any
musical context. A search-and-discovery baton is passed between the musicians, each of them adjusting to the other's pace of
musical dialogue.
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The golden era and the 'moulded' era
- S. SIVARAMAKRISHNAN
The first decade of the 21st century which is drawing to a close has seen re-volutionary changes in the
presenta-tion of art forms especially music. Music has become more of a ‘commodity’ and naturally acute
competition has set in. Thus we have 'music producers' (artists/musicians), products, distributors, agents,
consumers, etc. as in any other business. More and more people are entering the trade as it is no longer a
dreaded proposition.
Most leading Carnatic musicians today are not the betel chewing, vibhooti-chandan-kumkum laden senior vidwans,
but the trendy, tech-savvy, young aspirants who believe that a lot of acumen is needed to be in the business and in
the limelight. They attach lot of importance to presentation skills and not ‘mere singing’. They venture into new
frontiers and themes, thanks to more cosmopolitan audiences and the vanishing tribe of doomsayers among critics.
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