Bakrid thought: How Carnatic music is anyway catholic

When music icon Pt Jasraj sings 'Mero Allah Meherban', even the average listener would never wonder why the words sound Muslim even as the vocalist has a Hindu name. And all what even the connoisseurs of Hindustani classical would do is to tune in yet again to the appeal of Bhairav as a morning raga — be it invocatory of "my god", "yours" or "ours".

For, this upcountry system has a historicity of syncretism. Islam has enriched it over seven centuries of interface with a Hindu culture prevalent in the Indian subcontinent. The result is a beautiful blend of spirituality around Allah and Shiva both musically and thematically. It has only added to the dynamism of Hindustani music, more so since the times of poet-musician Amir Khusro (1253-1325) as a Sufi scholar born in what is now western Uttar Pradesh to a family tracing Turkic lineage on the paternal side.

Cut to 2018, and sharpen your ears close to Carnatic. You hear a discordant note being struck this month in the circle following a clash of concepts between what turns out to be religious. It was avoidable and is needless, because Carnatic, with roots deep in the southern part of the nation, is an equally amazing if eclectic music idiom.

If Hindustani has quite a few of its ragas (melody-types) and rendition styles steeped in unmistakable West Asian ethos, Carnatic sometimes goes farther from its Cauvery-centric moorings around the Deccan to conjure up compositions that sound occidental to the core. How not! After all, just to quote one instance, a certain Tyagaraja (1767-1847) living in the Cauvery belt of present-day Tamil Nadu was in his prime when the band music at march-pasts by army troupes of the British that had begun to wield administrative control down south of India. Some of the kritis of the saint, arguably the central figure in the Carnatic trinity, resonate with his receptivity to the musical charm of the colonial bugle.

Plain note, a signature character of Western music, thus, strengthened its position in Carnatic music. If some of Tyagaraja’s compositions, especially in raga Sankarabharanam (that corresponds to the Major Scale in Western classical) are devoid of the microtonal oscillations that are actually integral to Carnatic, the system saw his contemporary adding to the subgenre of kritis avoiding what is called gamaka. Muthuswami Dikshitar (1775-1835), incidentally a resident of Cauvery belt known for its crop fertility too, watered (down) some of his (400-plus) compositions by invalidating their scope for heavy strain around throat muscles. Songs like Pankaja Mukha and Vande Meenkashi are exhilarating examples of infusion of Western music to Carnatic.

Suddenly, bits of the temple music began sounding like tunes from the church as well. The languages of English and Sanskrit found an abstract synthesis. The southern repertoire even today has, for instance, a short piece called ‘English Notes’ that typically comes towards the end of some kacheris, much to lend the fag-end mood its fair share of lightening. Otherwise too, beginners of Carnatic find Dikshitar’s ‘nottuswaras’ (not to miss the lyricism in the portmanteau) good learning experience, given that their gamaka-less property makes it easier to sing.

Not to be missed, Dikshitar even travelled upward of the Vindhyas in a spiritual journey that enabled him to imbibe the essentialities of Hindustani classical, largely slower than the pace of average Carnatic kritis. One result of his Kashi sojourn was linking Ganga music with the Cauvery’s. Meandering passages, typical of rivers along north Indian plains, found their placid waters getting mixed with the gurgling currents along the peninsula’s inlands.

Just the reposefulness in Dikshitar’s ‘Sri Satyanarayanam’ is testimony to Dikshitar inculcating a culture of unhurriedness to Carnatic. It is not merely because the composition is tuned in raga Subhapantuvarali, which has equivalent in Todi upcountry, that several of its phrases sound as much Hindustani as Carnatic. The sedation, primarily, has its say in the feature. The bearded ustad’s freewheeling musicality was effectively set to the vibhuti-smeared bhagavatar’s penchant for rhythmic precision.

While Syama Shastri (1762-1827) in the trinity perhaps remained relatively ‘chaste’ in the trinity, his was a period the music system saw a Muslim down of the Cauvery belt composing songs that was to later have an influence on the Carnatic system. In the semi-arid lands of Ramanathapuram, Kunangudi Mastan Sahib (1792-1838) became a Sufi living in coastal Thondi, which was a port site by the Bay of Bengal under the erstwhile Pandyan kingdom. Some of his compositions founded presentation in kacheri format, courtesy 20th-century veena player V S Gomathisankara Iyer (whose 110th birth anniversary was yesterday), also an acclaimed teacher. Gomathisankara was three years old in 1921, when Tamil literature lost a stalwart in freedom fighter Subramania Bharati, whose poems (some of which are part of Carnatic music) are believed to have derived occasional inspiration from Mastan Sahib as well.

Now, here’s a throwback to the ‘English Notes’. There are a handful of such Western-sounding items in Carnatic, the most popular among them being one composed by Muthaiah Bhagavatar, a native of Harikesanallur in deep-south Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli region. Set to raga Sankarabharanam (in its skeletal concept), this three-minute piece with only swara sounds and no literary words can easily be mistaken for a Western ditty with just solfas.

Muthiah Bhagavatar, who has had a strong Kerala connection with his becoming the first principal of the 1939-founded Swathi Thirunal College of Music in Thiruvananthapuram, lived for 67 years. His lifetime (1877-1945) had its middle part significant for Carnatic, also because of it overlapped with the period of a Christian musician from the same region of Tirunelveli. His name: Abraham Pandithar. Born in 1958 at Surandai to a family of practising Siddha physicians, he was a composer of several classical kritis in praise of Jesus. In fact, this August 31 would mark the death centenary year of Pandithar, an author-translator, who had theoretical eminence in both Carnatic and Western Classical he learned from regional gurus.

Such a history of inclusivity is what makes it sad for Carnatic music today to be bogged down by a battle on religious grounds. It all began recently, when a frontline vocalist of south Indian classical chose to sing at a function hosted by a Christian organisation. As allegations flew thick and fast, with social media generating stories that eventually turned out to be false as well as malicious, Chennai-based O S Arun was forced to cancel the programme in his city. For the middle-aged vocalist, who was raised in even more cosmopolitan Delhi upcountry, the incident potentially marks a check on his prospect for similar collaborative cultural ventures.

It wasn’t just Arun who fell prey to a wrong propaganda that Carnatic music was being plagiarised in some people’s greed to make money by dishing it out to non-Hindus. Claims that Tyagaraja’s Rama was being simply replaced with Yesu (for Jesus) gained great belief in social media, even as vocalists of the ‘ilk’ of Arun kept denying them. The targets included top vocalists Aruna Sairam, Nityasree Mahadevan and T M Krishna — experimental on such lines as well, in varied degrees. Stories even spread that Arun was supposed to wear a cross on his chest while singing at the (now-dropped) August 26 function convened by composer Shyaam (whose real name T Samuel Joseph was suitably highlighted) in the Tamil Nadu capital.

While fundamentalist forces found the episode as the latest in evangelism hijacking Hinduism, the basic point seemed to have been completely forgotten in the cacophony. South Indian classical music can sound Carnatic, essentially, with its efflorescence of gamakas, however strong the slant has conventionally been on the lyrics. Without those loops that sound close to being flashes of quick falsetto, no passage of this music would sound Carnatic. While Tyagaraja may himself be among the pioneers of catholicity in Carnatic by gifting it with plain notes, it is outright immoral to replace Yesu as the first word of his famed Rama nee samaanamevaru (a Telugu composition starting with the line meaning ‘Who can equal you, lord Ram’) as was being widely floated to the consternation of music lovers (irrespective of faith). But then, none quite sought to do such piracy, it was later getting increasingly clear.

Given the episode riddled with absurdity, it is high time Carnatic music refreshes itself with its thematic heterogeneity. It would help the system more than anything or anybody else in contemporary times. For, south Indian classical exponents continue to complain of a relegated domestic and international status as artistes vis-a-vis their Hindustani khayal and dhrupad counterparts. The counter could be that Carnatic needn’t require invocation of non-Hindu gods to prove its gamaka richness. True. Even so, now is perhaps the right time to retrieve the aesthetic vitality of its multi-religious contributions that seems to be on the wane in the 21st century. If this August has served Carnatic a reminder to it, today, amid the festival of Bakrid, won’t be a bad occasion to turn the leaf afresh.

(The writer has been a follower of classical music for four decades.)