An ambitious guide to Indian music

I had written this review sometime in 2000. Thought I'd revise it a bit and post it here.
Ram


Alaap
20 CDs + 1 book
Times Music
Rs 4,900



Alaap, Times Music and Aurobindo Society's 20 CD-project, attempts to break the uninitiated and the hesitant into the complex world of Indian classical music.

The offering spans 20 CDs and a 275-page book. Earlier introductions in the Indian market were not as ambitious. Music Today's introduction -- they call it a guide to music appreciation -- is spread over three tapes. HMV's introduction to Karnatak music is two tapes long.

Aurobindo Society deserves thanks for planning and executing a project this vast. Alaap took ten years to complete, and is undoubtedly the most extensive introduction to Indian music available today.

"The first thing that strikes me is that practically nothing in the project has gone according to plan. And yet, when I look back, I feel that perhaps there was a plan after all, though hidden from us... working itself out all the while," says Vijay of Aurobindo Society in his afterword.

He co-ordinated the Alaap project from Pondicherry, living through the exhilaration and despair of interacting with musicians, writers and record labels.

"Commercial considerations were kept on the backburner," he told a TV channel after the project was released on August 15, 1999, the birth anniversary of saint and scholar Aurobindo, and also Independence Day.

The project is not credited to any single writer or researcher because as many have contributed to its making.

Alaap is divided into three parts: The Quest and the Lure, where the basics of music, and the concepts of swara, raga and tala are explained, Hindustani Music, which outlines the countours of north Indian classicism, and Carnatic Music, a corresponding introduction to the southern style.

Among the best parts of the book are the reflections on swara. Alaap relates swara to the idea of self -- 'swa' is self and 'ra' is that which shines forth -- and says, "The human voice has always a small component of swara in its timbre... Even this natural swara of human voice, when trained in raga and tala, can produce impressive musicians."

But mere skill isn't enough: "...the musician who has consciously worked towards the acquisition of the full swara produces quite another impact -- a mysterious economy, an assurance of direction, a quality of unbelievable credibility in the tonal essence of the voice, an integrity that is larger and more significant than the raga or the tala or the technical skill of the musician. Such a musician transcends the plane of the raga and lives and moves on a level above it".

The fire of learning
Alaap then explains many concepts, such as the chilla.

The chilla is "one of the most austere and mysterious traditions" in the learning of Indian music. This "extreme step" usually lasts 40 days, and hence the name.

A musician who performs the chilla isolates himself from the world "to attain a greater excellence in performance, a mastery in technique and sometimes to find the swara".

This retreat can elevate a musician to a higher awareness and make his music more instrospective. "In some cases its effect can be so far-reaching that the student abandons all desire, even for music, and becomes a mendicant withdrawing from life... Many illusions about life and its meaning drop away from people who do the chilla," Alaap explains.

The most telling description of chilla comes from Ustad Abdul Karim Khan, founder of the Kirana gharana.

He is reported to have told Pandit Bhatkhande, the famous musicologist, that the chilla is like "lighting a fire under your life. If you do not cook, you will burn. It is better to get cooked so that everyone can enjoy your flavour. Otherwise, you will be a mass of cinders, a heap of ash."

Alaap devotes many pages to the passion that music inspires in the learner and the listener.

Ustad Faiyaz Khan of the Agra gharana used to recall how Unnao, a little village, "was paralysed for some time when, one winter dawn, a singer merely passed through the village, singing". The stranger's music, says Alaap, sent the inhabitants into a state of reverie and bliss, and no one was able to work in the fields or attend to domestic duties for days.

This is the magical, hypnotic power of music, the power that Aurangzeb was wary of -- he believed listening to music would make him effeminate and unfit to rule. It's the same power the Pied Piper uses to settle scores with the deceitful mayor.

Alaap, like most books on music, talks enthusiastically of the spiritual nature of the musical pursuit. But the idea that everything about music is sacred and good is, at least in this reviewer's view, stretched to the point when it sounds false.

Music is no automatic gateway to holiness. It doesn't automatically fill a guru with generosity and benign caring. Musicians can be petty, and musicians bitch.


Transcending the mundane

The guru's power enjoys the sanction of tradition.

Many gurus use this sanction benignly, treating their pupils like their children, feeding, nurturing and disciplining them into learning the art. One also hears of gurus who drive students to depression and madness, gurus who humiliate brilliant students for fear that they may surpass their own children, and gurus who cynically turn students with no musical potential into unpaid domestic help.

Much can be said for a down-to-earth approach to music instruction, at least at the elementary stages. Surely there is a world of difference between the chilla that a musician enters into of his own volition, and the distraught state that a guru wilfully pushes his disciple into?

Alaap explains many concepts well. Its glossary is very useful, thanks especially to the demonstrations on the companion CDs.

The varieties of graces, however well explained in words, become much clearer when you hear them sung or played.

You can read what a sthayi (octave) means in the book, and then play the CD to understand how different sthayis sound: five sthayis -- anumandra, mandra, madhya, tara, atitara -- are demonstrated on the veena by Jayanthi R Krishnan.

Similarly, you hear well-known names performing the dhrupad, dhamar, khayal, thumri, tappa, dhun, ghazal, bhajan, kirtan and jugalbandi. The various gharanas are illustrated with recordings of stalwarts. You hear samples of various instruments, including some rare ones like the esraj.


Fantastic galaxy
Alaap offers a fantastic galaxy of singers and instrumentalists - from Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Dagar brothers, Amir Khan, Bismillah Khan, Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan, Kumar Gandharva, Bhimsen Joshi and Jasraj to younger musicians like Zakir Hussain and Shubha Mudgal.

In the southern section, we hear veterans like Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, Lalgudi Jayaraman, A K C Natarajan and D K Pattammal and youngsters like Unnikrishnan and U Srinivas. For both the Hindustani and Karnatak sections, Alaap has managed to get invaluable archival material from All India Radio. HMV has also pitched in with material from its rich catalogue. In addition, Alaap has acommissioned some original recording.

Some drawbacks: the voiceover (it's in English throughout) mispronounces words, changing the meaning of Sanskrit words: 'aadhaara shadja' becomes 'adhara shadja' ('aadhara' means base, and refers to the key note, while 'adhara' means lips!); similarly 'swarajati' becomes 'swarajaati' and 'jaavali' becomes 'javaali'.

Many musicologists believe the ragas are derived from folk tunes sung in various regions. That's how we have ragas named after regions (Multani from Multan, Goud Malhar and Goud Sarang from the Goud - meaning Bengal - region, the Kanadas from the Kannada-speaking regions, and so on).

Alaap does not talk about this connection with the non-Sanskritic traditions, preferring to leave the impression that the grand Indian music tradition came totally from the Vedic past.

The marga and desi interaction of Indian culture finds no mention anywhere, but such a study is important to an understanding of Indian music, which continues to thrive in its oral, unwritten, and in that sense folk, form.

The music of the 'classical' Jaipur gharana, for instance, is strikingly close to the music of Rajasthan's 'folk' singers. Many folk tunes are even now being codified and adapted into the classical repertoire. Raga Bihari, a favourite of Pandit Mallikarjun Mansur, is full of the swirling phrases that we hear in folk songs.

Alaap is huge in scale and sweep, and hopes to address an audience that may have been denied exposure to its cultural roots. An introduction such as this one has the potential to lure many of us into the wondrous world of Indian music.

The landscape we see on our journey may differ from what is described here, but we would still be grateful to Alaap for showing us the first turning.

Book on talas

I got mail today from Revathi, my colleauge at Deccan Herald in the late '90s.

She has sent information about a book released this evening. From her description, it's a book that mridangam players and other percussionists will find interesting.

This is what I gather:

Laya Vinyaasam, a book on Karnatik taalas, was launched at Bangalore Gayana Samaja.

It gives insights into the science of numbers in Karnatik music.

Author and mridanga vidwan R Krishnamurthy, son of the late S Rajagopala Iyer, gave a lecture-demonstration.

Shakuntala Srinivas and Sukanya Narayanan showed how the book would help vocalists improvise.

Copies are available at Gaana Rasika Mandali, 351, 38th Cross, 9th Block, Jayanagar, Bangalore 560 069. Call (080) 26634365/22442731.

Lessons from a shoot

If you have two weekends free, you can sign up for a filmmaking course. I did, and our batch of 22 students passed out on Sunday.

Of course no art can be learnt in two weekends. But what courses such as this one do is give you an introduction that you can build on. They also put you in touch with people with similar interests.

This particular course, which costs Rs 3,500, is favoured by software engineers, but our batch had a diverse mix of college students, animators, graphic designers, techies, sales and real estate executives, a human resource consultant, and a couple of NGO activists.

The course is conducted by ACTor Productions every couple of months. Siddharth, who has studied at Rajeev Menon's cinematography institute in Chennai, and Rabi Kisku, who has produced and directed a digital feature film, gave lectures. Both have an IIT background. They have now moved to full time filmmaking.

The boyish faculty was enthusiastic, and so were the students. Siddharth, with American campus gestures, spoke about lighting and camera angles, and quoted movie actress Suhasini who said cinematographers are often the smartest people on the sets. Rabi taught a couple of modules on direction and editing.

After two days of lectures, they divided our class into four groups. Each of us had to produce a three-minute film. After discussing a couple of other story ideas, our team decided to go with a song I had attempted to write and record. Our choice was a music video.

Baare sakhi, hoova kadiyuva (Come beloved, let's steal flowers!) had romantic nature images, and I suggested we should shoot it on a couple working in a city office. It would be ironic, I thought, to have them dream of stealing flowers, when in reality they would have to pay through their nose at a florist to get any. Similarly, they could sing grandly about crossing the seas when they couldn't even cross a puddle or a busy road.

We went and shot our film at a village called Raogodlu on Kanakapura Road. Inside Bangalore, we got some crowd scenes at Basavangudi and Jayanagar.

We learnt several things in the course of the shoot. The first was that an incompetent technician could undo everyone else's good work.

When our team played back the footage, it looked bleached and jerky. It turned out the camera guy assigned to us only knew how to shoot wedding videos.

That problem was solved when the organisers offered us a camera and a different cameraman for a reshoot. We drove up to the picturesque village a second time, and shot the film with a slightly different crew.

The lesson we learnt here was that we had to employ the same cast and get them to wear the same costumes if we wanted to mix and match footage from two shoots.

And we had to be wary of pretty frames. We tend to be impressed with almost everything we see through the lens, and end up capturing scenes that do little to tell our story. In the process, we lose precious time (and raw stock, if working with celluloid).

The most important lesson was that we had to do rigorous paperwork before we set out. On both days that we went to an outdoor location, we gave in to the temptation of composing and shooting scenes on the spot, forgetting altogether that we needed specific images to make our story go forward. Spontaneity helps, but if it isn't accompanied by planning, it can ruin a film.

And when we tell a story, we need our actors to do scenes that don't always show them in a flattering light. If everything turns out cheerful and pleasant, we end up creating something that either looks like an ad, or is too trite to hold anyone’s interest.

We also have to train ourselves to think in images and avoid the obvious. Matching our shots with the words makes the film hopelessly literal. (If the song talks of a horse, we don’t really need to show a horse on screen).

The student films were shown and critiqued on the last day. I liked the one about a day in the life of a telemarketer. Our music video wasn't disliked, but the irony hadn't come across sharply enough.

Is the CD on the way out?

The CD celebrated its 26th birthday yesterday. It wasn't exactly a cheerful, forward-looking birthday, because many are convinced the glory days of the shiny little wonder are over.

The compact disc, as we know it, was born in Germany in 1982. It was released by Sony and Philips Consumer Electronics as a medium for music. It was later adapted to store other kinds of data. The CD took a long time coming to India.

In 2002, that's just six years ago, a blank CD cost upwards of Rs 50 in Bangalore, and not all computers had CD drives. The floppy drive was still much in use, and CDs were considered an expensive option. Today, you can buy a good blank for less than Rs 10, and an unbranded one for half that price. The floppy is dead.

The CD is used to store many kinds of data, but the music CD, many believe, will soon be obsolete. For many music lovers addicted to mp3 players and mobile phones doubling up as music players, the CD is already history.

Listening is constantly being redefined. If you asked my father's generation, owning a private music collection meant buying vinyl records. In the 1970s, the first cassette recorders made their appearance in India, and vinyl records began struggling for survival.

Around this time, middle class families were eager to ask relatives returning from abroad to fetch them a Panasonic or a Sony tape recorder. The CD is now ubiquitous, but the cassette still holds its own in the villages and towns. Lahari Recording Company, south India's biggest record label, continues to release both cassette and CD versions of all its titles.

The CD had many advantages over vinyl records and cassettes. It could hold 10 songs, or an hour of music, and play it all without a break. After the mp3 format made its appearance, the CD became so cheap and commonplace that it was sold at street corners. Loaded with songs in this compressed format, a CD could just go on and on.

For those of us who had heard music on the LPs, there was something about the CD that just didn't seem right. It did not match the quality of sound that vinyl could produce. Audiophiles call it warmth. The CD played everything clean, with no distortion, but it was clean in a surgical sort of way.

In lay language, the CD is made up of a sequence of closely aligned blocks. But however closely aligned they are, they are still separate, and so, experts said, digital could never match the smoothness of analog (tape or vinyl).

The convenience of the CD helped it eliminate the cassette in the West. "CDs were smaller, faster and digital, the perfect product for a new era of hyperconsumption and hyperspeed. But that era has come to an end," wrote Scott Thill in Wired magazine.

Now, observers such as Thill believe, the greatest challenge to the music CD is broadband, which enables people to share music without it ever having to be burnt on to a disc.

Thill believes CDs will go because they use too much plastic (for the jewel boxes) and too much paper (for the jackets), and so are environmentally unattractive. He also argues that technology will emerge to help people send and receive high-resolution music on the Net.

I don't know about the environmental bit, because concern for it hasn't really deterred the world from using cars. But I do hope the technological leap to high resolution happens soon, because I love the vinyl sound. Software wizards have developed plug-ins to make digital sounds resemble analog ones, but it still isn't the real thing.

Meanwhile, here's a useful lead for those interested in digitising their vinyl records. A company called Ion has produced a record player with a USB line out. This means you can play your old LPs on the turntable and record the output directly on to your computer. The Ion USB turntable costs about 100 dollars (Rs 4,000). That isn't a big price if you are longing to listen to vintage music but have no way to do so because nobody sells styluses for your old record player any more. Know anyone coming down from the US?

When the glamorous protest

Fashion designers and DJs are hardly the sorts you would expect to see at a protest, but they came out on M G Road on Sunday to do what the affluent think only the riff raff do: shout slogans and create a hullabaloo.

The event provided us in the media some excellent photo ops. It isn't often that you get to see a street demonstration where well-scrubbed, stylishly dressed people strum guitars and sing songs. It was, all in all, good fun for everyone.

We all know what brought the glamour gurus out on to the streets: the night curfew that the police have clamped on restaurants and drinking joints, and an order against live music and dancing.

In the 1990s, when the software crowd started streaming into Bangalore, a frequent crib in newspaper columns was that this city did not have an exciting enough nightlife. Bangalore is often considered – and I believe it is – the most Westernised of India's cities. And this complaint sounded strange to many ears, including mine.

For those not complaining, it meant many new citizens had the inclination, and more importantly, the money, to drink and party every day, and could get quite vocal if they couldn't. There was no police curfew then, so the new settlers blamed Bangalore's "small town mindset", and believed it had yet to grow up to the psychedelic pleasures of the big city.

The crib mostly left the older residents of Bangalore cynical, if not angry. Their reading was that the brash new lot had no clue about the cultural life that had sustained old Bangalore – its lectures, concerts, literary symposiums, art and music classes... The new Bangalore knew nothing about Ravindra Kalakshetra, Sri Rama Seva Mandali or the Indian Institute of World Culture.

When Tamil Nadu had banned racing and drinking during MGR's time, hundreds of middle class Madras citizens regularly took the Brindavan Express to Bangalore and spent their weekends at the turf club and this city's watering holes. They will probably find it unbelievable that Bangalore is shutting its pubs and restaurants at 11.30 pm. And they'd be even more astonished to know who's forcing the city to go home half an hour before Cinderella's deadline. It's not the moral police, but policemen in uniform, armed with the law.

The police have their arguments: Crime soars if drinking and dancing is allowed beyond the deadline. Brawls break out, and drunk drivers crash. Live bands encourage immorality. Young people ruin themselves at rave parties. And so on and so forth.

Without getting into an argument about whether the city will sink into depravity if it is open beyond 11.30 pm, I am convinced we still have an irrefutable case to keep restaurants open late.

Thousands in this city work through the night, and need to feed themselves at odd hours. Not everyone has the luxury of a canteen. To deprive them of food is not just unfair, it is cruel. Software engineers, BPO employees, cab drivers, journalists, why, even policemen, burn themselves out working odd hours. They aren't spoilt brats itching for a fight. They aren't dying to get drunk.

For every Nikhil Gowda who goes out and smashes an Empire Hotel, there are thousands who just want to eat a hot meal and go home. Think of them, Mr Police Commissioner, even if you are unmoved by the DJs' demand for a nightlife.