Intellectual Honesty Demands That T M Krishna Decline The Sangita Kalanidhi Award

The usually staid world of Carnatic music has been in a bit of turmoil ever since the tony Music Academy announced the name of the winner of this year's Sangita Kalanidhi, a prestigious award that it bestows on Carnatic musicians for their contributions in the field.

This year's recipient is the polemical T M Krishna, whose abrasive views and iconoclastic approach have constantly raised the hackles of the mostly conservative aficionados of Carnatic music.

Him being bestowed a coveted honour did not go down well with the rasikas who were overcome with righteous indignation. They vented their fury on Music Academy for picking him for the award with purple prose. 

But one thing has to be clear, if music is one of the yardsticks for the award, then Krishna deserves it. For, he has been a precocious performer right from his young days (though 'performer' is a term he takes umbrage at).

The Music Academy's press release was a bit strange though. "Known for his powerful voice and his adherence to tradition when it comes to the art, he has experimented widely with its format. He has also worked towards expanding the listener base of the art by taking it to varied social settings and focusing on its exploratory as opposed to tightly defined structures. He has used music as a tool for social reform," it read.

But, in any case, to rail against Music Academy is mostly misplaced as Krishna is a talented musician and the institution is a private one and it is at liberty to award anyone it deems fit. But what of the awardee? Should Krishna accept the Sangita Kalanidhi title?

This question needs to be asked simply because the Music Academy stands for everything that Krishna has been vehemently opposed to in the field of Carnatic music.

No other music sabha is as snobbish, exclusive and class-conscious (and by extension casteist) as the academy is, and these are verily the things that Krishna has been projecting himself to be fighting against for the most part of his recent musical and social career.

For him to accept an award from the academy is to go against the essential grain of his stated ideals. (For the record, violin legend Lalgudi G Jayaraman had declined the Sangita Kalanidhi for albeit different reasons). The true intellectual response from Krishna to the academy should be, "Thanks for the award. But no thanks, actually". 

But guess what Krishna has done? Well, he has gushed forth. "It is very overwhelming to be chosen for the award and it is a special moment in my life," he was quoted as saying in The Hindu. 

Krishna’s Career Has Been One Of Convenience

It is not all surprising if you have followed Krishna as a public persona over the last two decades. It is one of convenient contradictions. To be fair, all personalities do this. But the problem is Krishna has not projected himself to be one among the lot. He makes a case for himself as being morally superior and intellectually higher.

So, his consistent inconsistencies grate. For example, Krishna champions himself to be against exclusivity. But he was upset that the Telugu film Shankarabharanam (1979), which is widely believed to have revived the interest in Carnatic music among the masses, did not actually employ proper Carnatic musicians.

Writing in his deliberately provocative book A Southern Music — The Karnatik Story, Krishna said "...the theme demanded an honest depiction of a Carnatic musician. While the melodies were largely based on Carnatic ragas and talas, none of the playback singers were Carnatic musicians. This gave the melodies a distinctive cine-Carnatic feel."

To say that the songs of Sankarabharanam did not have the heft of true Carnatic music is one thing but to actually put it down to the singers not being Carnatic musicians is another. And that is exactly the forbidding exclusivity that Krishna presents himself to be against.   

Krishna's angst is actually deeper. He is against the very influence of cinema music, howsoever it may be, in Carnatic music. "We need to analyze Carnatic music in the context of its existent expression and see if the influencing cinema has a place under its sun or not. A blind acceptance of any influence as being part of a larger process of evolutionary change is unacceptable, as it defies the basic nature and dynamics of Carnatic music."

And with further disdain, he writes a few pages later, "neither film music nor fusion contribute to Carnatic music. You contribute by being in Carnatic music as a musician or listener."

If, say, Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, who incidentally is one of the gurus of Krishna, had said the very same thing, he would have been pilloried for perpetuating Brahaminical orthodoxy, whatever that is, in Carnatic music. But when Krishna himself does that he has to be seen as being batting for the holistic aesthetics of the art.

By the way, Krishna took apart the Carnatic music ecosystem for not accepting K J Yesudas because he brought film sensibilities to the stage.

When Krishna Is The Sole Arbiter Of What Bhakti Is

"I don't care if I am singing about Rama or about the wall," he once thundered. Speaking against the conventional idea of Carnatic music being 'bhakti music', he pooh-poohed it and suggested that what matters to him is just the music he brings in between the letters Ra and Ma. 

Again, fine as a standalone intellectual opinion. But the very same Krishna waded into music maestro Ilaiyaraaja for employing Raga Saramati for the song Mari Mari Ninne in the Tamil film Sindhu Bhairavi (1985). This song had been originally set to Raga Kambhoji by its composer Saint Thyagaraja. 

"What does this transposition of a composition from its parent raga onto another actually do to the kirtana? A great deal, actually. The essence of its being disintegrates," Krishna typically said. "To me, the film version was unacceptable."

When others, in a fever of creative genius, so much as change the raga, he fulminates. But Krishna himself is at liberty to interpret what Tyagarajar's bhakti is and sing as he wants to and wherever he wants to. Again, Krishna's exposition, and his other so-called social experiments, would stand if he had not taken such a vehement position against Raja. 

He once said in an interview to The Telegraph, "...when people walk up to me and say that they saw Lord Krishna in front of their eyes because of my song, I am often tempted to say, I have sung so many times, but I have never seen him."

These lines are smart for an online troll. But for a person who actually uses krithis chiseled out of pure bhakti, such sentiments are just clever-by-half hubris.  For, on another occasion, he wrote in The Indian Express, "for me, the student of music, Rama is there in all I have heard and read but he steps out of texts and stories and comes to life only in Thyagaraja’s kirtanas." 

On Thyagarajar's krithis themselves, he once said in an interview to Deccan Herald, there are a few compositions that are troublesome in terms of their lyrical content, because there is caste and there is gender discrimination in them. But the very same Krishna said that he would continue to sing Thyagarajar krithis till his death.

Just Contradictions Or Intellectually Dubious?

The communist in Krishna once arose and made him tell his concert organisers not to ticket his performances. But when it quietly dawned on him that eventually it would sound the death knell to his musical career that idea was coldly cast aside. 

At one point, Krishna announced that he would cycle his way to sabhas to attend fellow-musicians concerts.  Again, nobody knows what happened to it afterwards.

When he continued with his diatribe against the sabhas and the culture they exude, somebody suggested to him that he give up singing in such places. But our warrior of words had his own defence, "I think that's a ridiculous question. Engagement with issues is needed. I want to participate and not disassociate myself from those spaces." How very specious and self-expedient.  

As you can see, it is also bewilderingly contradictory. But just that, Krishna has been selling them as virtues to us. He may hate the term ‘performer’, but he sure is compulsively performative.

And perhaps as it acme, the man who has shunned the Chennai December Music Season on the grounds, "the Carnatic music in Chennai has become more about the season than about music and this is dangerous for the art", will step on to the dais later this December Season and receive the honour from a sabha that epitomises the very same culture that he is avowedly against.

The claps that he would receive on that day are the ones that could be really dangerous for the art.