Musings.

[S.NAGESWARAN]

Musings.

God had blessed me to become a good Rasika of all geners of music for the past 5 decades.
I have listened to all the vintage musicians of yesteryear and the current generation musicians.

After listening to Sri Madurai Mani Iyer’s concert for the first time as a boy of 10 years at the Vasanthothsavam music festival at Kapaleeswarar temple, I have become a fan of him.
Later on I have listened to all the musicians.

I was mesmerized by the Violin music of Sri M.S.Gopalakrishnan and became a fan of him also.

The Rasikas mainly attend to the music concerts to get peace of mind, pleasure of listening to good music from their favorite musicians and wish to reach a meditative mood by listening to the great composers’ music sung with devotion by the musicians. We were able to get the above level of music while listening to the vintage musicians of yesteryear.

But the present trend seems to ignore all the above points and majority of the present day concerts are very noisy with all the artists wanting to increase the volume level of the mikes.

Co operative efforts are required from the Artists and accompanists to arrive at an optimum level of amplification so that the concerts can be listened to at a comfortable level of volume.

After listening to lot of Hindustani music, I am tempted share a few thoughts of mine.

1. The first point is that we are able to distinctly listen to the Thampura sruthi for a few minutes before the concert starts and many a times I am taken to a very meditative mood by simply listening to the Thampura sruthi alone.

I wish that the Carnatic musicians also can adopt this method by keeping the Thampura on their laps [Just like Parveen Sultana] or provide a mike for the Thampura also so that the Rasikas can always listen to the Thampura sound clearly.



2. The Hindustani musicians sing the plain notes of the swaras frequently for a long duration and use the gamakams less frequently. Plain notes have their own melodic effect on the music.

S.NAGESWARAN.
27.10.2009.

[laks1972]

Well said Sir.

Perhaps the carnatic musicians of today dont dare to keep thambura level high because it will expose their sruthi inadequacies more glaringly.

Your mention of Sri MSG and MMI are very apt here.

MSG is one musician who dares to keep thambura volume level higher as his playing is perfectly in alignment with sruthi.

MMI was another great musician who gave importance to perfect sruthi alignment and manodharma. He did not break his head (and that of listeners) with intricate mathematics , sparkling brigas or teasing sruthi bedams. No wonder, every concert of his was a success audience were spell bound for hours together.

Today we have "power concerts" similar to"power yoga". More the volume level is, the better... That is the trend.

I heard, recently one mrudangist , a big name known for "power play" and "high decibel", played thani avarthanam for 40 mins in a 2.5 hours concert!

[musicfan_4201]

Musings.



1. The first point is that we are able to distinctly listen to the Thampura sruthi for a few minutes before the concert starts and many a times I am taken to a very meditative mood by simply listening to the Thampura sruthi alone.

I have read an incident about Sri Mali somewhere cant recollect though. Mali was supposed to give a concert in the evening in a chennai sabha but was not to be seen anywhere near the concert venue. It was well past the start time. Sri Ramani and Srinivasan decided to look for him and ended up at his house in Triplicane? The house was apparently locked from the outside but they could hear the beautiful sound of the thampura. The disciples opened the door and went in to see sri Mali in an elated mood strumming the thampura and enjoying the sound from it. When the disciples reminded him of the slated concert and requested him to leave, he refused stating that the sound / music from his flute is in no match to what he is hearing and enjoying

VKV perhaps can throw more light and correct the above as may be necessary.

Few musicians who can perhaps sing without a Thampura maintaining perfect sruti are MMI, MSG and Voleti.

[vasanthakokilam]

The story I remember reading is that mAli was fascinated with the sound the table fan was making and built a beautiful subhapantuvaraLi out of it. ( something alog those lines ).

Though it sounds impressive that some artists can maintain sruthi without a tampura, and that may as well be true, but in our music, to perceive the raga correctly, the audience needs to hear the tampura sound. So the tampura sound is not just there as a reference sound to help out the artist but it serves a much bigger musical purpose since the foundations of our music is based on that sound being there in the back ground.

[Nick H]

CDs are regularly produced with a electronic tampbura at far too high a volume, and the same is true of many stage performances.

Do you include the electronic box? I suspect that the miced tambura instrument would a very different effect, and I wonder why it is not done, even when the instrument is on stage.

I am afraid that the sruti box has become a necessary prop to an artist, whereas the tambura is only a prop in the sense of stage decoration.

[arasi]

And how they relied on the sound of it, the vocalists! And the way they fussed about it, the player handing the instrument over to them carefully and like his accompanists, the vocalist too spent a few minutes fine tuning the instrument a few times during the concert! Yes, I see it occasionally on stage now, but it as more of a feature in an old concert.

[msakella]

While the Hindusthani-musicians sing 'in' Shruti our Karnataka musicians sing 'with' Shruti. amsharma

[thenpaanan]

Musings.

...
I wish that the Carnatic musicians also can adopt this method by keeping the Thampura on their laps [Just like Parveen Sultana] or provide a mike for the Thampura also so that the Rasikas can always listen to the Thampura sound clearly.

2. The Hindustani musicians sing the plain notes of the swaras frequently for a long duration and use the gamakams less frequently. Plain notes have their own melodic effect on the music.

S.NAGESWARAN.
27.10.2009.

Your sentiments are heartily reciprocated. In another thread we discussed the use of tambura in CM. With specific reference to your point, we simply do not have a tradition in CM of having a tambura to be heard by the audience at all times. As far as I can tell, the CM tambura is _meant to be_ just loud enough for artists on stage to hear. The audience only gets to hear it during silence gaps or when the singer has muted his/her voice (e.g. during alapana). This may have been forced upon us by the limitations of the South Indian tambura which produces a softer sound than the North Indian version.

As to the question of singing plain swaras, a rasika of both CM and HM once put this very question to me bluntly; to him CM suffers from over-ornamentation. I thought about that for a long time and have concluded that this is also a tradition. CM tradition seems to abhor singing plain notes (once in a while is ok) -- some people have tried. MDR sang many a plain note with great applomb but we don't have any emulators. In contemporary times, I have heard Aruna Sairam singing lost of plain notes in alapana, but her most recent concerts suggest that she does not do that any more. Singing plain notes has to be melded into the existing aesthetics and that is hard to do. It may be that the incredibly rich interval set that is _required_ to be evoked in CM (e.g. many notes have to be shaken, singing them plain would be considered wrong) make it all but impossible to sing too many plain notes.

Thanks for the interesting comments.

-Then Paanan

[shripathi_g]

"The story I remember reading is that mAli was fascinated with the sound the table fan was making and built a beautiful subhapantuvaraLi out of it. ( something alog those lines )." I think it was the Subhapanthuvarali Gandharam that he was fascinated with.

[cacm]

REG Mali: He was a true artist who accepted concerts only when he was broke; Rest of the time he truly pursued SOUND& MUSIC at a high research level. So all the stories including playing the sounds of a child crying, railway engine " breathing" &being totally "ABSORBED" in the Thambura sounds& subtelities are all FACTS. A FAMOUS COMPOSER PUCCINI used to take his carriage to a river & listen to the rustling sounds of river rushing past stones( Koozhang kallu) DEBUSSY listened to waves of the ocean for years. They have incorporated these into their compositions. In modern music one of the most bizarre & famous ones were the sounds at times square in nyc was successfully performed on stage!Most of the audience walked outas it was SO AUTHENTIC! As a matter of fact because of the perfection of MMI IN Sruthi& Swarasthanam Mali used to campaign as well AS recommend that any one interested in music shd. attend MMI concerts...
But on the subject of Thambura itself I am about to step on HOT COALS! While I am a great admirer of this generation of artists in many areas where they are actually SUPERIOR when it comes to this area I am afraid the Vocalists fall short in comparison & mostly compensate for the deficiencies with high volume which is the NORM in concerts now a days. Even the sound system in Music Academy is at the level of a 500 dollar home audio systyem & people just throw out names like BOSE system etc without realising that for halls of large size as well as accoustics very sophisticaed design is needed....Reg PLAIN notes I want to point out that LGJ& RAMANI in their 1971 tour before they started played the notes of EACH RAGA in plain notes, then with ornamentations to educate the audiences here who are used to western music. M.S used to practise Ahara Sadhagam for close to SIX hours till her late seventies at least.My feeling is as long as audiences are EMOTIONAL in their approach& understanding & ready to pounce on any dissenter without examining the merits of the arguments presented only useless criteria like older persons are prejudiced against today's great artists etc will be the basis for discussions...its called the LCD(LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR) Basis for things!...VKV

[thenpaanan]

I have read an incident about Sri Mali somewhere cant recollect though. Mali was supposed to give a concert in the evening in a chennai sabha but was not to be seen anywhere near the concert venue. It was well past the start time. Sri Ramani and Srinivasan decided to look for him and ended up at his house in Triplicane? The house was apparently locked from the outside but they could hear the beautiful sound of the thampura. The disciples opened the door and went in to see sri Mali in an elated mood strumming the thampura and enjoying the sound from it. When the disciples reminded him of the slated concert and requested him to leave, he refused stating that the sound / music from his flute is in no match to what he is hearing and enjoying

Not to compare myself with Mali but there is something magical about an acoustic tuned tambura that sruthi or electronic boxes cannot reproduce and that is the physical feeling of the vibrating instrument next to your skin. That effect combined with the sound creates a feeling of well-being (why?) that can be addictive. There was a time when I would start my practice by tuning the tambura and never get to the next step of singing! Then something changed and I was never able to tune it perfectly again and the magic was gone. Once, with the intent of listening closely to the vidwan at a concert I deliberately got myself the job of playing tambura for him. I never heard a single note of the vidwan.

-Then Paanan

[cacm]

I am NOT claiming to be Correct in what I am writing here reg the MAGICAL effect you are claiming with which I totally AGREE. I have spent quite a bit of time wondering why when you listen to MMI with Thambura WITHOUT any intermediate devic
es like mikes, amplifiers etc the effect is UNBELIEVABLE in that the UNISON of his voice with Thambura is astounding...I can only explain in terms of Physics in the sense that when PHASE as well as AMPLITUDE MATCH -between the voice& Thambura-the effects are at least Quadrapled! Which makes some sense if you are a laser guy!....VKV

[cacm]

quote=thenpaanan]

Musings.

...
I wish that the Carnatic musicians also can adopt this method by keeping the Thampura on their laps [Just like Parveen Sultana] or provide a mike for the Thampura also so that the Rasikas can always listen to the Thampura sound clearly.

2. The Hindustani musicians sing the plain notes of the swaras frequently for a long duration and use the gamakams less frequently. Plain notes have their own melodic effect on the music.

S.NAGESWARAN.
27.10.2009.

Keeping thambura on laps does not work. I had to play the Thambura for KVN after introducing him at Syracuse University in the Sixties; I was playing the Thambura for the FIRST TIME in my life in a concert & was unable to keep it vertical for over 2 hours. KVN the gentlest of souls could not continue to sing when I kept the Thambura in my lap at a Horizontal position & asked me to play it vertically as the sound was not good enough the way I kept it in my lap!....I DO BELIEVE AT THE LEVEL OF A K.V.N. id did make a difference. VKV I have met persons like mmi.mss, kvn etc whose sense of PERFECTION is something I CANNOT EVEN DREAM ABOUT...