Miscellaneous Musings

The clock struck twelve. It had been quiet a tiring day at work. I turned my iPod on and switched off the lights of my bedroom. Out of the long list of artistes that appeared, I chose T Brinda for the day. I skipped the varnam and a few more tracks to reach at “chEtah shrI bAlakrishNam” in jujAvanti. What a rendition! Totally out of the world. As the track finished my fingers spontaneously reached to browse through other tracks. A strange thought swept my mind that moment.

How radically in the past few decades has everything - technology, music and our perception of it - changed? Would the great T Brinda be actually happy, if she were alive today to witness these changes? It didn’t quite matter. What mattered was, today every single musician of the past or present could be summoned to my esteemed bedroom, by just the press of a button! Sometimes I resort to GNB's shanmukhapriya for some rejuvenation, while during others I like to sit back and swoon over Semmangudi's kharaharapriya and then there are times when nothing could be more relaxing than Brindamma's sahana. There was infinite choice!

I did manage to catch a good amount of live concerts too in Chennai this December. Too many choice there too. Every evening, I could choose between T.M.Krishna, Sanjay, Sowmya, Santhanagopalan and a host of other known, unknown, young and old artistes. If Sanjay performed at Mylapore, I’d probably not want to drive that far in the horrible traffic and may settle for some instrumental concert in T Nagar, which was closer to my place. Or even better I could avoid any travel by choosing some lesser known vocalist performing near my house at Mambalam. Dozens and dozens of Sabhas in every part of the city, hundreds of performers aspiring for stardom and thousands of rasikas thronging every sabha - Did someone complain about cultural degradation? Well, bring them to Chennai in December.

And there was also this peculiar breed of finicky rasikas, very choosy about what they were listening to. I knew a person who attended concerts only to listen to bhajans and abhangs. Some would give the initial one hour a skip and arrived only for the main piece while others promptly left their seat the moment the main piece started. I was contemplating over my friend's grandfather’s accounts recalling his college days, when he couldn't afford listening to kutcheris in sabhas. When occasionally an M S Subbulakshmi or Semmangudi performed at a temple, people would reach hours before the concert to secure a seat on the ground. In the jam-packed gathering, one wouldn’t be able to move an inch to their left or right until the mangalam was sung!

AIR came to the rescue of those, not privileged enough to attend sabha concerts and not satisfied with the once in a year temple concerts. Artistes were graded based on their talent as grade-A, B, etc. and given appropriate slots to perform. The ardent rasika would stick his ears to the pocket radio early in the morning, sipping over hot filter coffee. The more tech-savvy had an elaborate set up of tape recorder and blank cassettes always ready (Like a first aid kit) to immediately press the red button when their favorite artiste performed.

No doubt this was a great advancement over the past, when rasikas had to travel miles in search of good music. The great veena exponent Dhanammal, who lost her sight at old age, used to perform only at her house on Friday evenings, when vidwans and rasikas from all corners would throng her house. She would start when the clock ticked six. If anyone was late, she would ask, "who is that ‘gnyanashunyam’ (person with zilch knowledge)?" and if people who had come from far away towns tried to slip away in the middle to catch the last train to their place, she would angrily declare “Please go away and let me play peacefully”. But things have changed. Artistes today have adapted so well to the changes, that hardly does the listener sitting on the first row taking a look at his wrist watch every two minutes bother them. After all, he has chosen a live performance over hundreds of recorded options he must've had.

Not very long ago, when shellac records made an entry into India for the first time, people weren’t comfortable with the idea of ‘recording’, which seemed to steal the wizardry of a musician. The great Hindustani maestro Kumar Gandharva explained that the record was a mere musical photograph. Every one knows that the person in the photograph is not the real person so what is all the worry about?

But times have changed and so have perceptions. Gigabytes of mp3 collection are a qualifying factor for every rasika today and artistes are concerned about copyright violations above most other things. At the same time the advancements in technology, especially recording, have brought the legendary tradition of carnatic music to the reach of newer and larger masses. The audio cassettes, that did a roaring business in the 80’s have faced a silent extinction, while the CDs today look ancient in front of the iPod and its many cousins. While some like to sit back and reminisce about old world charms, others zealously embrace the new trends. Clichéd, but yes, change is the only changeless phenomenon !