Profundity

Inspiration is part of creativity.

I have made the aforementioned statement many times in many forums . But the fact of the matter is, many find it difficult to distinguish between ‘inspiration’ and ‘copying’. The reasons for the difficulty vary depending on the people and their mental make-up.

 Long ago, I wrote about 3 poets belonging to three totally different eras and also about how the 2nd one  got inspired by the 1st one and how the 3rd one was inspired by the 1st and the 2nd one. I shall just give the names of the three poets and without any further elaboration move on to ILaiyaraaja.

The 3 poets were – Thirumangaiyaazhwar(8th Century), Kamban(12th Century) and KaNNadasan(20th Century). 

When it comes to ILaiyaraaja, there is a group which would criticize him even if he sneezes. Needless to say this group would have heard not more than 5% of his compositions. People in this group do not know that when he scored music for a full fledged play (MaasatRa Manam) way back in 1969, he used original tunes. Nor do they know that he did some movies for free even when his market price was the highest among Indian composers (one of the movies was the Malayalam movie ‘Sammohanam’ which even won an award at an International Film Festival). 

And it is mainly this group which with its half-baked knowledge, brands his as ‘copy cat’. One of the songs cited by this group is ‘Endha Poovilum Vaasam UNdu’(MurattukkaaLai-1981). 

Let us first look at the facts. 

Antonio Ruiz-Pipó was a composer from Spain who wrote and composed some beautiful pieces. One of the pieces is called ‘Cancion Y Danza No.1’. This piece is in fact part of Trinity College syllabus for classical guitar grade 8.

The accusation is- ILaiyaraaja copied from Antonio Ruiz-Pipó.

Is this true?

Listening to the piece, the first humming of Janaki and most part of the Pallavi resembles the piece. But then what happens after that?

The guitar strums for 6 seconds. Suddenly the flute appears from nowhere and sings like a bird. Record this piece separately and play it to anybody. I bet they would say, ‘Oh, South Indian folk with guitar as the background’. Even experts in WCM would not associate this with Antonio Ruiz-Pipó.

Play the following piece where the violins and violas alternate between the cello, with each set playing different melodies and WCM aficionados would ask, ‘Is this piece from a classical symphony?’

The bulbul thara piece with bass guitar in the background would of course make even people not exposed to any major form of music, sit up, simply because of the way it pulls the strings of one’s heart.

How is the CharaNam? A mix of folk and semi-classical? But there is more to it. 

The higher-octave notes-going up to ‘Ma’in the third and the fourth lines- would make an Indian classical musician wonder as to how brilliant the composer could be.

The second interlude would probably make a poet with musical knowledge come up with a caption like- When Thames met Cauvery. This is because of the sound of the strings in WCM style backed by the folk instrument. And what would people say if they listened to the romance between the flute, the strings and the keys in the next segment?

The bulbul thara at the end puts things in a nutshell:

If a musical piece of a great composer can be taken as the base from yet another genius and expanded so beautifully like this, does it not speak volumes of his greatness?

After all, what is life without inspiration and creativity?

Afflatus

Getting inspired is a trait, I am sure all of us have. How, when and where, we don’t know.. But the fact is we all get inspired one way or the other and almost all the times, it results in a positive action.

Let me narrate a short episode from my life now.

About 18 years ago, I had a serious problem with my health and had to be confined to bed for a week. What it was and how serious it was are all not relevant here and are beyond the scope of this post. All I can say is that the ‘confinement’ was literal in the sense that I was not allowed to get up except for my eating sessions and for other small sessions. For a person who hates lying down on the bed beyond 5 am, this was indeed a very severe punishment. Moreover, I had to keep both my legs up and place them on a stool while an equipment with a pulley would be pulling me back.

My professional commitments forced me to be in touch with the office constantly through the phone. Though this was a positive distraction in a way, it was against the Doctor’s instructions. So, I was ill at ease.

To top it all, the ‘walkman’ was not working and I did not have i -pod (I don’t remember if I had even heard of that name then!).Reading anything continuously was ruled out too for medical reasons. ‘A great punishment’, I was thinking to myself when something caught my eye. One small creature peeped through the window sill and after a glance and a ‘tweet’ (not the ‘micro blogging’ one .The danger in writing about the past is that some words totally carry a different meaning and connotation in this digital world), the creature left only to return with its ‘friend’.

 I had seen this tiny creature since my childhood but only now did I spot the difference. The other creature, though it was looking similar, surely looked different in terms of the features. The first one had a uniform brown shade on its body and had a shorter tail while the second one had a kind of grey crown and black spots, which almost seemed like a beard below its beak. ‘Oh..How much to learn’ I thought. By then, I could somehow discern that the former was the female species and the latter, a male.

It was obvious that they wanted to set up a family and therefore, were looking to build a comfortable home. Within few hours, the male appeared with the grass on its beak. The female which was making more noise went around flapping its wings until it identified the best place to construct the house. Once this was spotted, it went on instructing the male partner which obliged religiously. In between, both the creatures spotted me too .They must have thought to themselves, ‘What an awkward position this man is in. Anyway, it is good for us since this bloke is unlikely to get up now and disturb our work!’

At the most, I could have shooed them away or at least asked one of my family members to perform that act on my behalf. But, I did not want to. There was a selfish interest of course, but the reason for my decision had more to do with my love for birds and most importantly my propensity to observe and learn things.

The next 6 days were spent just by watching the birds go about their tasks caring for nothing else. It was a great sight to see them plan their construction like trained architects and engineers ‘Would they by any chance have read Bhagawat Gita?’, wondered I.. Who taught them to be ‘Karma Yogis?’

After a week, as I rejoined my duty, I was lost in my own world of sales figures and budgets, but still I remembered the creatures. One evening, when I went to that room to check the status of their Home, I found to my dismay that it was deserted. Though I could not make out what went wrong, I felt sad and left it at that.

And I got fit within a couple of months with my physical pain gone with the wind. But the pain of seeing the ‘deserted place’ remains with me.

I am sure most of you would have made out that the creature referred to in the post is the Sparrow.

Today (March 20^th) is World Sparrow Day. 

The sparrow, that beautiful creature is now almost extinct and is likely to be declared as an endangered species soon. The same Digital World where Apples and Berries are no longer associated only with fruits, is the culprit. It is of course very easy to argue that if not for technology, we would not be sharing thoughts like this, just at the click of a button. Agreed, to a certain extent, but let us also lean back and think if we have ever felt that this world just does not belong to only us(meaning human beings) but also to millions of other living creatures. Let us start questioning ourselves as to what can be done to make the world a better world to live for all creatures.

Let me now take up a song-which in my opinion, is a marvel - and dedicate it to the Sparrow.

The beauty of ‘Chittukkuruvi Vetkkapadudhu’ lies in its rhythmic pattern. No, not just the pattern of the percussion, for which he is known for, but also in the way the lines in the Pallavi and CharaNams are designed and structured, albeit spontaneously.

The composition is in the normal Aadi taaLam in Tisra gati(aadi taaLam is the most commonly used cycle and has 8 beats and ‘tisram’ is 3 beats. So, typically a composition set in this TaaLam and Nadai should have 24 beats. Each beat will be further sub-divided into micro-beats.  I do not want to get too technical here as that is reserved for my other blog Rajamanjari. However, to highlight the hidden beauties, certain details and explanation are required.

First, look at the last line of the Pallavi which goes like ‘Muthirai Oththadam Ittadhum Nidirai Varume’. Here, each phrase follows 1 2 3 4(ta ka dhi mi) in the faster mode and there are 5 phrases. It is therefore 20 micro-beats. The remaining 4 are left blank, 2 before the first phrase and after the last phrase.

The CharaNams go a step further and the last line - Pattu chiRagu PaRavai Paruva Sumaiyai Perume- goes as 1 2 3 4/ 1 2 3 4 /1 2 3 4/ 1 2 3 4 /1 2 3 4/1 2 3 4.

Let me try and make it more simpler (if at all, that is possible!). One Tisram= 3 beats. So, the two lines quoted above should have 12 beats each. But the Laya Raaja doubles the speed and makes the vocals render in that speed. Generally, this is done (and mostly by him) for percussion alone even as the vocals render in normal speed. But the Laya Raaja that he is, he shows he can do it for vocals as well!

Not surprisingly, once when Vairamuththu was asked as to which one was his most difficult and toughest song, he quoted this song instantly.

Credit also goes to SPB and Janaki as it needs a lot of breath control and also a firm grip on the taaLam to render this.

In fact, this marvel occurs in the prelude itself though there are no words in that. Listen to the humming of Janaki and SPB. The first ‘Tara ra tara ra’ has ten  ‘1 2 3 4’ s rendered by Janaki(with SPB’s voice peeping up in lower octave now and then) and the two ‘1 2 3 4’s are rendered by SPB after that. The following humming sees twelve ‘1 2 3 4’s with Janaki in higher octave and SPB in lower octave.

Laya Harmony!

The percussion plays three  ‘1 2 3 4’ in faster mode, whenever it is present. Note that it is absent when those ‘special lines’ are rendered by the vocals.It is absent in the beginning too -when the sparrows kiss in Tisram with the flute casting a magical spell mesmerised by the spectacle.

The melodic instruments too play this ‘ 1 2 3 4’ in the prelude with the strings playing two and the flute responding in the third ‘1 2 3 4’.

Just because Laya dominates the scene, by no stretch of imagination should it be misconstrued that the melody takes a back seat. In fact, the song abounds with melody.

The sliding and gliding of strings in the first interlude, the singing of guitar and the cooing of flute and the ‘leitmotif ‘of the guitar in the same interlude, the majestic melody of the acoustic guitar to the backing of its ‘brothers’ and the call and response between the strings and the guitar in the second interlude are just some of the melodic aspects apart from the bass guitar, rhythm guitar and the flute melodies which back the vocals.

The composition also follows a very different scale. Though it is set in the minor scale, it eschews ‘dha’ while descending. As per the Raga texts, the raga which follows this structure is ‘Udayachandrika’, a raga not used by anybody before. But let me caution you that this composition cannot be said to be based on ‘Udayachandrika raga’. One can probably say that it follows the ‘Udayachandrika scale’.

And now for the inspiration. The first two phrases- ‘Chittukkuruvi Vetkappadudhu’- have been inspired from the Czech composer  Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony no.9, ‘From the new World’.. Mind you, it is just the third movement in the symphony, which has an entirely different tune in the other 2 movements. And surely, Dvorak wouldn’t have even imagined the ‘mel kaala tisram’ divided into 24 micro-beats, and rendered with gusto by two great legendary singers from India.

This is what a real inspiration can do.

A mortal, who loves nature, got inspired by two tiny birds and overcame his serious health issue, changing the way he looked at life, in the process.

An immortal(at least as far as his music is concerned) got inspired by just one line in the 3^rd movement of a 19^th century symphony to produce an outstanding composition which made that ‘mortal’, who got inspired by the sparrows , and who is always inspired by the immortal works of the genius, decipher the significant intricacies in that composition.

Long live Inspiration! Long live Music! Long live the Sparrows!

Check this out on Chirbit