A Pursuit
Kastoori Ramakrishnan
I got all excited when I heard that T M Krishna is coming to San Francisco Bay area in November, not for just a concert but a three day program of lecture demonstrations in carnatic music. I have heard this young artist from CDs and seen him on YouTube, but I have never had the opportunity to experience his live performance. I desperately wanted to attend all three days of this vibrant, tremendously energetic and enthusiastic carnatic singer.
As my luck would have it, I could only make it to the last of the sessions which was on Rāgam, Tānam, Pallavi. I drove about an hour from north of San Francisco to Fremont in South Bay where the program was. Finding the college auditorium was tricky because there are two entrances to the campus. If you take the wrong one, you will go home back out of frustration of going round and round without being able to locate the auditorium. Of course I entered the wrong one. When I was just about making the decision to return home, I saw a glimpse of a red-sari-clad lady walking towards a building accessible only by another entrance further away. I did not take my eyes off that lady and guided my car to the proximity of that building. I was already getting late. For any program, I make it a point to reach the venue at least 20 minutes early. I truly believe that as much as the performers need to be in the right frame of mind before the performance, so must be the audience to properly savor it. This frustrating hunt for the auditorium threw me off and made me all agitated. Nevertheless I reached the entrance of the auditorium, after parking the car and a brisk walk, just at 4 pm, the time T M Krishna was scheduled to start his presentation.
I hurriedly entered the lobby of the auditorium. The lobby was unusually empty for an Indian event which rarely starts on time and there would be a lot of people milling around outside the auditorium before the program starts. In the background I could hear music coming out of the auditorium. I thought that Krishna has started the presentation and I have, for once, witnessed an Indian event starting right on time. Alas! I quickly discerned that it was some dance performance still going on in the auditorium. I approached the table where two ladies were in charge of selling tickets. One of them volunteered to tell me, without me asking, that T M Krishna’s presentation will be delayed by an hour; the other lady immediately interjected by saying that it will be delayed by at least an hour and half. Controlling all emotions, I asked whether it is because T M Krishna has not yet arrived. The reply was, “No, he is back stage.”
I got furious. I wanted to run inside the auditorium, politely ask the dancer to wind down everything in fifteen minutes and announce that the organizers of the program should not insult a person of T M Krishna’s caliber, stature and virtuosity. For that matter no performer of any caliber must be disrespected and mistreated with such callousness. But I did not show my chagrin. I thought of just leaving. But I decided that I must wait just out of respect for Krishna. I bought the ticket which was $20.
I came out of the lobby and walked outside thinking about how to spend the projected one and half hours and possibly more. I saw a kiosk where they were selling some eatables. I went and got a cup of coffee. The coffee was good. It had the aroma and taste of Madras coffee. Anger was gone a little bit. As I sipped the coffee, I called a friend of mine in the nearby city of San Jose to chat. I vented my frustration on the shoddy way the organizers are conducting the much anticipated program.
A little later I went back to the kiosk and got some Parippu Vadas. Those ruined the taste of the coffee. I then decided to watch the dance performance and so went inside the auditorium and sat down. The dancer was petite but was very good - crisp, perfect moves. Sitting in the back row, I could not decipher her facial expressions and eye movements. The lighting appeared to be not well thought out. The petite figure appeared miniscule and did not get projected well in that high-ceilinged huge stage. A lot more attention could have been given to proper and sufficient lighting to accentuate the dancer’s presence. I kept drifting my eyes towards the music ensemble, which was excellent. The singing was very lively and melodious. Unfortunately, the singer’s left hand was so active with gestures that it distracted me from watching the dancer’s hand movements. When, at times the singer picked up the book with his left hand to refer to the notes, there was such a calm to enable me to focus on the dancer. Luckily the singer’s right hand was always engaged in keeping the beats of the rhythm.
The dance number I was watching was Dasāvathāram, a long piece, not expected to end any time soon. It concluded around 5:10 or so. After that, when the audience still stayed put, I knew there are going to be several more dance pieces before the program would conclude. I started worrying that T M Krishna’s program might get canceled. Or, he himself might get upset and decide to walk out and refuse to do his presentation. On the contrary, it is also possible that Krishna has experienced the fluidity of time from the previous two days and has concluded that today’s 4 pm schedule is just for some rough guidance. No one, except me, was taking it so seriously.
Indeed the dancer started another piece and I had to get out of the auditorium to restrain anger frothing up again. I went to the ticket table and inquired with the ladies about what was going on. They were very apologetic and admitted that even they were praying that the dance would end soon and what was going on would be the last item. I gave a sarcastic smile at them, came out of the lobby and took a small walk in the campus. The skies had started getting dark. I knew my drive home back to North Bay would be tough because I don’t like driving in the dark especially through the city. But I was determined to see T M Krishna’s live performance.
I went back into the auditorium around 5:30. The routine last number of Bharatanātyam performances, Tillāna, had started. I let a sigh of relief out. I knew the end is near. At 5:45 the dance program ended and the master of ceremony came up, thanked the performer, Pallavi Sriram, and the music ensemble. Then she announced a short break. I shuddered because these short Indian breaks can be like Pāndavā’s Vanavāsam. I wanted to get out and get my $20 back and head home. I restrained myself saying again, it is T M Krishna. Sat there motionless, watching the audience of about 250 going helter-skelter during the break. Many had brought their children. They were of all ages including a baby I saw of just a few months. The smell of silk Sarees preserved with those white naphthalene moth balls was overpowering. Children started running up and down the aisles adding to the cacophony adults were making.
The stage got set up with a rug and mikes. In a few minutes, T M Krishna walked in briskly. The Mrudangam player and violinist followed. Time - 5:55. I saw no consternation or displeasure in Krishna’s face. It was cheerful, pleasant and enthusiastic as if this two hour delay had caused no perturbation whatsoever. I liked that very much because for any performance the mind needs to be completely clear of all unnecessary and irrelevant pre-occupations.
Krishna immediately set a friendly rapport with the audience by saying that he will sing a little bit before lecturing us all. He gave an ālāpana of rāga Kāmboji. I have not heard a rendition of Kāmboji from anybody, old or new, with such vibrance, clarity, brilliance and most importantly creativity. The ālāpana was just a few minutes but I shall remember it forever. Yes, T M Krishna has that inimitable spontaneity in his music.
Vidwan Krishna then expounded the musical form of Rāgam, Tānam, Pallavi. The most memorable was how under the tutelage of Chengalpet Ranganāthan he got liberated from constraints of musical structures and forms and attained the freedom to make musical phrases flow out of him with ease, with no thinking whatsoever, except the direction given by the immediately preceding phrase. It is, as he said, just the here and now that matter to let the strings of Tānams to unfold in creative continuum interwoven in multiple rhythmic patterns. I have never heard anyone articulating the process of musical creativity in that manner. I felt that T M Krishna has the rare gift of being an inspirational teacher.
He vehemently opposed percussion accompaniment while rendering Tānam. He argued that any percussion accompaniment will restrict the freedom of expression and creative possibilities for Tānam. With examples he showed how any rhythmic accompaniment for Tānam would automatically make the singer trip into a mold of a set rhythmic pattern. That is essentially what needs to be avoided, he emphasized, to render phrases in Tānam which include in the same breadth, passages in Tisram, Misram, Kandam, Chatusram and for that matter in any meter in any order, limited only by one’s ability and creativity.
It was also remarkable to hear from him that Tānam should never, at any point sound like rāga-ālāpana. It made perfect sense because Tānam has a free flowing rhythmic pattern and therefore is not totally free like ālāpana or structured like Pallavi.
As these revelatory gems were coming out of him, I was distracted by Krishna periodically fidgeting with something with his right hand; something like a small recorder he was picking up, turning on and off or a watch which he was looking at for time. Having shown the patience for waiting two hours, I did not think he would be concerned about time.
He then moved on to Pallavi, Neraval and the intricacies of rendering them. His explanations with examples of pratiloma, anuloma and viloma were reasonably clear. It would have been a treat to hear, if he had rendered a Rāgam, Tānam, Pallavi in its entirety with no explanatory interruptions in a very simplistic framework to get rid of this hesitation upcoming singers have, to enter the territory of Rāgam, Tānam, Pallavi.
Krishna encouraged questions from the audience and readily engaged in lively discussions. He asserted that Rāgam, Tānam, Pallavi as a musical form is not losing its grounds in Carnatic music. A more thorough answer describing why he thinks so with some specific information such as how many singers still include it regularly in their concerts and how many and which vidwans are ardently training students on Rāgam, Tānam, Pallavi, I think would have added credence to his assertion.
While all these wonderful revelations were being offered to us by Krishna, people were getting up and walking in and out at will. It was truly an Indian function far from the decorum required of serious presentations on a classical music form. Above all that, the most irritating was children playing in the aisles. Particularly, there was a kid of about 3 years old across my aisle having a field day. His parents had no control over him and appeared to not care about the distracting run around the kid was engaged in. At one point the boy was going around to each row and trying to give a small piece of paper to anyone who will take it from him. He approached me. That was the first time, after many many years I felt I should slap a child to control it. Instead, I diverted my attention to Krishna because I realized that it is due to lack of sensitivity of Indian parents and the Indian organizers that this was happening; it is not the kid’s problem. Most parents have lived in this country for many years but might not have witnessed the discipline and decorum of a real western classical music performance or a master class offered by a piano maestro.
Regardless of the massive delay and distractions from the audience, the presentation by T M Krishna was memorable for awakening everyone to the beauty and wholesomeness of Ragam, Tānam, Pallavi and bringing it down to earth so that even those with very rudimentary knowledge of carnatic music could appreciate and enjoy the form. T M Krishna’s wisdom gained by learning from many other vidwans, his readiness and humility to admit that he does not know when he does not know the answer to a question and the magical flow and torrent of notes outpouring from him, can only be described as a genius at work keeping the eternal fire of Carnatic music aflame.
The drive home, back to North San Francisco Bay, was one the most satisfying among all the post-concert drives I have had because Krishna’s explanations were reverberating in my mind all along the hour long drive. Flashes of his creativity and the magnanimity of carnatic music itself were relentlessly playing in my mind.