why youth shun carnatic music?

[rasikaranjan]

Youth throng in large numbers for all types of music shows except carnatic music. Is it due to
(1) NON INITIATION TO THE MUSIC(2)IS IT DUE TO IMPREFECT SRUTI ALIGNMENT (3) DUE TO TOO MUCH TEHCNICALITIES>

[coolkapali]

Get your facts right. All ur allegations are false except maybe the first one. However, we may go on and on discussing about this, but the fact remains that carnatic music is for the selected few.

[rasikaranjan]

I should have your views on what I find a burning problem confronting my mission, "how to generate massive enthusiasm amongst the youth, stir them up to take intensive participation in Carnatic Music events."

[munirao2001]

rasikaranjan
Youth of the present generation are attracted mainly by the Hype generated by the Media-both visual and print,High Visibility, National/International Success, High profile Celebrities endorsements, successful event management, scope for their own participation, scope for unconditioned and uncritical listening and enjoyment. This is only applicable for the patrons/rasikas.
Youth have taken to Classical Music in large numbers, learning, practicising and performing, when compared to earlier generations, even with all the uncertainities of attainment of high quality Vidwath or Success. The confidence gained through the real time opportunites to make a good living out of income from practice of Classical Music, will pave the way for continued and increased participation and roles by the youth, in serving the cause of Classical Music and CM.

munirao2001

[vasanthakokilam]

Content rich music that is confident in its own capabilities, that is what we are dealing with. Such music does not usually bend to the ever changing tastes of the mass youth. Such music always has had this discrepancy. You can observe this in the west too. Jazz is known as the 3% music since that is its markeshare/mindshare for quite a long time.

The flip side of the coin is the music that the mass youth throngs to at any time have limited popularity cycle. Look at all that remix craze of a few years back. So why some particular music is popular with the youth? It is because that is the music that the youth currently likes.. The answer sounds flippant but there is no better reason. But if you want to know at another level about mass popularity of any music, the common underlying theme is: The music that is easy on the ears, easy on the feet and easy on the brain ( that which can be appreciated without having to learn to appreciate it ).

If you ask a record industry executive about which sub-genre produces consistent, long lasting revenue stream in India, many in that top 10 would be devotional or light classical music. It may not be the top producer at any time but such music has considerably long life cycle. The biggest one of them in India is: MSS's Venkatesa Suprabatham. I heard that it still sells a good consistent volume every year.

[mohan]

Probably lack of exposure to Carnatic music is the reason.

Unfortunately, innovative ways to attract the younger generation to Carnatic music are quite often one-off efforts that are panned by the establishment and connoisseurs and hence don't continue. eg. fusion concerts incorporating Western instruments or amalgamating with other music forms (rock, jazz), the movies on Carnatic music (marghazi ragam) or Carnatic music themes (Thodi raga, Morning raga)

[mohan]

Also we must remember that Carnatic music is currently appreciated mainly by some people from a few distinct community groups in South India. Hence it is largely associated with these communities and is unable to break away to a larger audience.

[bilahari]

Mohan's point in post 7 is crucial. I have directly heard or sensed from others two common generalisations about CM:
(1) It is almost completely devotional, and in an age of decreasing (?) religiosity, it is not considered "cool" to engage in such pious affairs.
(2) It is Brahmin-dominated and as such rather exclusive.

[srikant1987]

Well it's not exactly about youth ... we find that youth from these "select communities" do show enthusiasm to listen to and even learn Carnatic Music. Some of them don't necessarily associate it with religiosity.

Older people in other communities are also "religious" in their own way: the the music they associate with the religion is not Carnatic music. The youth in the other communities ... many of them proudly don't give a damn about religion, but the others sometimes do look into Carnatic Music. What stops them is their belief that you need to "know things" to appreciate CM more effectively -- even appreciate it at all. These are our best chance and the message that you need not know to appreciate should be spread amongst them.

[rajesh_rs]

Maybe the following reasons are applicable:

1. It is involved, and is not easy to develop an appreciation of it. Often, tutelage is needed to appreciate aspects of the music which don't get noticed by someone at first listen.

2. Cultural reasons - when a certain community or linguistic group is over represented in an art form, you will find that that forms a sort of entry barrier. A paradox here is that Carnatic music has a large number of compositions in Telugu, but has more rasikas from TN than among the Telugus. Correct me if I'm wrong on this.

3. Popular music forms such as film music, western styles such as rock and metal hold more attraction because of their visibility to different cultures - artists like Ricky Martin or Jennifer Lopez or someone like A R Rahman or Himesh Reshammiya are well known all over for their film music. Not even a top Carnatic artist like Yesudas is not as popular for his Carnatic renditions as he is for his film music.

4. Carnatic music probably has a the most complex melodic progressions in all world music, but doesn't have a harmony component to it. The harmony component is probably fascinating for those who have learnt to appreciate western styles like jazz, rock, etc.

5. There are few compositions that are not devotional. Even contemporary composers like M Balamuralikrishna have adopted only devotional themes for their compositions. Popular music has adopted and evolved to include different themes like love, surrealism, narratives, ballads, etc.

6. The energy levels of a typical Carnatic concert are lesser than that of a typical rock concert. For example, T M Krishna rendering a spellbinding Varali is superb and filled with energy for those of us who can appreciate it, but may be a little difficult for others. If you were to see an old Jimi Hendrix or Pink Floyd concert or perhaps a recent Joe Satriani concert, you'd see the emphasis they'd put on virtuosity and the "oomph" of presentation. While Carnatic concerts score max points on the virtuosity of presentation, the style and variety between successive compositions. If you were to go to a Hendrix concert for example, you'd listen to a short, energetic number like "Crosstown Traffic" first perhaps, followed by a bluesy, jazzy "Catfish Blues". (In Carnatic, this is probably like listening to a short energetic Shuddha Dhanyasi kriti followed by a lengthy piece in Nattai full of improvizations.) These would sound quite different in the concert when compared to the CD/record versions and the novelty (and virtuosity) is what keeps the fans hooked and listening.

7. Also, there is the matter of artists being characters in contemporary western and popular music - you'll find a western music fan refering to names of bands and artists rather than scales and progressions, and informed Indian music fans (of Indian music) refer to a raga or a kriti rather than artist more often than not. By contrast, Jimi Hendrix has performed a few songs from older artists - such as All Along the Watchtower (written by Bob Dylan) and these were popular because the melody is different, the chords are different although the lyrics are the same. Similarly other bands like Dream Theater, GNR and other do a lot of so-called "bootlegging" - where they play older artist's popular songs. Even contemporary artists such as Vanessa Mae ape old artists such as Eric Clapton when they perform numbers like "Classical Gas". In Carnatic music, the tradition is that you play old, well known compositions, and not your own, usually.

[Nick H]

I wonder how much time rasikaranjan spends with this youth of whom he speaks?

Quite apart from the fact that he seems not to have noticed the youngsters that do attend carnatic concerts, he seems to be missing out on some facts of life.

rasikaranjan, I have no idea how old you are, but have you forgotten that

--- "youths" have brains and minds of their own.

--- even though the parental influence is the first and deepest in life, to rebel is as natural, often more natural, to the young as to follow, at least during teenage years.

[srinivasrgvn]

-

[Nick H]

Exactly, Srini... you are just one among the many "youths" that the poster did not consult.

[rajaglan]

In a musical family, many likes music. And this cannot be compared to other families and people.

I find very few people can really 'appreciate and enjoy' the nuances of music. When a small kid sings
the melodic phrases of what Janaki amma did in Johny songs, your heart gets filled with joy. And when
MMI's gifted Ga haunts you or the SSI's the traditional Bairavi reach your ears, you get thrilled.

And I feel no need for a formal education in CM to enjoy, I was never formally educated in CM but could
enjoy and appreciate. And I donot differentiate between CM (only for few) and any other music like many
people/vidwans argue here. But it looks like there are lots of albums gets sold of Villu (devi sri prasad)
songs compared to a TMK album. But I still say those who enjoy the music in Villu album is very few.
For most of those people listening to a song is a side/background activity when something else happens
or because it has dance or it has Vijay. And the interest fades quickly. So I would say as Coolkapali put it,
CM, and in general, music is enjoyed by a few tasteful rasikas.

How the taste arrives is very similar to how some people enjoy tasteful food eating
and most others eat with not that much passion. It is like why one wants to go 5 km to eat a Ravaidli in Adigas hotel than eat in
one of those so many nearby restaurant .

So my next argument is among the music lovers the percentage of CM loving
youngsters is increasing nowadays. If you look at Airtel SS Junior or senior prgram, most contestants
are carnatic based. One of the top 3 finalists understood and resolved to learn CM after his 25yrs of
light music singing.

[rajesh_rs]

I don't see why youngsters on this thread are losing their tempers because someone started a thread like this. Frankly guys (and I say this as a youngster myself, I am 27), doesn't it strike you that most people you know probably don't listen to carnatic music, but only to film, pop and other styles? Is it that difficult a topic to digest given the reality that so many friends and people we know don't listen to carnatic music? What's there to get hot tempered about?

[gopalk]

Does the OP feel that CM is losing something by not having the "youths" in mass numbers attending kutcheris? It is quite possible that most of us may be very interested / keen but not able to attend many concerts since we also have a day job?

Maybe our thatha's felt the very same thing about the "youths" of their time - which is the majority of the audience today.

Dont worry boss, CM is safe and thriving.

[srinivasrgvn]

-

[bilahari]

I see nothing wrong with rasikaranjan's post. I agree entirely that CM is not in any peril and I see several youngsters (20s and 30s) in concerts I attend, and I also don't think the lack of mass appeal is worrisome, and actually quite happy with the status quo. However, the question of why CM does not have such a wide appeal especially amongst youngsters (the average age of CMgoing audience in concerts I've attended is still around 50) is perfectly valid for debate, though I don't necessarily attach much importance to it.

I agree that the intellectual demands of CM may be daunting. Most people just listen to music for sheer pleasure, and it may well be that CM is such an intricate tapestry that although a person could merely appreciate it superficially with no knowledge about it, a person's appreciation of and curiosity about the art increases as he/she learns more about it and develops a keener ear. For instance, members of my family who aren't knowledgeable about CM even though they enjoy all sorts of music complain a lot about drawn out alapanais, neravals, and other components of manodharma (especially RTP--they abhor it). They are much more interested in the songs themselves, and even there, my sister complains too few tamil compositions are sung, and she prefers listening to music that she can actually understand. Try as I might to make them understand the significance of alapanais, the sheer pleasure I get from listening to a raga unfold in layers, they just do not get it. I too hated CM for such reasons for several years in my childhood, and really resented having to sit through hours of music I really didn't understand at all. When I started getting interested in CM in my late teens, I got hooked to this forum and learned a lot of the theory behind music from this place, then started learning the violin, and my appreciation of CM has in turn multiplied manifold. I do not think that one necessarily needs knowledge about CM to appreciate it, but in my experience, the knowledge (just basic knowledge) has certainly proved beneficial. CM appreciation is probably more intellectually demanding than film music appreciation, and I'm not sure people are willing or bothered to take such pains to acquaint themselves with the art, especially since film music is ubiquitous, more widely available everywhere, and just more accessible.

There may not be an American Idol type mass following in CM, but the few interested people who do join our tribe nevertheless enrich the art, and I cannot ask for very much more.

[VK RAMAN]

If each one of us lead by role model our children would carry the mantle of CM; have we done it? I surely did not do and hence I cannot blame my children for lack of interest in CM

[srikant1987]

For most of those people listening to a song is a side/background activity when something else happens or because it has dance or it has Vijay.

THIS is a very, very profound thing. Indeed, it is setting aside some time to just listen to music that really takes you a level higher. A lot of people play music all day, as they read novels or textbooks or do their home or tidy a room ... and after all this, they claim "listening to music" is a hobby, and that they "can't live without music". For me, on the other hand, it's impossible to do anything else when I'm "listening" to music, indeed very hard to do anything when good music is being played in proximity!
---
These days, what with so many classes before, after and within school, it is a neigh impossible to just play some music and spend time absorbing it, doing nothing else: not even singing along. People around might think you're retarded. But I think this is something very, very helpful in improving music appreciation.

[gn.sn42]

I am a very young person, you will be astonished if I tell you my age...
I started learning music at the age of 7

So you're over 7. Now, if you were under 7, I would really be astonished... Seriously, there are several posters here who are well under 20, and no doubt many others who are as young or younger and who keep their ages to themselves.

I listen to such a lot of CM and my mother listens only to film songs! My father doesn't listen to music at all! But, how do I have interest in carnatic music? It is puzzling. There must be some 'pUrvajanma bandham' with carnatic music.

No, this is not puzzling in the slightest. If you substitute "punk rock" for CM, then by your logic, for some kids, "there must be some 'pUrvajanma bandham' with punk rock"?

So, please don't say 'youth shun carnatic music'! It is insulting youths like me. Don't generalize! There are people out there, whom you may not be aware of.

I don't know the motives of the OP, but here's a generalization for you: CM listeners like to think of themselves as superior to everyone else; and like to be as gloomy as possible. Hence, they will say things like

- CM is the greatest art form in all possible universes
- Kids don't appreciate CM (kids being anyone under 50)
- The art of CM is slowly dying; none of today's artists are a patch on the old greats
- The audience does not know what good CM is, they just want simple/clichéd numbers
- Yet for some reason, perversely, they come to CM concerts, sometimes in very large numbers, just to ruin the true connoisseur's day
- The other members of the audience don't know how to behave
- Most individual artists are terrible, and are destroying CM by performing ridiculous experiments when they can stay true to the masters

Such statements are nonsense, of course, but this forum is sort of like therapy for some; leave them be. The kids are all right; they don't need defending.

[vasanthakokilam]

Any general statement people make is about the majority. When something is obviously observable as a vast majority phenomenon, quoting the remaining minority as a reason to dismiss a valid observation does not serve any purpose. That is why we are forced to disclaim our sentences with "I do not really mean all, there are of course exceptions".

srinivasrgvn: not to pick on you specifically but when you said 'you will be astonished if I tell you my age', that is a tacit acknowledgment of the OP's premise.

The discussion is actually not about survival of CM. It is interesting that an intrinsic level many people took it in that 'defensive' way when the OP did not explicitly say that. The intention there is wondering why the mass youth culture is not attuned to CM and speculating reasons for it. I find the responses to be very illuminating so far. ( I do not really mean all, there are of course exceptions j/k )

[srikant1987]

The intention there is wondering why the mass youth culture is not attuned to CM and speculating reasons for it.

Mass culture itself is not attuned to CM. The thing is oldies who don't listen to CM usually stay at home so we tend to feel all oldies like CM.

[rajeshnat]

This is a beautiful thread.Lots of you have added great points. Just few observations without any repetitions

# Certainly Most of the CM rasikas are only above 50 and 60, averagely wherever you go ,the crowd of above 50 + is 80% of the crowd. I am also talking about not just weekday concerts , even weekend concerts.

# There are exceptions to the above rule during few kutcheris in the kutcheri season and there are artists like aruna sairam who break this barrier. But they are very very few.

# What we need to really narrow down this discussion ,wherein you should not consider youths listening to CM in their ipod and other recording device , but the measuring point of all concerts should only be a sabha and a live performance.

# I just want to highlight there is a lot of aspiring youths who come to listen to concerts where very likely they would have given few concerts or just beginning to prepare to give a concert(A case in point when I attended saketharaman's concert for the first time ,I sat next to K Gayathri and then realized after 6 or so months that she is another singer). In my opinion that is not the youth we are talking . We are talking about youth who only want to be a rasika and not have an iota of aspiration to perform (some one like me during 80's).

Putting all filters as above , the youth are indeed not taking up carnatic music as an exclusive rasika and definitely they are majorly not inclined to listen to CM.

Just digging little more to find the reason :
--------------------------------------------
Atleast the reason of why I had taken was because the carnatic seed that was initially seeded by some extraordinary musicians who had the mass appeal who belonged to outside of CM(Illayaraja in particular and to an extent SPB and KJ yesudoss). They all perhaps seeded an interest that the music that I am listening in movies like Payanangal mudivathillai, nizhalgal (in early 80's)etc had created a curiosity (which will burn for ever )and more importantly to know that there is something absolutely colossal in music some thing far far higher than film music , and that I discovered as it is indeed Carnatic Music.In short the biggest pull for anything should be from outside carnatic music.

Also looking little back CM before 90's also went to a lull period where my periappa tells me only after the movie shankarAbharanam was released in 1981 CM started to have a more appreciable patronage(it was very bad in 70's). Just imagine movies like sindhubhairavi in thamizh , his highness abdullah in malayalam and sAgara sangamam in telugu, they pulled many many like me. They pulled to an alien land (CM )then from a known terrain (mass melody based film music).In short atleast to my generation + 10 years WE had a taste of CM in a way that was just right at that age, though it was not actually CM .

Unfortunately for Today's Youth,Their frame of reference is some junk movies(nowadays music is horrible in all languages),dial tones and the proliferation of idiot box (TV channels)

Few remedy's I think:
-------------------------

# we need no lectures by the hard core musicologist and pure vidwans and vidushis for bringing more people into CM, they only will have a trickle effect. What we need as all vidwans and vidushis sit in a hall as rasikas, have some one like illayaraja and AR Rehman come forward and give lectures where they sing a famous film song and tell their actual inspiration was because of this raga and this krithi .Then make a vidwan /vidushi sing that krithi. That way every body appreciates CM and want to be a rasika (not a performer). Possibly beam all that performance from a hall into the television (not during the kutcheri season already in chennai lot of people dont go to sabhas and think kutcheris can be seen in that jaya tv channel)

# Also if mani rathnams and K.Balachandar and cibimalayil take a movie with carnatic base and give some super good songs like the above four that I have mentioned , then CM will have more youths.

IN short the first step is the most difficult step for today's youth.

Note:
----
1.We only have few exceptions like srinivasrghvn, srikanth1981 , sathej etc they are just too few and unfortunately my post is not having these youths in mind.

2. My post is definitely having a focus with my experience being in madras , I am sure the same is needed for all other cities.

[gn.sn42]

When something is obviously observable as a vast majority phenomenon, quoting the remaining minority as a reason to dismiss a valid observation does not serve any purpose.

Are you saying that a statement like "youth shun carnatic music" is "obviously observable as a vast majority phenomenon"?

In my opinion it's doubly incorrect.

It's not a vast majority phenomenon, and it's certainly not at all obviously observable as such. This is a forum for casual talk, so we can be free with sweeping (gentle) generalizations; but if you broadly say "X is obvious", I can certainly respond "No it's not".

If we wanted to be slightly more scientific about it, we'd need to define what we expect. How do we measure if youth are interested in CM or not? Here are some angles:
- what is the age breakdown of CM concert attendees? How does it compare to the age breakdown in non-CM music genres? (My personal observation here: the average ages for CM are lower than most other genres - except for the Hannah-Montana crowds. A given CM concert has a good mix of babies, young children, teens, and young adults, in addition to older attendees.)
- are there factors that reduce the numbers of young people even further? For example, a 12-year-old cannot drive himself to a CM concert, so if his parents are not into CM, he might be out of luck. Most 18-year-olds enjoy the company of other 18-year-olds, and will decide collectively how to spend an evening, so it's only once in a while that a CM concert will be chosen.
- do young people listen to CM? I don't have data for that, and neither does anyone else. Personal observation suggests they do, at least as much as older people.
- do young people buy CM CDs? As far as I can tell, they do, in larger numbers than older people. Again, hard data is difficult to find.
- are young people who attend concerts and buy CDs knowledgeable about CM? In a word, yes. I've learnt more about CM from (very) young people than from older people.
- do young people study CM? Of course they do - much more than they study popular music, for example. And those who study CM are by far younger on average than those who study most other musics.

And finally, do young people enjoy music that by a less conservative measure would fall into the category of CM? Yes, yes, and yes. When we talk about western classical music, we include everything from medieval music to John Cage and beyond. I would argue that those who enjoy the music of Ilayaraja and Rahman fall squarely into the CM camp; except boorish elitists deny them that label.

Young people enjoy CM, study it, nurture it, and will take it into the future. Grumpy talk is all very well, but it will invite sharp responses.

[wordpecker007]

I woud call this a very releavan thread. It is a quesiton I ask myself? The number of youngsters attending cocerts are less when we look at the crowds that throng horrendous ganamelas even in temples. I remember watching a festival of the Sree Krishna temple at Neyyattinkara. The singers were belting out most unmmusical numbers and there were some strangley dressed guys attempting to moonwalk.
Having spent some time thinking about it, this is what I felt:

1. Many listeners, including teachers, don't know the meaning of the sahityam they sing. So there is no bhavam or modulation. On the other hand, popular film music can appeal to the youth as they are able to understand what the singer is singing, that is when there are lyrics in the song. If only singers and teachers spent some time explaining what they are singing, may be that would be bring more youngsters to the concerts as the lyrics of many of the songs are so divine.
2. Many parents force their children to learn a composition or two merely to win prizes.
3. Many teachers themselves are half baked products with just a string of academic degrees to their credit an dno gjanam.

[vasanthakokilam]

There are two kinds of 'obvious' and we all know the difference. ( again "all" does not mean 100% all ). When something not obvious at all and people use that word for their advantage. And then things that are indeed obvious. You can very easily knock the above statements down as being untenable. Fine. I think pragmatics demands we atleast consider something obvious if it stares us at our faces.

Continuing on this lighter vein, if we go by your line of thinking, you can never have a discussion based on opinions. Everything has to epistemologically correct based on solid data. It will even take days to agree on a set of terms to use and come to a common understanding on whether it is even worth a discussion. Then we have to go by the Wittgensteinian idiom "what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence"

I would argue that those who enjoy the music of Ilayaraja and Rahman fall squarely into the CM camp; except boorish elitists deny them that label.

If we go by that definition, which dilutes the discussion into nothingness, yes I do deny that label and take the risk of being labeled a boorish elitist. But that is really not the point, is it? It is not for you or me to give them the label, it is for those people who like Ilayaraja or Rahman to say if they like carnatic music or not and agree to sit through a 3 hour concert.

But if the crux of your whole argument is along the lines of what Srikant said, namely there is no difference in CM listening % between Mass culture vs Mass youth culture, I do not have any data to dispute that and may go along with it. That is not the premise of the OP though this observation is a good answer for what is being pondered about.

Just as an addendum, I get a feeling that you are adding a tinge of value judgment to the discussion as others have also done. What I mean is, this is not a knock on the youth neither it is a lament about the future of CM.

[gn.sn42]

vasanthakokilam, I'm not saying we need to agree on the exact measures before we begin an argument.

If you read my post, I begin by saying: if you wish to broadly say X, I can just as broadly say Not X.

I then proceed to justify my Not X using a number of measures.

You may ignore them, disagree with them, or counter them, or provide some other measures; but what you're saying is "If you don't agree that X is obvious we cannot have a discussion".

About diluting the definition - no, that kind of inclusive definition is normal for similar discussions. We don't restrict the definition of western classical music to baroque; we don't restrict the definition of film music to that of the 1940s; we don't restrict the definition of jazz to Dixieland.

And you (and I) are free to label anyone any way we want; but I disagree with your final point. The people who like Ilayaraja or Rahman may just as well say they like CM and then reject the idea of a 3-hour concert as tiresome and painful. Or, more likely, they will just laugh and ignore this whole exercise.

[gn.sn42]

vasanthakokilam, your additions to your post crossed my response. Of course I bring my value judgement to my posts - I happen to think that CM is very enjoyable and is being performed by good musicians and followed by a knowledgeable, interested audience. There is (obviously ) a group of posts in this forum that are gloomier than my outlook, and my posts tend to try and counter that.

My first post was a flippant one, my second one more thoughtful. Of course, my first one is being taken seriously and my second one is being dismissed .

[vasanthakokilam]

>but what you're saying is "If you don't agree that X is obvious we cannot have a discussion".

Now I realize where the disconnect is. I am definitely not saying that at all, in fact quite the opposite in terms of having a discussion. It is actually a perfect swap of view points and I do not know how that happened.

This is how it went:

OP: "Why are youth shunning carnatic music"

Another opiniion: "Your premise itself is bad. Topic is not even worth discussion since as you can see there are SOME youth who like carnatic music".

I am saying, pointing to logical fallacy: Hey, just because SOME youth like carnatic music does not mean youth as a whole like carnatic music. Why are you questioning the premise unless you have data to shoot it down.

See here I am 'pro discussion on the original topic exploring the reasons'.

Of course, I am of the opinion that it is 'obvious' that youth as a group shun carnatic music ( notwithstanding the numerous counter examples ). But that is a different point. And to disprove me, you are watering down the definitions. Now what we have to do is go to a corner and agree on the terminology

On your last point, in fact that is what I am saying. It is upto the youth to self label if they follow CM in whatever terms it means to them using REASONABLE and commonly understood meaning. There are certain parameters, I just mentioned only one of them namely attending concerts. But you can not leave it open ended and let them say that they are followers of CM when they only listen to A.R. Rahman.

Actually you can, but it makes the whole discussion pointless.

Hope I clarified the difference.

[Music]

All said and done, CM is specialized music. It is not mainstream. It is centered around bhakti. Don't know if many would agree, but it is acquired taste. You start liking by listening to it a lot, knowingly or unknowingly. I personally am crazy about CM, because I love to sing it, I try to understand the lyrics and enjoy the meaning, and listening to a good kutcheri just feels blissful. This attitude resonates very well with my friends who enjoy CM. Outside of this circle of friends, it doesn't. Its because they haven't acquired a taste for it.
Youth wouldn't shun it if they were exposed to it from a young age. Parents play a major role here. There are many parents who don't care about CM too.

(BTW, by 'youth', I think of teenagers. I don't fall in this category.)

[gn.sn42]

to disprove me, you are watering down the definitions

Not to flog this dead horse much further, but "watering down the definition" was just one of my points, in fact my last point and if you look at how it was structured, almost an aside. I'm not complaining, though it will be nice if you looked at some of my other points and cared to comment.

However, let's push on with this. There are plenty of people, for example, who can legitimately call themselves fans of western classical music when all they do is listen to the film scores of John Williams. And my tastes in CM are probably highly questionable to some, but I'll happily call myself a CM rasika whenever I want; others are free to call me an apostate.

[vasanthakokilam]

gn,

>my second one more thoughtful.

I do agree with that. You have provided a framework to evaluate the premise of the thread. Definitely.

And I do see your point. Before even evaluating if the premise is true or not, offering opinions on the reasons assuming the premise is true will only be of minimal use. Also we do not necessarily have to provide a 'cure' for this since not liking CM is not a disease

I think we can still do that within the framework of what we consider as CM without having to broaden the definition.

[vasanthakokilam]

About your John Williams example, yes, it can fall either way. My guess is people who do not buy/download legally or illegally classical music CDs, or go to concerts or listen to classical music stations, will say, 'yeah, I like that kind of stuff but not the more hard core ones'. Again just my guess.

And, talking of your personal example, if some boorish CM elite says that you are a gyanasoonyam, wear it with pride Actually, I am completely with you on that whole point.

If we consider this from the value judgement of 'CM rasika' is somehow on a higher plane than 'non CM rasika', then yes such labels matter and we need to redraw the boundaries. I am more into approaching it purely from an informational point of view as to why certain types of music like CM ( as we commonly understand it ) does not get its mindshare from the segment of the population that in general likes music. In India that population is huge, in hundreds of millions.

[gn.sn42]

I am more into approaching it purely from an informational point of view as to why certain types of music like CM ( as we commonly understand it ) does not get its mindshare from the segment of the population that in general likes music. In India that population is huge, in hundreds of millions.

Sounds good, let's look at this specific angle.

My point is that CM does get a reasonable amount of mindshare. Why do I say reasonable?

We tend to to make unequal comparisons - we compare CM with whatever is drawing a huge crowd today. This is a straw man argument. At any time, there are a few things that are fashionable, trendy, or currently popular - and this is constantly changing.

Young people tend to do things in groups, and therefore when they make a collective decision on what show to attend today, the thing that is popular today tends to win out. Even with film music, it is only the films-of-the-day that are hugely popular.

This does not mean that any individual young person is particularly interested in that thing, and certainly does not mean that they will be interested in it next week.

If you filter out the thing-of-the-day, and look at stable genres of music over time, you will find that in most, the average audience is a)small, and b)less young than the thing-of-the-day. (Go ahead, look around you at a rock, reggae, bluegrass, jazz, HM, rai, or any other concert.)

That does not mean that the youth are underrepresented; it just means that they are overrepresented in the thing-of-the-day.

Other things being equal, young people tend to spend a little bit less of their time on any one specialized interest - they tend to have many diverse interests, for one; they hang out with friends more; they have less disposable income; the very young have transporation and curfew problems, and so on.

I do not think that the proportion of young people in CM audiences is all that different from that in other stable genres. In fact, I think it is higher than most.

My personal conclusion is a happy one, that youth are quite interested in CM and will take care of it in the future.

[vasanthakokilam]

gn, I definitely agree on the first half of your thesis. That was essentially what I had in mind when I wrote the second paragraph of my post #5

For the second half, I guess what you say is essentially that if on the entire population, 5% is interested in CM, then youth defined to be between Age X and Y, would represent a higher percentage. That is definitely possible. It depends on how wide the X and Y is.

Here are two statistics I could gather: Young people in India is 35% of population. Out of which 15% are in the category of Child. So let us approximately use the 20% as a guideline. If a CM concert has 20% of people below 25 years of age, then we can say they are represented properly. ( all this is a back of the envelope calculation )

An off topic note, when I was looking for the above statistics, I noticed that the current lndian population is 1% of homo sapiens that ever lived on this planet ( estimated ).

[Suji Ram]

Probably lack of exposure to Carnatic music is the reason.

Unfortunately, innovative ways to attract the younger generation to Carnatic music are quite often one-off efforts that are panned by the establishment and connoisseurs and hence don't continue. eg. fusion concerts incorporating Western instruments or amalgamating with other music forms (rock, jazz), the movies on Carnatic music (marghazi ragam) or Carnatic music themes (Thodi raga, Morning raga)

I had this funny situation a couple of weeks ago. I was playing a varnam to a visiting neighbourhood mAmi and I hear this from behind-
"MAmi, she has now taken to playing film songs leaving all the carnatic songs"
It took me a while to get that! off course I was playing a film song- "mAthe malayadhwaja" from the film "Morning raga"

[vasanthakokilam]

Suji: Interesting. May be such films do contribute to 'main-streaming' CM. ( good or bad, a different question ). It may now be cool to be associated with you, this varnam woman who play their kind of music

gn, after reading your post #35 again, though you do provide another angle with a redefined premise and come to a conclusion about the future of CM which I incidentally agree, those points are indeed very appropriate and direct answers to the original premise of the thread. If you disagree with my interpretation please do correct me.

[gn.sn42]

vasanthakokilam, I was responding to your nicely-scoped framing of the problem, but yes, I agree it's very relevant to the main thread.

Re your statistics, I did some data gathering and modeling, and while the exact numbers I used and so on will be a distraction, here's my conclusion:

If we consider the population over the age of 15;
if all age groups are equally represented in all activities;
we should expect somewhere between 15% and 25% of any group to be under age 25.

Your 20% estimate is right in the middle of my range, so I think we're on the same track. Two comments from me:
1. If we find the numbers to be consistently under 15% or over 25%, we can say that youth are under- or over-represented.
2. This is for any activity, not just CM. I think that the under-25s, and certainly the under-18s, have various constraints (like money and transport) that will cause them to be systematically underrepresented in all activities. We should compare CM's distributions with other fields.

[gn.sn42]

Sorry to infest the thread like this, but I found some relevant data - the US National Endowment for the Arts has a study that shows the age breakdown of various arts (jazz, classical music, museum visits, etc).

That link is the summary; the data is here.

What I'd like to highlight is this:
For jazz, 7.8% of the total US population attended one or more concerts in 2008. For the 18-24 age group, it was 7.3%.
For (western) classical music, 9.3% of the total US population attended; for the 18-24 age group, it was 6.9%.
For opera, 2.1% of total population; 2.5% of 18-24s.

That is, for jazz and opera, youth attend in exactly the same numbers as the general population; but for classical music, there are 25% fewer youth than you might expect.

(These are survey results, and a person who claims to have attended one concert is equated to someone who might have attended dozens; so please let's not place too much weight on this data.)

[srikant1987]

This is for any activity, not just CM. I think that the under-25s, and certainly the under-18s, have various constraints (like money and transport) that will cause them to be systematically underrepresented in all activities. We should compare CM's distributions with other fields.

Of this I'm not entirely sure. Certainly a much larger fraction of under-25s go see movies in theatres than attend Carnatic music concerts. Now unlike watching a movie on TV when you can do lot of other things simultaneously, one needs to "set some time apart" for watching a movie at a theatre.

(1) movies being "video", tend to keep you more involved: you need to be looking at the TV while watching a movie on it, so in the same room, this will cause all genres of music to lose out over movies

(2) non-movie (and serial) art forms are badly underrepresented on TV. They don't show a lot of dramas or non-film dances or standalone music. And in the few so-called "music channels" we again find (no CM, yes, but also) songs where the video itself is made engaging (or at least the makers think so!) (so again you won't be doing your sudoku as you "watch" those songs.
===
Moreover (I could be very wrong on this, I have very little idea about movies of today) movies these days aren't the ones we could comfortably watch with our mothers. Consequently, mothers and fathers don't attend these movies with or without kids. It is mostly the unmarried, and maybe very recently married "youngsters" who can go for these ... so that's what we see.

[vasanthakokilam]

gn.sn42, Excellent. I understand what you say about the systemic bias in the data for the reasons you cite.

Let our regular concert goers opine on this distribution and provide estimates. One problem is, the students of music tend to be young and they will skew the sample.

Comparing with other activities will smooth away the bias, we need to pick the activities that are spread over a wide spectrum of age groups and obviously not ones specific to the youth. What would be such examples? What are common group attendance across age groups along these lines: Food, clothing, art, education, entertainment, concern about the future, etc... ( I am leaving out fundamental needs of housing and healthcare since youth tend to not worry about those )

Would an art exhibition and general purpose book fare type of thing be a comparable activity ( to CM ) to look at? I also thought about say, a conference on global warming but that will be biased in favor of young people I tend to think.

I know I am going overboard here, just to jog all your collective memory, the following are the groupings of things that people spend money on. The %s are the %of total expenditure for each category worldwide. I am providing this list so common group activities across age groups on these broad verticals may come to your mind

Food/groceries 14%
Beverages/tobacco products 4%
Hygiene and healthcare 7%
Clothing 5%
Household and electronic devices 7%
Home 20%
Heating/lighting 6%
Transportation 15%
Miscellaneous services including entertainment 22%

[gn.sn42]

srikant1987, I don't disagree with your statement, but I did say "youth like to do trendy things in groups" and seeing the latest movie falls into that category. A better comparison might be an art-house film festival; or a retrospective of movies from the 1970s. I'm not sure that youth attend these in larger numbers than they attend CM events.

[srikant1987]

@ vasanthakokilam

Art exhibitions and general-purpose book fares ... don't they sell works of fine-art? And can't we have a look at books and art outside exhibitions and fares?
---
What makes movies trendy?

[vasanthakokilam]

>And can't we have a look at books and art outside exhibitions and fares?

I am not really sure what you are getting at.... but
I am basically looking for occasions where there is a gathering of people of all age groups.

[srikant1987]

Can we look at it another way? What did these oldies and middle-aged people do when they were young, in their teens and twenties?

[VK RAMAN]

They did what youngies are doing now!

[Ramasubramanian M.K]

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread-Why should a neanderthal like me be left out of the discussion. So here I am with my 10c(Am I overrating myself here?) worth of opinion.

First of all,I would like to bring a historical perspective to such discussions that have been around for decades if not more-the mere proliferation of medium available for one to "air" one's views,appears to lend some "shrillness" to the main theme--WHY YOuth shun CM?

1. Rangaramanuja Iyengar in one of his monumental works laments about the deterioration of tastes and interest in CM and says very strongly that CM was pretty much on its last legs after the 1920's and virtually dismissed the artistes of the thirties(especially the SSI,GNB,MMI,ALATHUR). The last time I looked whether in the concert halls or forums like this CM is very much alive. If it is true that 80% of today's listeners are in their 50's and sixties they must have been interested in CM when they were in their twenties. Likewise youths of today(especially readers of the forum) would propagate interest in CM!!
2. When I was growing up in the 40's and 50's,in Bombay,virtually there were few boys attending CM concerts --the girls naturally were learning music and were overrepresented. In fact after a concert on a Sunday when I went to school in the morning all of my Non_CM music friends used to "Rag" me as a sissy!! Ofcourse I come from a family passionate about music and fought more often over who is better,SSI or Ariyakudi more than over any property or estate!! I am not suggesting that I represent the majority. The point is that CM has survived so far and will survive and there will be enough youths to sustain the interest in CM. Again when I used to go to the concerts I was always unlucky to sit next to an old foggy who would lament (during Ariyakudi's concerts) about Poochi Iyengar or Konerirajapuram Vaidyannatha Iyer,Pushpavanam etc knowing full that I could not have listened to those stalwarts to challenge him!! Point: Despite the presence of "elites"(self-styled cognoscenti),the "torch' has been passed on so far and I am sure will be passed on further. If you do not believe it read about the Cleveland Aradhana Youth Competitions in NA and the applications that flood the organisers(many of the families, the parents were not well-versed in music--either performing or listening and yet they provided opportunity for the youngsters.

3.In my own lifetime I have seen and heard SIX generations of Male artistes
(
(a)(ARIYAKUDI-CHEMBAI-MUSIRI-MAHARAJAPURAM),
(b) SSI-GNB_MMI-ALATHUR,
(c) TKRangachari,Sattur,TMT,KVN,MDR,Voleti,Balamuralikrishna
(4)TNS,TVS,Neyveli Santhanagopalan.
(5) TMK,SANJAY,Ashok Ramani,Unnikrishnan
(6) Gurucharan,Suryaprakash,Saketharaman etc etc.
Any omissions in the above generational list are totally unintentional!! I did not mean to omit the female artistes--the same generational hierarchy could be cited for the female artistes.I have only seen greater interest in every succeeding generation.

How many times have we not heard the lament that Classicism is Dead and CM has no future and standards have only deteriorated--yet I do not find youths in any of the above generations to be indifferent towards CM-if they were CM would not be flourishing today--use any metric you want other than mere concert attendance-- there is no evidence that youths are less interested in Music than previous generations-notwithstanding the influence of Cinema music.

In my next post I will quote some extracts from an article I wrote in the SHANMUKHA Magazine(a publication of SHANmukhananda sabha in Bombay) IN THE YEAR 1974(that was in response to several articles and letters in various media at that time --all harping on the theme-- namely -- How the CM Music interest is declining and serious steps ought to be taken to "resurrect" the same from oblivion.I have to dig it out of my archives and will revert later!



arir

[srikant1987]

Thank you. So sabhas didn't have lot of youngsters even in times when Ariyakudi performed. But I would like to hear from some other older members here, whether they, like you, were rasikas in their younger days, or they picked up the interest later on.

[cacm]

In MADRAS where I grew up I attended concerts regularly from age 14(1948) & there used to be at least 30 young ones mostly because parents brought them? VKV