thenpaanan wrote: ↑20 Nov 2019, 01:17
That transformation changed the musical paradigm profoundly, and perhaps brought it from an esoteric form (obscure ragas in complex talams) to relatively easy-to-grasp form that captured the essence of the previous musical insights (simple devotional keertanas in vernacular languages set in common ragas with a simple beat that anyone could learn).
This is where we under estimate the soundness of the later tALA system. Their concern shifted from investing too much technical energy into rhythmic forms to making it second nature, not easy, so music can shift to a different dimension. If you read the thread "Kriyas Angas vs lyrical structure" here :
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=17780&start=50, I discussed how a certain tALA fits the sAhitya better. There, the canda tALAm invests too much focus on keeping the sequence of candas employed, whereas an appropriate tALam from the modern system allows for an MDR-ish drunken man's walk about and around the kriyas and melodic extensions around the same in the process. And your favorite tone emission!
But canda tALAm has been learnt by ordinary women learning under Late Sri Thirupugazh maNi Raghavan - I listened to recently in a village. It is not a question of which is easier to learn. A student can labor through it and master either one. It is a question of which will allow master pieces like tiruppugazh to come on stage in No 3 spot, more often, and create effect for a "professional" concert musician, who should not be burdened with unusual technicalities. Most musicians adhere to tradition and render them in canda tALA, which relegates tiruppugazh to later part of the concert, removing itself from heavy laya to heavy rhythm. And they cannot add manOdharma to the sAhitya rendering.
A thematic presentation, or a person specializing in that aspect, can occasionally do a simhanandana tALam or a complex canda tALam - no issues. I want an accommodation for a garden variety concert also to handle such items.
thenpaanan wrote: ↑20 Nov 2019, 01:17
If you permit me to speculate some more, I suspect there were people then who thought the music was going through some "vulgarization" even then, what with everyone humming classical tunes on the streets of Tiruvarur!
I don't know how we came to ascribe such motives to people in the remote past. Even if true, their intent was to preserve the good. Similarly now we cite, the Mylapore women gurus who persevere to preserve their pATantarams as the issue! If you ask them, nobody has followed their ideal, in the concert circuit, even in the last 10 decades. But they also misunderstand their importance a bit. The "pAtantaram" they preserve is for that guru - Sishya conversation and people must learn through that right?
But in our enlightened archaeological zeal we try to look for written manuscripts and that "original" tune from the composers, short circuiting , people in the "now" who have devoted their life to music.
But that is where the philosophical view of the past raises us "now" in the present to a higher ethic. "All said and done they regarded music as sacred" - that stand takes us forward. It is evident that a music that wants to build on the past should view the past with a philosophical eye, neither positive (blindly adoring) nor negative ( looking for problems to justify whatever now) and nor neutral (passive).
Secondly it is natural that a music that inherently seeks to provide continuity of tradition, examines the past first through immediate preceptors , and not digging around as to how Sri tyAgarAja might have originally sung this or that.
thenpaanan wrote: ↑20 Nov 2019, 01:17
For whatever reason, I am seeing more and more young singers enunciating the words more clearly than previous generations, which is a good trend in my mind. I never understood vidwans of yore who would seemingly mumble and mangle words for no apparent reason except theatrical effect.
This is a reductionist view. What you refer to theatrical effect is music. You seem to bring in some remote notion of what is music. Secondly even today, while the youngsters may have a clearer presentation, but as a formal language grammar goes, they pronounce a ga or a da or a pa or a Sa wrong especially if they are tamizh. Similarly for vidvans with mother tongue other than tamizh while rendering tamizh.
Perfecting pronunciation , or even other aspects of musical technicalities, is the vidvan's burden to resolve in private with their Guru or saha vidvans. But on stage when they sing a sAhitya, sAhitya is music as well, and it's language is NOT a personal property of somebody whose Mother tongue it is! It is the property of the sangIta sampradAya merged as one.
I guess we never got to hear the clarity of vidvans of yore that much, in their young age when they had all dexterity in their palate and tooth intact and not chewing Betel leaves. They all came to perform music after they were 40-ish?? Life after 40 is changed - philosophical
thenpaanan wrote: ↑20 Nov 2019, 01:17
And, of course, there were people who bemoaned the loss of the "pure" music to these mass appeal "sabha kutcheris". We are perhaps witnessing yet another transformation in the making that is broadening the reach to even more people, beyond religious and philosophical boundaries (who knows, perhaps even linguistic). And we are bemoaning the loss of old values.
Well philosophy is not the preserve of some isolated set of people, it is everywhere. Your justice system quotes it regularly , in India though from Greek and Latin
. Your laws are based on it. Any musical system how much ever it purports to be a renegade challenger to established practice, has to seek an higher ethic. This is especially true of a system that by (unwritten, but understood) charter wants to be continuing a tradition. Tradition cannot mean sticking to dogmas. There is no religion here. There is no transformation. It is rather continuation.
Now as regards the old values, old values went through their own confusion. It seems MMI would not sing grahabalamEmi, because he believed in graha balam. But that is a question, SrI tyAgarAja goes through in his ruminations. Why it should be brought into mix with one's own practice? SrI tyAgarAja is not the first one, SrI PurandaradAsa says the same, and Appar in his kOLARu patigam says the same. People recite the last one to get over the same.
Same goes for nidhi cAla sukhamA? The literacy drive, had literally read all of it, from TSP's book and argues. It is like many of us, learning from kONAr notes for our tamizh. Our teacher used to get incensed
The sAhitya is sacred. Whatever it means. I'd rather would not delve into meaning so much, even if it is my language , as we seem to miss the point. So a musician mis-pronouncing it, is not an issue also
People should not put themselves as arbiters of truth. People here have handled contradictions more easily than this. Gandhian confusion I suppose.