Who is the real beneficiary?

This is no ordinary spectacle. More than 50 organisations, over 300+ artists, around 1000 performances and sizeable audiences together underline the gigantic Carnatic music festival that is held in Chennai every December. The scale has been growing every decade since its modest beginning in the 1920s. In that sense, the festival is celebrating a centenary of sorts. As the finances are not publicly available, one must make an enlightened guess of the money that flows through the whole festival. It is supposed to be around Rupees 15 - 25 crores, give or take (only a fraction better than a wild guess!). This does not include auxiliary service like food at the venues, transport costs, press coverage etc. So, it is brisk business over just a few weeks.

The uninitiated might assume that the festival’s scale is driven by popular demand. There is, of course, a dedicated audience, but there are also many casual drop-ins for concerts. This is not to suggest that they lack an interest in the music, but just that some show up after exhausting other avenues of spending a few hours in the evening. Like the small ocean waves that also hit the shore, they too form part of the festival’s audience. A business analysis of the entire festival has escaped careful attention all these years. The layman’s understanding of the system is simple - artists perform, audiences enjoy the music, sponsors finance the shows and some organisations carry the can if they need to. Let’s dwell a bit deeper.

Out of over 300 tier one and tier two artists, about 20% earn enough to sustain a comfortable middle-class life. That remains one of the season’s best kept secrets. The rest live modestly, going by urban standards in India. Most of them would earn a few times more, if they had pursued a profession based on their education. Yet, the calling is hard to give up. The December fever is still worth it on its own, for all these artists, who brave many uncertainties – rain and shine, vulnerable vocal cords, chaotic commutes, organisers on high horses, underwhelming halls and acoustics and sparse audiences unless you are a star. Yet, the adrenaline of enthusiasm trumps all these odds. With rising costs of living and arbitrage in other professions, artists’ remuneration remains a sad and largely untold story. A few top ranking (or socially savvy) artists make good supplementary incomes from overseas tours, at least while the opportunities last. If you are an artist starting at the bottom of the ladder, and especially if you are not a nepo-kid, keep some cash handy to pay for your early performances. Given the years of toil, learning and talent nurturing that is needed just to break in, it’s a travesty of justice that career earnings for a musician practicing this difficult art are a poor pittance.

What about the organisations? At a generous guess, about eight to ten organisations (sabhas) probably make a surplus every year, thanks to their longevity, entrenched sponsorships, vantage venues and habitual patronage of audiences. This would include marquee names like the Music Academy, Narada Gana Sabha, Sri Krishna Gana Sabha, and the Mylapore FineArts Club. About 40 others scrape through, often relying on gap-funding by well-intentioned friends. So, it’s a lot of mental, physical and emotional effort for no financial gain. It’s the labour of love that keeps these organisations going. At global festivals like film festivals, there is either a central body that channels the funds or a federation of outfits who pool in resources to make it viable. The Chennai Carnatic sabhas, however, see themselves as rivals to one another and are unlikely to share resources, even though they are all not-for-profit societies.

So, do the audiences get a grand bargain, if other key stakeholders have mixed outcomes? That too is debatable. When it comes to tickets to key performances, there are the haves and have-nots. The system in many established sabhas has a bias against new audiences. The entrenched ticket holders continue to enjoy the spoils (or just absent themselves). Admission tickets to good performances could cost you 1,000 or 2,000 rupees for a person. How many families can afford that and for how many concerts in a season? No wonder that you see very few young children or uninitiated audiences at concerts. This system, thus, is a vicious circle that keeps more people out than in. Social media following for many artists outnumber the physical audience by factors of thousands. That should tell something, even assuming all may not be in Chennai. The emergence of YouTube uploads of many concerts has kept the audiences’ interest alive. Organisations rarely break even from gate collections. Yet the festival has managed to sustain itself – corporate and other donors being the key.

It is not clear if the donors have any multiplier effect in their businesses or if it’s merely philanthropy or continuation of generations of patronage, to seek good karma or influences. Who, then, is the real beneficiary of this mammoth event? One can say for sure that the sabha canteen operators and the auto/taxi ride industry are net profiteers. Any such conclusion about all other actors is a glorious speculation.

A healthier and sustainable strategy for the festival is to draw more crowds, not necessarily offering free entry, but perhaps at a modest ticket price. With some nudging, sabhas could consider an all-venue season pass for maybe Rs 500 or Rs 1000 ('a la the all-route bus pass of the MGR era) to attract the interested listeners who are currently apathetic. Else, this may be the last generation that attends concerts in person.

Financial questions apart, there are glories to pursue. Artists do cherish coveted titles given by organisations. R.K. Shriramkumar, Sangita Kalanidhi awardee in 2025, deserves the honour not just for his music – his works for over 30 years have been at the intersection of music, culture, religion and propagation. But such honours are not always conferred even-handedly. Instrumentalists, for instance, have tended to get a raw deal in award decisions over the years. The highly deserved ones who missed it (or the award missed being held by them) include Mali, Lalgudi Jayaraman, V. V. Subramaniam, Kunnakudy Vaidyanathan, T. Rukmini, S. Balachander, C.S. Murugabhoopathy, Karaikudi Mani, T. Upendran, G. Harishankar in modern times. The award also went poorer by not landing on Pudukottai Dakshinamurthy Pillai and Malakottai Govindaswamy Pillai from the previous era (the award itself got instituted in their last years). The recent decade has been better, though. Many instrumentalists are waiting in the wings, with powerful credentials. Controversies have taken some out of the reckoning, but that may not be a bane anymore, as some recent years witnessed. The tireless grooming, practice and performance of instrumentalist must also be recognised, ideally in their prime. If the waiting list is long, perhaps the Music Academy can consider awarding two artists – a vocalist and an instrumentalist – for some time, so that the respected ones make it before their sunset years.

By,

Bala Shankar