The Master turns 78 today

It has been more than 16 or 17 years, but I still clearly remember the first concert I heard of my idol Sri M.S. Gopalakrishnan. It wasn't live -- it was, in fact, a recording of an AIR National Programme of Music. It took only one song - the very first one, the nATakuriJji varnam -- and I was a fan. And remain one to this day. The songs that he played in that concert (they are etched in my memory: rAma bhakti in zuddha baGgALa, zObhillu saptaswara in jaganmOhini, E tAvunarA in kalyANi, a sindhubhairavi bhajana) all remain my personal favourites.

I can go on and on about him, but I am in the middle of a busy work week. So here are some links instead:

• The thread on rasikas.org discussing the Master.
• MSG concert recordings from sangeethamshare.org.
• MSG concert recordings from sangeethapriya.org.

Thoughtfulness

From Sanjay Subramaniam's blog:

In my personal experience I have given several non-mic concerts. The most recent being one in Europe. The best part was that they provided mics with monitor speakers just for feedback, whilst the audience listened to the true sound as they would like to call it.

On Kannada

Yes, yet another post on Kannada. But this time, it's on the raga -- not the language.

Kannada is a vakra janya of Sankarabharanam. The ArOha-avarOha: SGMDNṠ ṠNṠDPMGMRS

The avarOhana indicates that we can descend to D only from NṠ. Therefore, ṘṠD is invalid. It should be ṘṠNṠD. Of course, the same applies when we have to descend to R — we have to pass through GM first.

Here is a transition diagram of the notes. (Click on the diagram for a bigger version.)

(The notes in green are the rAga-chAyA swaras.) This diagram immediately reveals the important cycles of this raga. GMG, MDPM and ṠNṠ. This is an advantage of this representation. The cycles may not be readily apparent from the mere mention of the aroha-avaroha. This can be helpful for improvisation. (E.g., MDPM-GMDNṠDPM-GMRS)

As we saw in the avaroha, there are two 2-note cycles present - MGM & ṠNṠ. In addition, the raga permits three more 2-note cycles, which are however not "compulsory" (it is not mandatory to traverse these cycles): SRS, MPM & PDP. Indeed, this raga is wickedly vakra:


I have used dotted transitions to indicate that they are "non-compulsory" and can only form a 2-note cycle. That is, they cannot be used for forming a longer non-cyclic path. For example, the sequence MPDNṠ is invalid. But MPMDPDNS is legal. It is difficult to indicate such features using just the aroha-avaroha.

Some Kannada pieces:

• bhajarE bhaja mAnasa by TR Mahalingam [MP3]
• inta kaNTE kAvalenA by Subhashini Parthasarathy [MP3]
  

Yehudi chala sukhama, Paganini sannidhi seva sukhama

I have read about the Western classical violin maestros: Yehudi Menuhin, Jascha Heifetz, David Oistrakh and others. Today I was absolutely thrilled when I found their videos on YouTube.

Yehudi Menuhin playing Paganini's Perpetual Motion. It simply takes your breath away.

More Menuhin delights.

Jascha Heifetz playing the Paganini Caprice No. 24.

More Heifetz videos.

I always thought of the violin virtuosi as thin folks with long and lean fingers. With Menuhin and Heifetz, I was proved right. However, when I found David Oistrakh, I realised chubby multi-chinned people could be maestros too.

More videos of the Ranatunga of the violin world.

Other maestros:

• Mischa Elman
• Nathan Milstein

* * * *

A couple of days back, I came across the show Italian: The Language That Sings on NPR, which said:

Even when it isn't sung, the Italian language sounds like music...

This programme reminded me immediately of the position of Telugu in Carnatic music. Telugu is also considered a musical language and has been hailed as "the Italian of the East." The poet Subramanya Bharathi famously called it sundara teluGgu.

The musicality of the two languages has been attributed to:

... the fact that most words end in a vowel. Not only does this make it a very suitable language for opera, it also means that once you are familiar with its rhythms, it is a comparatively easy language to pronounce. [Link]

On coming to Bangalore, I observed that Kannada words end in vowels too. Sample:

nArAyaNA ninNna nAmada smaraNeya sArAmRtavenNna nAligege barali [mp3]

Doesn't that sound as sweet? Does it not bleed when pricked?

Probably, their vowel-ending does not fully explain their status as musical languages. On Italian, the NPR programme explains:

So many of these musical forms—sonata, cantata, aria—started in Italy," Hoffman says.

"Plus, Italian musicians were in positions of prestige all over Europe, so it became the lingua franca."

Possibly similar reasons exist for Telugu too?

Introducing Sahityam.net

As the frequency of posts would indicate, the last six months was a tight period at work. This had forced me to shelve (among other things) a particular pet project of mine. During a lean stretch, I was able to work on translipi, the embedded-text transliteration tool. (See the sidebar to try it out.) Though worthy of an independent existence, translipi was originally conceived as a component of this project. Finally, it is now ready enough for release: Sahityam.net (Beta).

Targetted at Carnatic Music enthusiasts, students and professionals, Sahityam.net is a wiki for all things concerned with Carnatic lyrics, usually called sAhityam. Its goal is to facilitate accurate pronunciation and understanding of the lyrics as well as to serve as platform for everybody to collaborate in creating such a repository.

While the software is ready to use, there isn't enough content and documentation yet. This can be built up over time together with everyone interested. I invite your participation in the wiki. Anybody can edit a page, but creating new content requires registration (which is a simple process).

So, please do have a look and let me know any comments for improvement.

Audava-Audava Raga Sangraha

The mELa-karttA classification system has served the sampUrNa rAgas well. However, the janya rAgas are still a wilderness; they deserve a Periodic Table of their own.

I have put up a scheme for the Audava-Audava (pentatonic) ragas at http://srikanthsubram.googlepages.com/audava.

Update [19 Feb]: A question. Can anyone tell me the basis on which a (janya) raga's parent is decided? E.g., why is the janaka-rAga of nAgasvarAvaLi considered harikAmbhOji and not, say, cakravAkam or zaGkarAbharaNam?

Intonation in Carnatic concerts

The term Intonation in music means, put simply, producing notes that are in tune. It is what we would call zruti zuddham. (Or, in other words, being a "suswaraM Ramjhi.")

The most important factor for producing a note in tune is possessing an accurate aural perception of that note. Once this is present, intonation is developed by practising to match the note we produce with this standard. (In Carnatic music, of course, we do not have an "absolute note" -- they are all relative to the chosen reference SaDja.) Thus, for perfect intonation, a keen sense of hearing is absolutely essential.

When performing in large halls, musicians hear their own instruments only very faintly. And there isn't enough echo either.* So, intonation becomes a big challenge. Now, an accompanying Carnatic artiste has a tougher problem -- he needs to be able to hear the main performer as well. Furthermore, an instrument that is initially tuned perfectly to the taMbUrA, may go out of tune during the course of the concert; and the musician needs to be able to detect when this happens and correct it based on the taMbUrA that is droning some distace away on the platform. (And, to repeat, "I can't hear no nothing!")

Usually, to enable the performers to hear themselves, a speaker system (called a monitor or "fold-back") that is directed towards the platform is provided. However, I have never seen one in a Carnatic concert. In addition, few concert venues are actually auditoria built with necessary acoustics for a music performance. Many are just open spaces with asbestos roofing (Ayodhya Mandapam, YGP Auditorium, etc.).

Given all these hurdles, I am amazed how our musicians perform with perfect intonation. They are practically performing deaf.

- - -
* An extreme case would be a recording studio, whose walls are built to expressly prevent any echoes. This is why (as we have seen in movies scenes featuring a studio recording) the artistes are supplied with headphones.

Update (20 Dec): I have found a related Wikipedia entry -- Foldback. Excerpts:

The provision of foldback (or monitor) speakers is essential to performers, because without a foldback system, the sound they would hear from front of house would be the reverberated reflections from the rear wall of the venue. The naturally-reflected sound is delayed and distorted.

... On stages with poor or absent foldback mixes, vocalists may end up singing off-tune or out of time with the band.

Update 2 (26 January): A post from an excellent blog (by Ramnarayan) I stumbed upon says:

Young vocalist Savita Narasimhan clarifies that the musician on the stage rarely asks for the volume to be turned up for the listeners. He or she is actually asking for help with the feedback (or fallback) so essential for the performer on stage. “Often the vocalist cannot hear the percussionist or violinist and vice versa. The musician’s request to increase the volume of the monitor is misunderstood and the technician increases the volume for the audience.”

On Celestial Pachyderms

Today, I was listening to a Ragam-Tanam-Pallavi by a yesteryear vidwan. The pallavi was in Tamil and went:

ten-pazhani vaDivElanE, devayAnai maNavALanE*

The pallavi refers to the deity Muruga/Karttikeya. He is considered a bachelor in the north** but is twice-married down south. His second wife is called dEvayAni in Sanskrit and dEvAnai in Tamil. Gods and goddesses in Tamilnadu have two names - one each in Sanskrit and Tamil.

In this pallavi, the vidwan wishes to refer to the deity in relation to his wife, i.e., "O Husband of such-and-such-a-person." But he confuses the two names, dEvayAni and dEvAnai, of the goddess and ends up with the hybrid dEvayAnai, which means "Divine Elephant" (yAnai = elephant, in Tamil)!

- - - -
* தென்பழனி வடிவேலனே, தேவயானை மணவாளனே
** Whether it's north of the Vindhyas or that of Tirutthani, I am not sure.

A Delta of Fertile Minds - Thanjavur's Contribution to Music

At different times in history, certain regions become centres of immense creative output: Madurai in the Sangam Age (Tamil literature and music), Vienna in the 17-18th centuries (Western classical music) and Bengal in the 19th century (literature, science, etc.).

Similarly, the Cauvery delta region of Thanjavur seems to have been the happening place in the 18-19th centuries, as far as Carnatic music is concerned.

Ruled successively by Vijayanagara (Nayaka) chiefs of Karnataka/Andhra and Maratha kings of Maharashtra, this Tamil area saw an immigration of Telugu-, Kannada- and Marathi-speaking people. Such diversity resulted in a glorious cross-pollination of culture, one of whose fruits is the Carnatic classical music.

A slew of composers emerged, creating works in different languages (Telugu, Tamil, Sanskrit and Marathi). The important names are Seshaiyengar, hailed as "mArgadarzi" or Pathbreaker; Uthukadu Venkata-kavi, whose Tamil and Sanskrit works include the famous alaippAyudE; the Tamil composers Arunachala-kavi, creator of the rAma nATakam and Gopalakrishna Bharati, whose magnum-opus is the nandanAr caritram. The pinnacle was reached with the Trinity of Tyagaraja, Muthuswami Dikshitar and Syama Sastri, who are known too well for me to go into details.

These compositions were created in various formats. In addition to the well-known kRti, is the Natakam (opera), exemplified in the bhAgavata mELA form. It consists of plays in Telugu and Marathi which are performed by an all-male cast of Telugu speakers from Melattur village in Thanjavur.

Of all these works, the ones that deal with Krishna-bhakti are always... erotic! One such is the kRSNa lIlA taraGgiNi, composed by Narayana Teertha (who moved in from Andhra). And Tyagaraja, who was as orthodox as they came, created the zRGgAra-laden opera naukA caritram. Other “madhura-bhakti” formats are the padam and jAvaLi.

Besides the intense composing activity, important strides were made in musicology as well. Venkatamakhin wrote the caturdaNDI prakAzikA, that deals with the 72 melas. This was refined into the Mela-karta raga system as we know it today by his grandson Muddu Venkatamakhin. Some of the kings were scholars themselves: Tulaja wrote the treatise saGgIta sArAmRta.

Furthermore, the bhajana sampradAya took shape here around this time. The primary gurus of this tradition were Bodhendra Saraswati and Sridhara Venkatesa (popularly known as "ayyAvAL"), a local of Telugu ancestry. (The late Swami Haridas Giri was the most visible face of this sampradAya in recent times.) This system was made rich with contributions from the earlier Kannada as well as Marathi (abhang) bhajana movements.

The Marathi settlers (thanks to their rhythm-dominant abhaGgs) also helped develop the mridangam techniques. This is evident from the Carnatic terms, chapu (as in the tala "Khanda Chapu") which is probably from the Marathi "chhaap" छाप; and mora (rhythmic patterns) from "mohra" मोहरा. (In fact, their influence can be seen in other spheres too - the original name of Bharatanatyam "sadir" and the famous "sambar" come from Marathi.) One of the foremost mridangam exponents was a Thanjavur Marathi, Nanasama Rao (aka Narayanaswami Appa).

Thus evolved our music - in a cultural melting-pot that was Thanjavur.
- - - - -

Other recent blog-posts on Carnatic Music that are great:

• Suraj's Crash Course in Identifying Ragas
• Sunil's If Music be the Food of Love

Cry "Wolfgang!"

The world celebrates the 250th birth anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the great Western Classical composer, this Friday (27th January). Thousands of people are gathering at Salzburg, Austria, his hometown.

On this occasion, an excellent set of concerts, tributes and other audio programmes are featured on the non-profit radio station NPR. Check them out!

[Link via Yossarian Lives. Pic: Wikipedia.]

More links on Music: http://del.icio.us/srikanths/music

Harmonium - Sarangi Wars, Redux.

A while ago at a Hindustani concert by Padma Talwalkar, seeing the accompanying harmonium unable to keep up with the fluid voice of the singer made me wonder why this instrument was preferred to the sarangi or the violin. I expressed my thoughts in the article How the Harmonium Came on the Hindustani Stage.

I didn't know it when I first wrote this article, but the harmonium was banned in AIR concerts for 30 years from sometime in the 1940's. This is surprising. Though the instrument can't probably reproduce the high-speed taans or certain types of gamakas, it's got a rich continuous tone that only a very good violinist with impeccable bow control can match. This is a very desirable quality for an accompanying instrument. Banning the harmonium, I feel, was draconian.

In the late 1960's, the Sangeet Natak Akademi invited experts to a seminar to discuss this ban. Excerpts from the seminar proceedings were posted in the rec.music.indian.classical group and make a very interesting reading. V.H. Deshpande, an AIR artiste, while presenting his case for the harmonium, brought up the important topic of the role of an accompanist in a concert:

[W]hat is the role of an accompanying instrument? I submit it is to create a musical atmosphere, and inspire the artiste by bringing him into his best singing mood. Further, the accompanying instrument must keep the continuity of singing to heighten the musicality of the performance and make it more more entertaining and in effect more pleasing. This it is expected to do by following the main artiste closely with or without a little time lag and also at times being played independently in the interludes, generally calculated to excite and inspire the principal to do better than before. I dare say that the Harmonium by its powerful, constant and sustained notes not only abundantly satisfies all these requirements but satisfies them in a far greater degree than any of the stringed instruments...

It is said that Sarangi can reproduce the exact tonal nuances and meends and gamaks. This is alright only if the resonating strings allow it to remain in accurate intonation. But let me ask, whether exact reproduction is at all necessary for an accompanying instrument, whose role is only complementary?

A certain P. V. Subramaniam from Delhi makes an eloquent case for the harmonium as well:

It is not realised that as in the case of other aids to music the Harmonium has undergone great refinement. Today's version of the Harmonium is capable of providing a whole range of tonal excellence unavailable in other musical instruments... Present-day Harmoniums have three-reed-boards joined together with provision for air-release in a zig-zag fashion ensuring softness of tone and melody.

In the far South, before the days of cant and dilettantism, Perur Subramanya Dikshitar, the Harmonium Wizard, used to accompany the great classical vocalists... Dikshitar played on a highly sophisticated Harmonium. There are many gramaphone records testifying to his instrumental excellence while accompanying a maestro of the calibre of Palladam Sanjivi Rao. These records have also been broadcast over the Radio. The heavens have not fallen. They are in one piece.

This gentleman, P. V. Subramaniam, is none other than the much-feared Carnatic critic Subbudu!

Read the whole thing.

More on the Harmonium vs Sarangi debate:
In the For Sarangi team: Kishori Amonkar.
In the For Harmonium team: Rajan Parrikar.

Who doesn't love a good fight?

Our languishing music heritage

India has an astonishing wealth of music. Besides the Carnatic and Hindustani traditions that we all have heard of, there are a number of lesser known ones such as:

• Panns: The Tamil region since ancient times has had a well-developed music system, mentioned in the Sangam literature and extensively discussed in the 2nd century epic Silappadhikaram. The Tamil bhakti texts (circa 7th century AD) such as the Thirumurai and the Devaram were set to panns (ancient ragas). Unfortunately, large parts of this music was lost after Malik Kafur's raids in the south. Whatever remains has been assiduously preserved by a dwindling number of odhuvars, who traditionally sing these hymns in temples. The panns are believed to have had considerable influence on the development of the Carnatic ragas.

• Abhang, the bhajans of the Marathi saints, Namadev, Jnaneshwar, Tukaram and others, who were bhaktas of Vitthala. To this day, their itinerant followers, called the varkari panthis, celebrate the names of the Lord in these songs of intense devotional fervour. The abhangs even spread to the Thanjavur region (which was ruled by Marathas) and were merged into the divya-nama tradition of Tamilnadu.

• Vachanas: In the 12th century, a Shaiva movement was founded in Karnataka by Basaveshwara. A revolutionary, he fought caste, glorified manual labour and condemned ritualism. The ideas of Basava and his followers (cutting caste and gender) are expressed in Kannada poetry, called vachanas. The original melody of the vachanas are probably lost; they are now sung in the Hindustani style.

Such wonderful, but little known, music deserves a wide audience, but unfortunately there are few recordings widely available.

Recently I met a gentleman who has recorded such music, but is unable to find anybody willing to market them. He has produced the Thirumurai sung by an odhuvar in the original pann system, abhangs by varkaris as well as basava-vachanas. Marketing people expect a well-known name on the label for reasons of commercial viability, but the authentic sources of such music are unknown and poor persons languishing in remote villages or temples. The gentleman I met is very commited to such an undertaking; he has set up his own studio for this purpose; he also has a keen attention to detail evident even in the aesthetically created jackets for the CDs.

Do readers have any suggestions as to what could be done to market such productions? I was thinking along the lines of setting up an e-commerce site. Probably Yahoo! Store is an option to consider; does anyone have experience with such stuff? Or better ideas?

Update:

Suraj Kumar, a Carnatic enthusiast and guitarist who works at Amazon, suggested:

I talked to folks. Seems the Amazon Advantage Program will fit you right. BUT... are you trying to sell only to India? or Will this include global audience as well?

The good thing is the kind of systems that we have in place that would help you as a seller. Firstly, when you decide to sell via most online stores, the route is quite long. You as a publisher / producer will have to go to a distributor and the distributor would place your product on a lot of different places (amazon, barnesandnobles, etc.,.). But you end up paying up a lot of cuts. This would be advantageous if you expect a whole lot of audience purchasing your product (like you are selling iPods).

This is why the amazon Advantage program is beneficial for small sellers.

More suggestions from Shivku and Sivaram in the comments below.

Thanks a lot everybody!

Update 2: The details of the pann recordings: (These were produced by him for Kosmic Music, not for his own fledgling company.)

1. Pann muraiyil Thirumurai (3 volumes - audio cassettes)
2. Pann muraiyil Pasurangal (2 volumes - audio cassettes)
Both by Muthukandasami Desikar, the odhuvar at the famous (Rock Fort) Thayumanavar Temple, Trichy.

The panns covered are:
Nattapadai (Gambhira Natta), Sigamaram (Malavagowla), Thakkesi (Kambhoji), Kolligouvanam (Navaroz), Megharagakurinji (Neelambari), Pazhamthakkaragam (Arabhi), Vizhakurinji (Saurashtram), Thakkaragam (Kambhoji), Nattaragam (Panthuvarali), Sevvazhi (Yadukula kambhoji), Kausikam (Bhairavi) and many more. (I am too lazy to type all of them.)

These cassettes are also listed on the Kosmic Music site.

With Masters of Melody

'There was again a world of difference between my guru and Mahavaidyanatha Iyer in the care they took to preserve their voice. The latter went to extremes... [H]e was afraid that the tiny flame of the maṅgalārati would cause excessive heat in the body and a spoonful of teertha would bring on a cold! He stuck to a strict diet of rice and pepper rasam. He scrupulously avoided midday naps and practised brahmacharya.

'My guru was exactly the opposite, "Why on earth should one learn music of one has to starve like this?" he would argue. He ate... sumptuously without bothering whether the preparations were cooked in oil or ghee. He slept whenever he liked and as long as he chose to! He would go for his concert in the evening with absolute confidence and return victorious! He would ask with a smile, "Vasu! Who should dictate terms, the singer or his voice?"'

Carnatic music, like any other Indian tradition, suffers from a lack of reliable accounts of its composers and performers. And one of the greatest of Carnatic composers, Tyāgarāja's life is shrouded in legends. In such a situation, Nā kaṇḍa kalāvidaru, Mysore Vasudevacharya's collection of short bios of his contemporary musicians (set in early 20th century), is a wonderful surprise. I read its English translation, With Masters of Melody.

Himself a well-known performer and vāggēyakāra, Vasudevacharya's bios are filled with delightful anecdotes and peppered with a gentle humour. The quote given here at the beginning is his contrast of the rival musicians, Mahavaidyanatha Iyer and Patnam Subramanya Iyer (Vasudevacharya's guru and a famous composer). Also included are accounts of the great veena vidwāns from the Mysore region, Veena Seshanna, Subbanna and Padmanabhiah. Of violinist Tirukkodikaval Krishnaiyer, undoubtedly the Paganini of Carnatic music. Of 'Poochi' Srinivasa Iyengar (and his gargantuan appetite) and of 'Tiger' Varadachariar (and the tiny cap that he wouldn't take off his gigantic frame). And Bangalore Nagaratnamma, the lady who undertook the construction of Tyagaraja's samadhi.

His accounts paint a bygone era - when the gurukula system was still in vogue, where learning was more by listening and osmosis than direct teaching; when the artists depended on patronage of kings and zamindars for their survival; of royal performances and the attendant palace intrigues:

Kuppiah and Appaiah were brothers who [...] once went to Tanjore seeking royal patronage. But, it was not to be as easy as they had thought, for the jealous musicians of the court kept a vigilant watch over those who came from outside lest the King's grace should slip through their fingers.

It was also the age when the artistes had to go against their families' preference for vedic studies and disdain for the pursuit of music.

Reading this book, I was also reminded of Semmangudi Srinivasier's reminiscences, tinged with his characteristic wry humour. I wonder if they have been preserved for the future, as they well-deserve to be.

If you are a Carnatic music aficionado, Mysore Vasudevacharya's With Masters of Melody is something you should not miss!