Exhilarating

[Rsachi]

Varsha, a powerful play if ever there was one. I watched one of the more recent versions some years ago and found the emotional drama draining, indeed. 1947 Pulitzer winner, Tennessee Williams
Here is the dialogue you shared:

• MITCH :
  You may teach school but you're certainly not an old maid.
  BLANCHE:
  Thank you, sir! I appreciate your gallantry!
  MITCH:
  So you are in the teaching profession?
  BLANCHE:
  Yes. Ah, yes...
  MITCH:
  Grade school or high school or--
  STANLEY [bellowing]:
  Mitch!
  MITCH:
  Coming!
  BLANCHE:
  Gracious, what lung-power!... I teach high school. In Laurel.
  MITCH:
  What do you teach? What subject?
  BLANCHE:
  Guess!
  MITCH:
  I bet you teach art or music?
  [Blanche laughs delicately]
  Of course I could be wrong. You might teach arithmetic.
  BLANCHE:
  Never arithmetic, sir, never arithmetic!
  [with a laugh]
  I don't even know my multiplication tables! No, I have the misfortune of being an English instructor. I attempt to instill a bunch of bobby-soxers and drug-store Romeos with reverence for Hawthorne and Whitman and Poe!
  MITCH:
  I guess that some of them are more interested in other things.
  BLANCHE:
  How very right you are! Their literary heritage is not what most of them treasure above all else! But they're sweet things! And in the spring, it's touching to notice them making their first discovery of love! As if nobody had ever known it before!

[thenpaanan]

Very good use of the head voice by KMB and refreshing to see too!

-Thenpaanan

[shankarank]

TMK (if you recall his thrilling neravals and swaras last decade)

Yeah ya ya ... why just last decade - we can head back even before to his first U.S tour 1998 with "Ga" of Ra-Ga duo and Arun - the cotton heads were pleasantly surprised by his RAju vetala as coddler with no Alap - all fire and fury swarams with matching replies by Gayathri - yeah, she was on the instrument though which is supposedly easier - yeah!

And a good paced Sri DakshinamUrte with TS at MFA - 2002 IIRC - tani in miSra jampa.

A sublime and slow kamalambikE tOdi 2003 BVB - remember the caturASra tiSram by Manoj Siva in dwi-kalai rUpakam - the speed was still playable. So there is enough space as composed or even in break-neck compositions that can still be lot slowed to do justice.

What is concerning now is that utter falsehood is being promoted and sold - with elaborate supporting arguments some in fact consistent with the agenda. Things are slowed down to showcase gliding sounds as an aesthetic with no perception of any intervals left - sometimes percussionist confused even. The falsehood arises because the sAdhana and deep felt truths of the percussionist is disrespected and falsified!

I don't think I need any lakshana granthas to substantiate here. Just a half lifetime of experience would do? This is not about grammar, tradition or sampradhaya. Something more basic.

If cAndas with it's perception are removed - all ties to ancestry can be removed. This is purging. It truly becomes art in a museum to be viewed with some post modern voyeurism with no roots implied.

Good going!.

[Rsachi]

Shankarank,
Your words, and my own observations of the many moods and displays of TMK, recall to mind the stern warnings in Bhagavadgita Ch 2 and also the Vivekachudamani. They warn that even accomplished sadhakas and wise men can experience a steep and accelerating decline in their wisdom and equanimity if they do not guard themselves against the temptations and vasanas of the unbridled ego/mind. And the climb back will be not easy.

[Sivaramakrishnan]

Everything evolves. But remember that music and a musician evolve together and you are listening to people 2 generations below you. Your tastes have evolved too over decades of listening, don't forget that. We will see where they evolve to after 10 years.

See, in Western Classical music, they preserve original compositions 'as they were'. There are dedicated practitioners and loyal bands of listeners. These are sort of benchmarks for the later generations.

[SrinathK]

Yeah they can because their music comes from the book. But it was not so even a hundred years ago. Many played their own arrangements of Paganini and Auer edited Tchaikovsky's violin concerto. Baroque music has improvised arpeggios. Bussoni composed his own arrangement for the Chaccone. Milstein often went back to fine tune his own compositions.

Just see as an example how different are two styles of Bach of the immortal chaccone:

Baroque : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGmUrUwEn5k on a period instrument and old, non-standard bow. A bit of improvisation.
Romantic-Classical : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q-Zqz7mNjQ on a modern violin and bow (Even some elements in this style are out of date today)
Another modern, rather eccentric style : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uCdKH_zHVs & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdtU0T4Ukd8

While Heifetz goes through in a fast 12:57, Hahn takes a very leisurely 17:54 !

But yes, overall, their music survives better because of the notation system optimized for it. The notes are the same.

In CM, notations are actually not good for more than memory aids. Going by the book can sometimes result in strange results due to different interpretations of the gamakas. What we need are recordings.

You should know that the sangati was the original ancestor of the neraval and was once a form of improvisation and therefore can't completely abandon that role.

As for those brigha sangatis, the credit goes really to forerunners like GNB. Eg. darini. Thyagaraja in fact may have been the one to start it (Endaro).

[shankarank]

Western traditions place more importance on commandments , obedience, and history centrism. That reflects in the arts too. In the modern times - they had to find new genres to break free!

I don't know if the word art is used even in the sense of Plato : http://www.iep.utm.edu/art-ep/ . Even there Aristotle moved away.

That raises my suspicion that the word art as currently used subconsciously is in the protestant sense - deriving from the experience of Colonization , plunder and then museum-ization. Except that when you land in the airport - they don't discuss all their atrocities and issue a pamphlet documenting all of it. Like what is being done in fora like Lit. Fests - all funded by the protestant west - where there are people who might hear for the first time that there is something called Carnatic music.

In our tradition obedience and grammar play a part only during learning. Then by sAdhana you can find new truths.

Even in the spiritual - there are bramha-niSTAs ( those who reached the state) and SrOtriyas ( those who have heard the methods) . The latter pass on the tradition so that when people are ready they can avail of it. It might be that they might themselves re-incarnate as per belief and avail of it.

As regards what we call the folk arts - they still exist and not consigned to museums. The artistes and communities connected to it must do the sAdhana and restore it.