Within and Without

 The music system in my car continued from where it left as soon as the ignition was turned on. Within a few minutes, it said, ‘Naan KaaNbathu Un Kolame..andRum..indRum..endRum..’ and my mind went on a flashback mode. But unlike the kind of flashbacks we all get to see in a typical tamizh cinema, this one was an amalgam; and admixture of many incidents/thoughts.

It was sometime during the mid ‘80s.Having lived in different cities/towns in India and studying in different institutions, I was happy to be back in Madras, the place where I was born. But the happiness had more to do with something else. Until then, ‘concerts’ were mostly confined to that small box called the ‘radio’. Here I was in a city where concerts were held almost every evening, which would give me an opportunity to listen to stalwarts like T.N.Seshagopalan, Maharajapuram Santhanam, D.K.Jayaraman, Dr.Balamuralikrishna and many others. Not the one to miss out on opportunities, I utilised this fully. But more than all this, I was eagerly waiting for the month of December when the entire atmosphere in the city would be soaked in music. And my wait was not for concerts alone.

Right from the time somebody entered my life with his music, I have been intrigued by the theory of music. By theory I mean not just the bookish knowledge but the way the techniques are applied. Needless to say Carnatic Music has a lot of techniques and surely one birth is not enough to learn all these. Therefore, what interested me more were the lecture/demonstration sessions during the Music Season. But I did not have to wait longer.

Sometime during the month of August, a new Association formed by the youth brigade(this brigade included names like Vijay Siva, Lalgudi Krishnan etc.,) held a lecture/demo session and one of the topics was ‘Classical ragas in film music’. A serious looking gentleman(years later, I experienced his ‘seriousness’ in my office, but that is a totally different story!) played songs from ‘old’ movies. I was waiting for a particular composer to be referred/discussed but much to my chagrin, it came just towards the tail end of the session when he played ‘Pon maalai pozhudhu’!

I was upset and even irritated. A decade after his entry, just one song is said to be based on a classical raga? Wasn’t it because of him that I got interested in music? Wasn’t it because of him that I found music to be so beautiful? Wasn’t it because of him that I started exploring that most beautiful thing?

How many ragas he had used by then! And yet, just one Kedaram!!

That day, I seriously felt that one day his name and his works would be discussed in the same premises with reverence.

That ‘premises’ is situated at T.T.Krishnamachari road(then known as ‘Mowbrays road’) and is called as The Music Academy(of course that session was held in the ‘mini hall’).

In any case, my love for lecture/demonstration sessions was not lost after this. On the other hand, it grew by leaps and bounds after listening to the likes of Smt.Vedavalli, Smt.Vidya Shankar, Smt.Reeta Rajan. Each and every session was a learning and threw light on various aspects and dimensions of music. In fact, after each session I would mentally play a Raaja song based on the raga(s) discussed and see how he used the same raga(s). Of course, lectures were not just on ragas but on different techniques, but I am not getting into all that now for some obvious reasons. There were even lectures by dancers and I still remember the remark of a very famous dancer- ‘’I see music and listen to dance’’- and the way she showed the different gaits of some characters from RamayaNa.

All these scenes were mentally playing in my mind yesterday even as I was nearing The Music Academy and even as my car was travelling on the T.T.K.road, I remembered how I would rush to catch route no.23A from the place where I lived and get down at the signal at TTK road/Mowbrays road.

So finally my dream of seeing my idol- the gentleman from whom I first learnt to appreciate music, the master from whom I learnt the many intricacies in music, the guiding force in my life- during the ‘season’ as a chief guest in the festival I love the most. If at all I realised the true meaning of ‘Dream Come True’, it was that moment; a moment I had been waiting for since 3 decades.

In fact, Raaja sir and the Academy share two things in common. The ‘M’ part is too obvious to be mentioned. It is the second thing which is more significant (and sadly absent in many, nowadays).It is that ‘P’ factor called as ‘Punctuality’. The curtains went up exactly as 5pm.

The next 25 minutes or so came as a pleasant surprise to me as Shri.N.Murali poured encomiums on Raaja sir though he got some facts wrong(like ‘AnnakkiLi’ being released in 1975, ‘Symphony scored in 1998’ and ‘Music Messiah’  released in 2016). When he mentioned about ‘Rakkamma Kaiya Thattu’ and the BBC poll, Raaja sir laughed and gestured to him indicating ‘why about that here’.

When Shri.Ravi KiraN referred to music in general by saying ‘Tyagaraja to ILaiyaraaja’, the Maestro shook his head suggesting ‘Don’t even compare me with him!’.

On the whole, he was calmness personified but what was striking was the camaraderie he shared with carnatic musicians in general. His big namsakaram and smile to Shri.Umayalpuram Sivaraman from the stage is still etched in my mind (it is the affinity between the two ‘Laya’ masters!).

Finally, when got up to speak, the Hall reverberated like a thunder.  Two things stood out here- 1.It was a prepared speech, 2. Speech was in English. People who follow him closely know that his delivery has always been extempore and that he hardly refers to the notes (pun intended here!). But here it must be understood that the Inaugural ceremony is a formal occasion and that it is attended by people across the globe. That is why, he deviated from his usual way.

However, this did not stop him from saying certain things spontaneously. He started off by addressing Shri.Ravi KiraN-who in his speech had requested the Academy and the audience to support instrumentalists- by saying ‘People should come on their own and not after ‘requesting’ them’. He then spoke briefly about his journey and how he had attended the Music conference at the Academy when he was ‘nobody’.  His remark that 1000 films and 5000 songs don’t mean much to him showed yet again that he is above everything. But what made the audience nod their heads in appreciation and put their hands together was the tamizh verse he quoted on water not being the same in a river and connecting this with music.

The jewel in the crown was the song he quoted, a song not many in the audience were aware of. And I had more than one reason to be overjoyed because the song is a personal favourite of mine. Most importantly, it is not from his so called ‘80s. It is one of his 21^st century compositions from a movie which never got released(Ajanta)  and yet won him the Tamizh Nadu state award for best music direction in the year 2007. Though I have already written about this song in Orkut long ago, I wouldn’t mind writing about his again for  reasons not that difficult to understand.

The composition starts without a prelude in the musical voice of the Master. It asks us a lot of questions, the answers of which will take eons to find out. More about this later..

‘Oh Music, where were you?’ is followed by the melody of the synth instruments and the keys. It looks as though the instruments are trying to answer that question!

The Master continues the question- Were you in the soul? Or in the feelings?Or in the mind? Or in the intellect?

No, I don’t know where you were but you are inside me and flow like a spring.

The synth melody continues in the first interlude with the percussion playing in chatushram and the synth bass giving its own shade in its unique way.

Are you one of the forms of the breeze? Or are you just a sound form?- asks the Maestro in the first CharaNam.

You are formless and yet you attract everyone. Is there anybody in this worl who is not mesmerised by you?

Aren’t we related from the previous births?

The Master of varieties that he is, he changes the pattern of the percussion in the second interlude and makes it play 1 2 3 4/ 1 2 3 4/1 2 3/ 1 2 3/ 1 2. He does not stop with this. He makes the saxophone enter for the first time and makes it move with pulsating vibrancy and shining with a spiritual radiance. It is sedulous craftsmanship as the second saxophone responds briefly. The synth melody follows with spright while the keys respond with repose. What is music without contrasts? What is life without contrasts?

The second charaNam is filled with nostalgia. Musical nostalgia..

Sadness inside.. happiness outside.

Oh..Music where were you?

Where are you?

PS : Wrote this 8 years ago in the facebook group - ILaiyaraaja - The Master.

Lateral

Sometime back, when we visited a wildlife sanctuary situated very close to the sea, I found something amazing. I am not talking about a sighting a tiger or a lion-which in fact would have invoked a feeling of awe and even fear. But here it was very different. For starters, it was not an animal. It was a tiny bird which would fit into our fist with a very different shade of blue and a kind yellowish patch. If only I was a Salim Ali or a M.Krishnan, I would have immediately recognized the species and would have made a note in the pocket book. But it does not matter, for after all a bird is a bird is a bird as the Bard of Avon would have said.

What does matter however is the flight of the bird. Let me try and explain. I first spotted it from a distance of about 10 metres even as I was driving on that treacherous ‘road’. My first reaction was ‘Oh, how beautiful!’. I stopped the car and tried to click. As if driven by instinct, it moved and took off. It rose, went up vertically straight, swiveled, took an oblique turn and went to the other side-that is the left side of the car. All done in a split second.

I was astounded and stunned. Being a mathematics student, the flight looked like a parabola to me and let me admit that I had never seen anything like this before. The entire scene is etched in my memory and it gives a strange internal quivering. It is indeed very difficult to express..

What that bird did(or still doing) must be very natural for it. In fact, it may not even be aware that its flight is something extraordinary. Even when it looks at the other species of the birds with ‘normal’ flights (read as flights familiar to us), I doubt if it would flap its wings with pride thinking ‘see how different and great I am’.

Whatever it is, I discovered the real meaning of ‘poetry in motion’ that day.

Looking back now and pondering as to why it gave-and still continues to give- that feeling, I arrived at certain answers.

1. What I saw was something I had never seen before.

2. We always associate things we know with certain specific actions. And this applies to the people we know as well.

3. When our beliefs are questioned, we are shaken up.

4. There are so many things unknown to us in this world and yet we feel we know everything.

5. Nature is Divine. Or in other words, the Divine Force itself manifests as Nature.                                                                                                                   

Coming to think of it, the entire ‘episode’ has some hidden lessons. Without getting into those lessons and probably reserving those for one of my future posts, let me get into the rare gem of today, which I feel is relevant to that poetry in motion I witnessed.

It has got nothing to do with the birds, nor is anybody flying in the song. However, this song also strikes us with suddenness reminiscent of the flight of that bird. It is of course beautiful and spontaneous and also shakes one up questioning the beliefs and mindsets.

The first impression one gets on hearing the prelude of ‘Thaen KuLaththile’ from ‘Ezhuthadha SattangaL’(1984) is ‘It is a club-dance song and is a mix of pop and jazz’. This is because it has a host of western instruments which move ebulliently. Let us see how.

The drums play a beat and echoes. The bass guitar plays 1 2 3/ 1 2 3/ 1 2 3/ 1 2 3 4(ta ki  ta/ta ki ta/ta ki ta/ta ka dhi mi) for two cycles. The saxophone joins and plays a melody with the bass guitar getting subtler and the western percussion playing the same pattern as that of bass guitar’s the only difference being the stress on the first syllable in the first three ‘ 1 2 3’ s and on the first and the third syllables in the last ‘1 2 3 4’. The percussion changes the pattern slightly as the saxophone gives way to the other piped instruments. A solo sax follows again with the percussion playing all the syllables. Just towards the end, the electric guitar joins and plays a melody sounding almost like an Indian classical raga.

Ok, till now-except perhaps the last section- it is purely jazzy and therefore we should not be wrong.

And the Pallavi starts…

Is it jazzy too?

Janaki sings in Karnataka khamas in a qawwali style with the tabla backing her. Apart from the electric guitar which appears very briefly after a phrase, there is no trace of any other western instrument.

Did we expect this? And how beautifully the lines give the shades of the raga, and how wonderfully the short Pallavi is composed with the pause after ‘thaen’, with the phrases ‘kadhalile neenja vaicha kaaman avan vetti vaicha’ rolling melodiously and rhythmically. It is also rounded off with a lustrous ‘akaaram’ for one and half cycles.

The jazz returns in the first interlude with the saxophone etching a beautiful melody in the beginning. Suddenly, there is a twist with the electric guitar intercepting and going on its own trip with a touch of nonchalance and even seeming to be insouciant. But nowhere does it sound jarring. The trumpet follows in the same scale and plays with it. Finally the electric guitar says ‘enough is enough’ and goes back to Carnataka khamas, like it did towards the end of the prelude.

The CharaNam continues in the same style of the Pallavi and is marked by another bout of ‘akaaram’ which goes for 4 cycles. Note that the ‘akaaram’ s in the two CharaNams are not the same which proves the creativity of the composer yet again.

The second interlude is more energetic with the electric guitar, bass guitar, saxophone and a bevy of brass instruments playing and dancing spiritedly. The electric guitar plays again in a different scale as if to bring contrast yet again.

Linear, Parabolic and Circular..

Differently different.

That is what is Life anyway!

How to name it?

 The tune of 'Kodiyile Malliyappoo' from 'Kadalora KavithaigaL '(1986) can melt any heart and make us fall in love. With yekkam (surely no English word can be a substitute!) written all over, Jayachandran and Janaki take us to an utopian world where only two souls exist- a la Bharati’s KaaNi nilam.

 

Starting directly without a prelude, the soft Pallavi is indeed in two ragas, with the first two lines in KiravaNi and the last phrases in the in the lines that follow in ShaNmukhapriya. The CharaNams are somewhat long and go at a leisurely pace (doesn’t love too move leisurely?).Alien notes peep in here as well but these only add to the beauty. The pause after each phrase in the first half of the CharaNams accentuate that feeling of ‘yekkam’.

 

The strings, bells, keys, and the bass strings in the first interlude continue the ‘yekkam’ while the emotions evoked by the second interlude can never be expressed in words. A very different sounding instrument backed by the cello moves us, the flute that follows pierces us and the keys and strings bring tears to our eyes.

 

Yekkam….for?