Whither Indian Music?

By N.S. PHADKE

The last twelve years following the achievement of India’s freedom have been marked by a tidal wave of renaissance in the fields of literature, arts, and music. Foreigners left our country, a national Government came into existence, and the new rulers decided to patronise all activities pertaining to the nation’s culture. With the coming of peaceful and stable times, people evinced a new enthusiasm for all kinds of arts. Under the cover of a newly-found spacious phrase, ‘Cultural Programme,’ dramas, dance recitals, ‘tamasha’s and musical concerts are being arranged endlessly. Not a day passes, but some sort of a cultural programme is billed somewhere in every city. What with the birth and death anniversaries of dear departed artists, and the Annual Day celebrations of institutions, some excuse or other is easily available for all the three hundred and sixty five days of the year for these so-called cultural programmes. Huge attendance is the order of the day. Economists continue to tell us that India is a poor country; and the organisers of musical concerts continue to raise enormous incomes, in spite of prohibitive admission prices. Whenever people want to raise funds for an institution, they plan an ambitious cultural programme. Half a dozen dramas, two or three musical concerts, and a ‘tamasha’ under the new-fangled name ‘Lokanatya’! This is enough to bring in tons of money! Looking at this flood of cultural programmes and the public enthusiasm which they evoke, one cannot help thinking that our cultural level must have gone up very very high during the last twelve years, and it will most decidedly touch the very heavens soon, if the present craze for cultural programmes continues! God save our culture in case it reaches the height of Mount Everest! Scientists tell us that breathing is rather difficult on dizzy altitudes!

Today, people flock in their thousands to musical concerts. Sixty years ago two or three hundred people were considered a fairly good attendance at a musical concert. But, now, these concerts have assumed colossal proportions. The fees of the artists have also mounted up amazingly. The great Rahimatkhan was after all an ‘Avaliya’ who did not charge a single farthing for his incomparable music. But top-ranking artists like Alladiyakhan, Abdul Karimkhan, Balkrishnabua, Bhaskarao Bakhale, Pandit Paluskar, Faiyazkhan, could be heard on payment of a mere fifty or seventy-five rupees. The current charges of first-class artists have to be measured in terms of thousands. Formerly, the ‘tabla’ player used to be quite content if he was paid ten rupees. Now he would not touch the ‘tabla’ unless he receives a crisp hundred-rupee note. Be it summer or winter, thousands of men and women flock to musical concerts today, pay fabulous admission fees, give generous rounds of applause, and manifest their appreciation with such zest that the performing artists might feel as though they were celestial ‘gandharva’s come to earth for the benefit of the mortals! Ample proof is provided that, apart from many other forms of madness which may or may not be attributed to us, we are music-mad! Throughout the length and breadth of the country, there goes on, today, day and night, a continuous swell of music! Surely our music has today achieved a spring-time bloom, as never before! Surely, our people have cultivated a remarkable understanding and love of music!

These are happy thoughts indeed. But are they true?

Has the number of people who understand music really increased during the last twelve years? Has our music really progressed? How many of the present day popular artists are of such a calibre that the great artists of the former generation will have to bow to them? The artists whom we heard four or five decades ago were equipped with music which was the product of years and years of untiring practice, profound study and knowledge, and, above all, an amazing mastery of voice and artistry. Do the present-day artists show any evidence of
these qualities? Can we point out a single musician of today who can be unhesitatingly ranked with men like Faiyazkhan, Bhaskarao, Vazebua? Can we point out a single ‘satar’ player who could be compared with that wizard of the ‘satar’–Barkatulla? Do we find a single musician who can astound us with the range of his voice, or fill us with ecstasy by the limpid sweetness of his voice? Can we mention an artist who has a stock of four or five hundred ‘chisa’s (compositions), as the older musicians used to have?

All these questions will have to be answered in the negative!

Measure today’s musicians and instrumentalists by their study and knowledge, and they would look mere dwarfs in comparison with the former giants. There were no microphones in the days gone by, and yet musicians like Bhaskarao sang in open ‘maifal’s, at Amritsar and other places, with such vigour that their music could be heard by the last man in the farthest corner of the crowd. The feeble-voiced musicians of today require half a dozen microphones, without which their music would not reach beyond the first three rows of chairs. Musicians of the past generation sang for seven to eight hours, Today’s concerts have shrunk in the dimension of time, like the present-day theatrical performances. A couple of ‘ragini’s, a ‘thumri’ or ‘kazri’, and a ‘bhajan’! Finish! The rest is ‘Interval’ and ‘Coffee’!

Could it be said that there has come about an appreciable increase in people’s understanding of music? Amongst the thousands who crowd at a musical concert, how many souls can be found who possess a true understanding of music? How many who have at least an elementary knowledge of the twelve musical notes? How many who can tell ‘trital’ from ‘dadara’? How many who know how many strings the ‘tambora’ has, and in what notes they are set? Most of the men and women who flock to the musical concerts come because it is the current fashion to do so, and because it gives them an occasion to display their costly, fantastic clothes. There is hardly any difference between the crowd at a musical festival and the mammoth crowd at the Brabourne Stadium come to witness a test match.

How wrong would it be then to point out the present popularity of musical concerts and to argue that the financial success of these concerts is a sure indication that the knowledge and love of music are spreading fast, and that our music is progressing as it had never done before? On the contrary, there is enough reason to suspect that the present growth of our music is only a misleading, unhealthy obesity. The time has surely come when we must seriously think who are the true promoters of our music, and who mere pretenders to the title, camouflaged enemies?

The inherent strength and beauty of our music are undoubtedly such that it should have a perennial appeal, unaffected by the passage of time or the change of environment. It is usual to say that, while the principle of ‘harmony’ rules Western music, our music is principally governed by ‘melody’. It would be simpler to remark that two fundamental features of our music are the ‘raga’ classification and the concept of the ‘tala’, out of which have arisen the various ‘tala’ patterns. Those who formulated and organized our music have developed both these features with such thoroughness and such aesthetic sense that we have every reason to feel deeply proud of our music, and even to believe that our music is incomparably superior to the music of other countries.

And yet it would be wrong to forget that the modern times are so essentially different from the old times, that they would demand improvement in both the performance and the propagation of our music. The urgent need of the hour in the field of our music is two-fold. We must abandon certain time-worn practices and myths, and we must graft on our music a few new ideas. We are guilty of certain sins of commission and also of some sins of omission. We shall succeed in preserving, and also enriching, the great traditions of our music only if we are prepared to discard fossilized ideas and to adopt certain new vigorous concepts, with a view to widen the appeal. of our music. It would require a separate long article to examine the traditionally accepted idea that specific ‘raga’s must be sung at prescribed hours of the day and night, and also the idea that specific ‘raga’s evoke specific ‘rasa’s (that is ‘emotional moods’), and to prove how both these ideas are unscientific. I shall, therefore, content myself here with suggesting that the time has surely come when connoisseurs–and, of course, the performing artists, too–must reassess the values of our musical ideas and practices.

Even though concerts of classical music draw large crowds of listeners, it will be foolish to conclude that its appreciation has become wide-spread. On the contrary, there are undeniable indications that there is a widening gulf between ‘classical music’ and ‘light music’, and the public are being increasingly drawn towards the latter. And no one is more responsible for this growing popular distaste for classical music than the musicians themselves.

Let us remember that what is known as ‘classical music’ is, after all, essentially a science and not an art. Its appeal is to the ‘intellect’, and not to the ‘heart’, Classical music may thrill the listener’s intellect, but it does not have the power to create emotional rapture. It is usual to say that music is an art. But an art aims at arousing the exuberance of an emotional mood; and classical music–however expertly sung–can never produce this effect. Faithful purity of notes, the perfect correctness of ‘raga’, and the clever execution of ‘laya’ patterns–these are indeed wonderful forms of artistry, which mark the first-rate performance of classical music. They will indeed be hugely enjoyable. But the experience of the listener will have to be described as ‘intellectual joy’–not ‘emotional delight’. Patterns of melody, emanating from a human voice or an instrument, however rich and astounding they may be, will fail to produce what I would like to call ‘the complete and full delight’ of music, which can arise only from the co-ordinated blending of melody, words, their meaning, and their emotional suggestion. The present ever-widening gulf between classical music and light music will be bridged only if our musicians and artists realise this.

In the old days, music thrived under royal patronage. Today, it has to live on public support. Formerly, the role of the common people was that of mere listeners. Now, they are also the patrons of music. As a result of this change, our musicians must carry out the delicate and difficult task of at once pleasing the public and cultivating in their minds a musical taste of a high order. On the one hand, they must acquaint the people with all the glories of classical music, and, on the other hand, they must instil as much artistic element in their performance as they can, so that listeners will derive, from their music, true emotional delight.

Indian classical music–whether of the Hindustani or the karnatak type–as we hear it sung or played, has degenerated into such purely pedantic acrobatics of ‘melody’ and ‘tala’ that they strike the listener as emotionally dehydrated products which do not have the power to touch the heart and to create ‘rasa’, which must be the aim of any artistic performance, whether literary, pictorial, or musical.

The impression which can be gathered after attending concerts of classical music is that our musicians do not ‘sing’. They only go on playing on the instrument of their voice, utterly ignoring the words of the composition, their meaning, not to speak of their emotional suggestion. They do not give ‘music’, but only long-winded bundles of repetitive monotonous ‘tana’s. They mislead the audience into believing that these acrobatics constitute Indian music, and the poor ignorant souls who make the majority of the crowd swallow this misconception. People who come to listen to renowned musicians and instrumentalists want to witness a cock-fight between the artist and the ‘tabla’ player. And, since such a cock-fight is the easiest thing to perform, the artists oblige the crowd most willingly and repeatedly.

A musical concert ought to be an artistic piece–like a lecture. Just as a lecture must be a composite progressive whole, each succeeding point arising logically out of the preceding, a musical concert too must be marked by a delightful logical development–first the skilful ‘filling’ of the ‘ragini’, then the transition to the ‘tana’s, followed by the ‘bol tana’s, then the full-chested ‘jamak tana’s’. And, above all, the basic composition–of which ‘tana’s and ‘meend’s and ‘murki’s are after all the decorations–must be presented again and again with all its implications of meaning and emotion. If this does not happen, the performance, however renowned the artist may be, cannot be called a musical concert. It becomes a ‘tamasha’. People have come to be fond of such ‘tamasha’s. The musicians and artists say to the public, “Please yourselves, have ‘tamasha’s.” The musicians and artists cheat themselves and their public. The people, intheir turn, applaud the artists and cheat them. Everyone joins in a huge hoax. A vicious circle of ignorance and humbug goes round. There arises an illusion of music’s progress. In truth, true musical talent and appreciation are both rapidly declining.

In the old days, music had to be studied under a master. The pupil had to live in the master’s house and win his good opinion and favour by personal service. Now, there are classes and schools and colleges where courses of musical instructions are taught. I am prepared to admit the importance and value of bookish instruction and degrees. But there are certain arts and branches of ‘knowledge which cannot be acquired from mere books and courses. Their acquisition can come only from personal association, from close contact between the teacher and the taught, and from years and years of continued teaching and patient practice. Such devoted practice is today being ignored. Artists hanker after cheap degrees. Even small lanes are crowded with ‘Sangit-Ratna’s and ‘Sangit-Acharya’s!

Our music is progressing, if at all, in a horizontal line. Its vertical progress is lamentable. Theoretically, one cannot object to books on music or courses of musical studies and degrees. But there is definite danger in over-estimating their value. First-class artists were never manufactured in schools and colleges. The Goddess of Art will never smile on an artist who regards art as a mere means of livelihood. Such devotees will always stand in ankle-deep, shallow waters of knowledge. They will never reach the depths of what our ancient musicians have described (in many a musical composition) as an ‘ocean of music’. In the light of the light-hearted attitude of the present musicians towards the study and practice of music, anecdotes of the bone-shattering labour, which the older musicians took, seem like fantastic fairy tales. These artists of the older generation, whose names are deservingly recorded as of giants, spent twelve to sixteen hours a day on their practice. We are told that they spent several hours of the early morning in perfecting their ‘kharja’. It is foolish to imagine that the science of ‘Voice Culture’ was unknown to our ‘maestro’s, and that one must go to America to initiate oneself in this science. All the present ills in the field of our music arise from the fact that our musicians do not want profound knowledge, do not want labour and effort, do not want years and years of study. They want only one thing–cheap and quick publicity. This is killing our music!

Listeners of today are as guilty as the artists. No one seems to realise that listening to music is as much an art as music itself. To hear music is certainly not an irresponsible pastime to be indulged in by any one who can fling a few rupees and buy a seat in the concert hall. The capacity to appreciate music–and specially our classical music–can come only after one learns to, understand at least the elements of ‘swara’ and ‘tala’, and the ‘raga’ classification. How many listeners of such capacity can be found in the crowds which attend today’s musical festivals? These vast audiences possess a crowd mentality, and their musical taste is shallow and vulgar. Our artists naturally sing and play to the gallery, and stoop to conquer, sinking to the level of dolts and fools. Real high-class music is thrown to the winds, and there takes place an exhibition of cheap acrobatics. One could wish there existed even a single courageous and honest artist who would pull the ears of the audience and tell them that what they applaud is not real music.

Listeners must realise that they must try and cultivate a high standard of musical taste. And musicians and artists must realise that it is their responsibility to create such taste in the public.

Musical concerts have today become a mere ‘business’. There is an all-round obsession of the glamour of publicity. Music in which there is a beautiful blending of science and art is becoming rarer and rarer. Ignorant people are pretending that they possess a great love of music, and artists are fooling such audiences. The future of our music would be bright and hopeful only if this vicious circle is broken, and only if both the artists and the listeners begin to understand their respective duties and responsibilities.