“They’ll 'Talk' About Music?”

Carnatic music has been gripped by intense dissatisfaction with the Music Academy awarding the Sangeet Kalanidhi to the notorious T M Krishna.

For the first time, musicians and their listeners (termed rasikas) have demurred against the political machinations of an oligarchy which has maintained a stranglehold over Carnatic music. 

As may be obvious, I do not hail from dakshin Bharat, nor am I able to understand much of its languages.

I have lived all my life in Delhi. I was trained in Hindustani shastriya sangeet paddhati, and had mostly remained aloof from Carnatic until recently.

As an outsider, I can perhaps offer a slightly different perspective to an issue which concerns not just dakshin Bharat or music, but Bharatiyata itself.

I came to appreciate Carnatic music after coming into contact with online recordings of its legends. I thereafter stumbled onto the works of more recent artists, including fusion musicians, who weaved together modern elements while retaining the traditional beauty of the system.

With the recent revival in Bharatiya consciousness, a young generation of Hindustani music aficionados (within which I count myself) has emerged. They discarded snobbery vis-a-vis Carnatic and have become devoted enthusiasts of both paddhatis; Hindustani-Carnatic jugalbandis have created a keen audience for themselves.

Thus, I chose to make the pilgrimage to Chennai during its 2023 margazhi music season. I was warmly welcomed to the music, the venues, and even musicians in an environment where I had no linguistic skills, scholarship, or clout.

Rasikas were enthusiastic, helpful, and appreciative, and the musicians responded with humility and passion. The ecosystem is open and democratic — with the sore exception of the Music Academy’s upper echelons and affiliates.

Evidently, the academy’s executive committee was under the iron grip of pedigreed gatekeepers, almost all non-musicians. Throughout the academy’s executive committee’s history during the last 50 years, there has hardly ever been representation from the most important segment of musical practice itself, i.e., the musicians.

Threads of nepotism, favouritism, and privilege criss-cross the executive committee’s composition. It is this executive committee which decides upon who gets the Sangeeta Kalanidhi; non-musicians thus find themselves competent to pronounce judgement on the worth of a musician. 

The academy’s all-powerful presidency has been the exclusive preserve of a neat rotation between the members and/or nominees of three families.

These feudal patrician industrialist-cum-political houses bear great influence over Tamil Nadu and beyond, and have monopolised the fates of generations of musicians by controlling access, networks, and the platform of the academy.

The degradation brought by depriving musicians and rasikas from decision-making was palpable — the free concerts were better than the paid ones, and I found superior music in many of the smaller sabhas dotting Chennai.

Discussions in nondescript halls had much greater depth compared to those in the academy. Notably, even the crowds frequenting the sabhas had a higher proportion of young enthusiasts — who will ultimately shape the music going forward. 

Differentiating between Carnatic music and the academy is of utmost essence — the academy has placed itself into a well-moated ivory tower, and struggles to peddle the convenient narrative that it is the sole musical authority and commercial platform.

If anything, the academy is quite remote from all stakeholders of the Carnatic ecosystem — the musician, the music-goer, and the musical scholar. The myth of the academy’s musical monopoly only serves the decidedly non-musical elite at its helm, and their political affiliates.

The above realisations are crucial to make sense of the current opprobrium surrounding T M Krishna. He belongs to one of the three families which have passed around the presidency of the academy amongst themselves.

He is a scion of a dynasty possessing a sprawling business empire, and the grand-nephew of a former Union finance minister who lent his name to the academy’s auditorium.

Krishna has been granted the privileges and connections which any other musician could only dream of, and had consistent support from all quarters of the industry — albeit not the measly musicians or recalcitrant rasikas.

Strange are the ways of the academy — an award granted by relatives, taken by a product of nepotism and privilege coddled by an ecosystem controlled by said relatives, and rubber-stamped by a committee having hardly any practitioners of the award’s subject.

The academy’s principal defence is that Krishna is being targeted for he dared to ‘democratise’ Carnatic music. The absurdity in attacking people opposing a politically motivated and nepotistic award (and award-giving mechanism) on grounds of being anti-democratic is obvious.

The academy’s vituperative rebuffs sound more like personal and ideological defences of Krishna instead of the academy’s decision; for the lines between the triumvirate, their conveniently associated executive council, and the personal interests of Krishna are vanishingly thin.

The academy’s outburst is symptomatic; it has correctly identified pushback as a challenge to its exclusivist mode of functioning.

What is meant here by ‘democracy’ by Krishna’s defenders? It is, plainly put, enforced secularisation of all that is sanatani. Attempts at separating Carnatic music from the Hindu faith are not just futile, but subversive. 

Carnatic music was born from the Bhakti movement, evidenced by the sahityam of Purandara Dasa, the founder of Carnatic music. The musical system has been conceptualised and designed as a mode of worship integrating dhyana, samkirtana, chintana and yoga.

The foundation of shastriya sangeet, the ragas, are associated deeply with particular deities and jyotish, and consciously include deity names or religious themes.

The Hindustani Vrindavani Saranga and the Carnatic eponym, for example, may be musically distinct but evoke the same bhava; Bana Bana Dhundan Jaun and Srirangapura Vihara evoke the same romantic longing for lord Hari as one seeks an elusive light in soothing forests. This phenomenon displays conscious design in what the raga ought to be.

The very purpose of shastriya sangeet is to channelise, actualise, and inspire devotion and a contemplation of higher concerns. The divinisation of music is due to the musicality of the divine, where existence itself is conceptualised as melodies played by Shiva and Shakti.

The universe emerges from Shiva’s nada, and finds its end with Chamunda playing a veena made out of the universe’s spine. The Vedanga known as Gandharva Veda is the source of the swaras of music — making music an outgrowth of the Vedas.

Veda swarupini Saraswati is also Samarupa, i.e., appearing as music herself. The Upanishads’ Shabda Brahman, the cosmic sound permeating and characterising existence, is a means of reaching Parama Brahman, the ultimate reality. Shabda Brahman, the music underlying conditioned existence, was equated with the Vedas by Sri Krishna in the Gita.

From the musical trinity and right up till this day, composers and musicians are driven by dharma; Muthuswamy Dikshitar, for instance, keeps referring to particular Amnayas of Shiva in his kritis, and it is from these Amnayas that the seven swaras, the seven crore mantras to be in existence, and the five Vedas emerge from.  

Those who wish to ‘adapt’ and ‘democratise’ Carnatic music by deracinating it from sanatana and injecting it with foreign elements are violating the very raison d’etre of Carnatic music.

Music is not culture neutral, and is not mere arrangement of notes. If it were so, then all cultures using the heptatonic scale would have independently arrived at our ragas and compositions — which they have not, for I am not aware of equivalents of Nata Bhairava or Natakuranji in the Western Classical system (of which I am also a trained vocalist).

Separating sanatana from shastriya sangeet, as Krishna is trying to do, is as ridiculous as separating heat from fire. When the idea, the concept, the very essence of Carnatic music is sanatani worship, secularising the same is cultural theft being committed against Hindus. 

The process of enforced secularisation has been waged against sanatanis since the days of Islamic rule. To dilute Diwali’s recounting of the grandeur of Lord Ram, it was rechristened as Jashn-e-Chiraghan by the Mughals, just like how modern-day Mughal-Macaulays characterise Durga Puja as a “cultural” and not religious affair.

The goal is to take from Hindus what is theirs, and return it to them devoid of their value systems and spiritual outlook, continuing a civilisational onslaught which Hindus have nonetheless endured. Can raga Saraswati be isolated from Ma Sharada?

Clearly, those who wish to engage in such cultural theft, even if they can execute the technicalities of performance, are devoid of the spirit. Their art is pale imitation, whereby they puppeteer a corpse while trying to pass it off as an alive being. Such deceivers are no stakeholders in the system for they desecrate its integrity. 

The Hindustani paddhati has a long and illustrious history of Muslim ustads — till date, they maintain the basic sanatani character of the art, right up till compositions on deities being sung, lamp-lighting prior to mangaladhwani, and Saraswati worship being the norm.

One need not go into details of legendary figures such as Tansen serving in the courts of Muslim rulers, while continuing to name ragas in Sanskrit or Braj bhasha. Maintaining the integral sanatani nature of our symbols, rituals, and modes of worship — including music — is non-negotiable for all Bharatiyas.

It is a question not of mere aesthetics, but of the survival of our common heritage. What we sing and play is who we are.

The leverage which the gatekeepers hold by controlling the academy and cultivating their inherited connections has resulted in an exploitative system of favouritism, nepotism, and active politicisation of Carnatic music.

If anything, the academy in its present form is stultifying Carnatic music while engaging in short-term political one-upmanship. With changing times and tastes, any musical system needs to experiment with ideas, formats, and instrumentalities.

However, the loss of its very essence would mean losing all distinctiveness, as also the purpose for its being. If classical music is to be denigrated to appease the fluvial whimsies (musical and ideological), then it would remain neither classical nor music.

Thankfully, both Carnatic and Hindustani paddhatis have a thriving and diverse ecosystem of enthusiasts and musicians. Ossified organisations burdened with the stifling control of oligopolies, such as the academy, are acting as impediments to the democratic openness required for navigating the times.

True democratisation entails embracing the myriad rasikas and musicians, old and new, to freely shape the music as they collectively see fit, instead of non-musicians passing diktats from closed assemblies.

An anecdote I stumbled onto while navigating the history of Carnatic music is worth sharing.

Veena Dhanammal, an exalted name in Carnatic music (a non-Brahmin amongst many such greats, now that accusations of Brahminical patriarchy are misleadingly being thrown at Carnatic music), was informed that a music academy is being set up in Madras (Chennai).

She asked, what is the academy going to do? Upon being briefed of its object, being perplexed, she quipped, “They’ll talk about music?”. Times have degraded indeed, for in those days the academy at least did talk about music.