The Best is Now. Or, how CM never had it so good before!

[Rsachi]

Dear Rasikas,
after the Varsha or deluge of MSG tracks for download, after the several discussions in this forum of late, surveys, snipes and suggestions, I want to say
The Best is Now. Or, how CM never had it so good before!

Let me list a few reasons, and you can add more:
1. We have 8 to 80+year-olds performing with verve, vidwat and vibrant melody.
2. We have 8- to 80+ year old rasikas thronging concerts, blogging reviews, lamenting what should improve, encouraging youngsters, saluting maestros, honouring the greats.
3. We have centenary celebrations to MMI, PMI, etc. etc. and CDs and DVDs being made for our ready enjoyment of the all-time greats.
4. We have hundreds of organisers arranging year-round concerts around the globe. So much so that Carnatic music is co-existing as a positive alongside poverty, disease, old age, air pollution, atrocities and genocide and company closures and born-again entrepreneurs.
5. We have an unprecedented 24x7 access to music of our choice in this Godmart of Carnatic music where you can slice and dice by composer, raga, tala, genre. bani, age and talent of artiste.
6. We have 500 years of compositional repertoire, duly catalogued and analysed.
7. You ask the lyric of a rare varna, and Lakshman posts it in minutes. You ask for MSG CM/HM/WM? tracks, Varsha shares them in a jiffy. You can access, download and listen in halls, bathrooms and airplanes.
8. You have Face Book and Twitter and the Hindu for artistes to make style statements, expound a raga's journey or show off on video.
9. You have MMI singing JUST now as I write, manasu nilpa shakti leka...Thanks to VKV's Double DVD!
If one is not capable of controlling his mind, of what avail will be his showy worship with flowers and dulcet bells? How can a bath in the holy river KAveri or GaNga purify one, if he is puffed up with haughtiness and self-conceit
So 10. It is all up to me!!!!

[sureshvv]

And we have rasikas.org to share all this

[arasi]

With a busy young father at helm and teenagers to beyond-eight-year-olds finding a soap box for spouting our stuff! And the chief lives not too far from Hyde Park corner

Vive la Rasikas and their dot org

[Ramasubramanian M.K]

RSachi,Arasi: AMEN!!! While I may be presumptuos in asserting that CM would be alive and prosper 100 years from now ,anybody who follows this forum --even as a casual passive reader --would agree with the richness and diversity of CM(as well as HM).

[VK RAMAN]

Well said. तथास्तु

[vasanthakokilam]

There is at least one other aspect of this which is worth thinking about. In our various discussions about Sabha acoustics, Musicians' facial contortions etc., one thing that is expressed is 'Why don't you then stay home and listen to the song on your iPod?' ( iPod for any listening device ) or 'I would rather listen on my iPod than go there' etc. So, one can say that in modern times, people go to a live concert not because they do not have other avenues of listening to music but they cherish the live experience. In olden times ( even as early as seventies and eighties ) I would venture to guess that other than AIR and occasional TV, for most people the only way to listen to CM is at a live concert.

The other dimension is availability of recordings of the past masters and comparisons of them to the current generation musicians. In that sense, the current generation musicians have the work cut out for them since the gold standard is out there for everyone to measure the current performances. Add that to the possibility that one can stay home and listen to the past masters if the current crop is not good enough for them.

Given all this, I think the system will adjust itself and move forward towards the greater good. I will bet on the side of 'Best is yet to come.'

The artists and rasikas need to view all this with a certain humility. Invoking its most familiar expression found in the letters of Isaac Newton: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

[Rsachi]

The Psalm Of Life
What the heart of the young man said to the psalmist
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!--
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,--act in the living present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow :
http://www.poemhunter.com/

[varsha]

Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,

Beautiful footprints....
http://www.mediafire.com/?jut994gjsldmxqw

gets surreal from the halfway mark ..