What emotion does a song convey?

Miscellaneous topics on Carnatic music
Post Reply
kvchellappa
Posts: 3596
Joined: 04 Aug 2011, 13:54

What emotion does a song convey?

Post by kvchellappa »

This is from FB, and I think it has a bearing on some of the discussions we carry on.
Sri Sriram Parsuram on a post of Smt. Radha Bhaskar (It is intriguing how the same song can stir different emotions in different people.):
“Music, even of the highest order, is at best a medium .... A medium which can help a person move towards the Divine..... Relating to and Attaching oneself to the song emotionally is mostly only in the field of Rasa.... Objectively speaking, being absorbed in Rasa is quite different from being 'immersed in Divinity'... But most of us live in the illusion that listening to classical music (with closed eyes preferably) and listening to one's favourite artistes (for whom we have anyways developed a liking for) automatically transports us to some 'Divine realm' .... Nothing like that happens.... Liking of an MS song or a GNB rendition Has to do more with Oneself than the Music itself.... (this of course takes some guts to come to terms with)... So when people come up to me and say 'how divinely u sang this song' or things like 'apdiye vaikunthathukku eduthundu poyitel' I Am thankful for their kind words but I cannot really take their words to mean anything seriously.... We (both musicians and rasikas) have psyched ourselves to believe that just because the intent and content of our classical music is 'spiritual', all of us are automatically in the field of the 'Divine'....”
“Attaching 'absolute' values and attributes to ragas and melodies is a problem .... The Svaras and ragas themselves are totally free from our psychological states, conditionings and experiences.... So perceptions and responses to ragas and melodies (with or without reference to saahitya) is mostly subjective.”
Smt. Radha Bhaskar:
“Here another point arises in this case - myself a musician with some understanding of the raga & lyrics of the song & the other end person with no clue about the lyrical content and very little knowledge of music. Now, whose perception of the feel of the song is correct, or are we both correct or is there nothing called correct in this?”
Sriram Parasuram: “Radha Bhaskar ji.... u hit the nail on the head when u say 'there is nothing called correct' in this. But 'truth in music' has an ability to convey itself beyond raga and saahitya.... The main reason why a Tyagaraja or Diksitar kriti is still so beautifully alive in our consciousness is because of the Satyam in it... Beyond the raga and poetry and hundred other saamarthyas.....”

shankarank
Posts: 4041
Joined: 15 Jun 2009, 07:16

Re: What emotion does a song convey?

Post by shankarank »

Emotion itself is a bio-chemical, hormonal drudge passed on from animal kingdom to us. And rationality and logic are large scale computations that highly complex systems perform, and Stephen Hawking famously said , human body is just a computer!

And the universe will have a cold death into SUnyata. Completely hopeless!

shankarank
Posts: 4041
Joined: 15 Jun 2009, 07:16

Re: What emotion does a song convey?

Post by shankarank »

kvchellappa wrote: 12 Jul 2018, 18:56 The main reason why a Tyagaraja or Diksitar kriti is still so beautifully alive in our consciousness is because of the Satyam in it... Beyond the raga and poetry and hundred other saamarthyas.....”
tyAgarAja refers to that as nijavAkuladO in his sogasugAmridanga tALAmu. The brahmin in Dr V. Raghavan translated that as upaniShadic truths. A kriti that defines a kriti's lakshaNa. That is parasatyA ( beyond the normal worldly perception - something metaphysical).

But then when a nAyika accuses , parodies and vilifies the nayaka as jAraSikAmaNi , that is iha satyam - more dvaidic, you could say. Something Prof. TRS had too much trouble explaining in his Lec Dem. But Prof SRJ was much more comfortable, he lofted it up as nayaka-nayaki philosophy!

But the concept went into the loft for a while! ;)
Last edited by shankarank on 15 Jul 2018, 03:33, edited 1 time in total.

shankarank
Posts: 4041
Joined: 15 Jun 2009, 07:16

Re: What emotion does a song convey?

Post by shankarank »

kvchellappa wrote: 12 Jul 2018, 18:56 So when people come up to me and say 'how divinely u sang this song' or things like 'apdiye vaikunthathukku eduthundu poyitel' I Am thankful for their kind words but I cannot really take their words to mean anything seriously....
https://www.dummies.com/education/scien ... manifolds/
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Calabi-YauSpace.html

Calabi-Yau spaces are important in string theory, where one model posits the geometry of the universe to consist of a ten-dimensional space of the form M×V, where M is a four dimensional manifold (space-time) and V is a six dimensional compact Calabi-Yau space. They are related to Kummer surfaces. Although the main application of Calabi-Yau spaces is in theoretical physics, they are also interesting from a purely mathematical standpoint. Consequently, they go by slightly different names, depending mostly on context, such as Calabi-Yau manifolds or Calabi-Yau varieties.
Lets parse that a bit: "Although the main application of Calabi-Yau spaces is in theoretical physics" <-- although they may mean something, "they are also interesting from a purely mathematical standpoint" <-- they could also be abstract mythical Math , who could weave their logic in a mythical world. In other words the Math is a metaphor for something that may be real in some ways.

More on some mysteries: Such mythical Math could be pulled out of Thin air.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathemat ... -20150312/
Ramanujan became famous for seemingly pulling mathematical relationships out of thin air, and he credited many of his discoveries to the goddess Namagiri, who appeared to him in visions, he said
So living in Mythical experience is not insane after all, and mostly there may not be anything fruitful to the world!

vgovindan
Posts: 1865
Joined: 07 Nov 2010, 20:01

Re: What emotion does a song convey?

Post by vgovindan »

......And the universe will have a cold death into SUnyata. Completely hopeless...

Yes, but the whole information content remains embedded in the event horizon of the black hole - which has no volume but encloses the total universe in a dimension-less dot. This information content reemerges when the black hole bursts out as big bang - with all its previous 'memory'. What kind of SUnyata which ever exists and so exists that it is so imperceptible as non-existence - the grand SUnyata!

This is what probably called euphemistically 'angushTha mAtraH purushaH' - the all-pervading consciousness enveloped by information content of all the accumulated karmas.

And the universe manifestly exists because of emotion - the glue that binds everything - as forces of attraction and repulsion - but for which the universe is a state of total anonymity - pUrNata or SUnyata : sat or asat - depending on which side of the coin one looks at.
Last edited by vgovindan on 15 Jul 2018, 05:41, edited 2 times in total.

shankarank
Posts: 4041
Joined: 15 Jun 2009, 07:16

Re: What emotion does a song convey?

Post by shankarank »

kvchellappa wrote: 12 Jul 2018, 18:56 Sriram Parasuram: We (both musicians and rasikas) have psyched ourselves to believe that just because the intent and content of our classical music is 'spiritual',
No!! An entire so called educated intelligentia have psyched themselves to think that , between hormonal and bio-chemical urges and the upper cortex with which they once cut bones to survive and then did Math, they have this think called intellect with which they make sense of a thing called language and lyrics - a sort of superiority complex over other beings. Anthropocentric pride. Engendered largely by reading the West and awed by it's progress.

In between for about 10s, 100s of thousand years , fortunately for them the gaze up on the Sky revealed something beautiful and even today with all the understanding, some informed Scientists are left to Wonder how and why the world is even comprehensible to them!

To even talk about a "content of classical music " in a limited sense is atrocious. One of the words has been thrown out the Window. For e.g Sanskrit is not classical and other languages are not regional. The word vernacular contains the word "verna" - etymology "slave born in an household". "Vernacular Press" is a commonly used term by the opinionators in the English press.

Do you want to subscribe to that?

And music is yet to be defined.

How much more idiotic can we get???
kvchellappa wrote: 12 Jul 2018, 18:56 Smt. Radha Bhaskar:: myself a musician with some understanding of the raga & lyrics of the song & the other end person with no clue about the lyrical content and very little knowledge of music.
Hope you still don't think Raga is made out of some notes! Even a svara has so many dimensions. You seem to sound like "raga" is music and then there is this "lyrics of the song" . Time and gain we have discussed in this forum , what is sAhitya and what are it's recognizable components in terms of just sound! And even that is scratching the surface.

First before we address "lyrics", answer me this!! What is your take on meaningless syllables of Mridangam and dance?? Are they music?? No I am not talking about the note-frequency of those, just their stress and position on time scale! You who frequented this forum so many times in the past, have fell silent and did not speak a word in my thread on "Brief History of time in music".


To use the word "lyrics" in English - which as a sound has not integrated with any form of Indian music yet , is an insult and treacherous to the traditions of the Bharat. And that is a language our people have learnt the hard way, writing it so well ( every U.S person appreciates the writing skill of an Indian) , reading it so well, speaking it, but many times not understanding it too well.

First address my questions or else close down your departments of Ethno-musicology!!! The latter needs to be given a quiet euthanasic burial!!
Last edited by shankarank on 15 Jul 2018, 09:02, edited 1 time in total.

kvchellappa
Posts: 3596
Joined: 04 Aug 2011, 13:54

Re: What emotion does a song convey?

Post by kvchellappa »

Too much of knowledge without sense of proportion and relevance does not help.
We deal with the world and live in it in a limited way like in a snapshot picture. Even a scientist or a philosopher or a yogi lives within a limited sphere. We do not live in a black hole or in some mathematical paradigm.
To take any topic to a grandiose setting of some cosmic proportion serves no purpose. We deal with compartmentalised reality in our conscious setting. When we eat, we concern ourselves with taste, perhaps etiquette, or health consciousness. We do not get into the function of the digestive system, the ecological imbalances of artificial farming methods, and so many other topics which may have some bearing on eating. We do not set out to define eating before we eat.
Anything can be pulled to pieces or dealt with in its intended scope.
Criticism is valid only within the scope of its setting.
Here, the question was about the same song in the same tune creating varying emotional response. Criticism is valid in that scope. Even quantum mechanics may have a bearing on it and must be discussed in some other context.

shankarank
Posts: 4041
Joined: 15 Jun 2009, 07:16

Re: What emotion does a song convey?

Post by shankarank »

Well post #6 confines itself simple existential realm of thought and all commonly observed phenomena in a normal day of life. Don't have to look up to the sky. So ignore the cosmos and answer with your common experience.

shankarank
Posts: 4041
Joined: 15 Jun 2009, 07:16

Re: What emotion does a song convey?

Post by shankarank »

kvchellappa wrote: 15 Jul 2018, 08:31 When we eat, we concern ourselves with taste, perhaps etiquette, or health consciousness. We do not get into the function of the digestive system, the ecological imbalances of artificial farming methods, and so many other topics which may have some bearing on eating. We do not set out to define eating before we eat.
Works well for traditional Grandmas food in a village that sources everything locally. But people seem to have to go beyond their compartments to get some extra bits of info these days it seems. Take a listen: https://youtu.be/telKCS1QAXY?t=263

365 varieties of rice around Jagannath ( er.. Juggernaut ) temple. Daily naivEdyam with that day's harvest. Well how did they deal with not aged rice?

shankarank
Posts: 4041
Joined: 15 Jun 2009, 07:16

Re: What emotion does a song convey?

Post by shankarank »

Also Smt. Radha Bhaskar need not bother too much with Cosmos and stuff. She just needs to consult Mudra Bhaskar. He spoke in that interrupted TMK concert when TKM fell ill / 2004 or so. He was almost introducing Sri TKM to the Nungambakkam audience. Senior vidvan ( of 7 decades then - in a concert of a rookie) . The concert gained steam he said, with the pace/kalapramaNam set by him - and he quantified by the contribution too - about 70%.

Whether he said that in consolation to a suffering vidvAn or not , she can find out.

Post Reply