Replacing Sahitya with Meaningless Gibberish?

[Sachi_R]

This post is inspired by an oft-repeated, highly publicised, and confident, opinion of Sri.TMK that words and sahitya and meaning DO NOT MATTER to musical experience in Carnatic music. He concedes I think that it is only the sounds of words, but not their meanings, contexts, or word-images. I am not going to debate that view. You can guess where I stand.

I have participated in Gibberish meditation:
https://youtu.be/BryQqaOYNXw

So I have an idea.

1. Let us take 3 tracks of TMK on YouTube. He always sings songs with famous lyrics.
2. Find a software-way to replace all the words with gibberish generated by a computer, mangling his words. The result will be meaningless sahitya coinciding with the enunciated sahitya with similar sounds. Raama will be something like laapa, Krishnaa will be GrishMaa, and so on.
3. Recreate the Youtube video with gibberish lyrics replacing the original (Dikshitar, Perumal Murugan, Thyagaraja, Javed Akhtar).
4. Post it in this forum, as Track A - original Track B - gibberish. Ideally this should be a double blind study of listeners thronging Chowdiah, Music Academy, Shanmukhananda. Also share in Social Media.
5. Ask each listener to rank each version, A and B, on a Likert Scale 1-5, 5 highest.
6. If we get 10000 responses, for 3 songs, we will have significant data to analyse if present-day audiences care for Sahitya as a part of their musical experience.
7. Since TMK may not like such experiments (despite being the great innovator himself), I would be equally happy for a vocalist forumite or someone they know with a good enough musical vocal ability to record the songs. It should have tambura and be a nice musical offering.
8. If one is willing to perform and record the tracks (6 tracks = 2*3), I am willing to pay the artiste for his/her efforts. If more people upload, so much the better. I am thinking of paying a token amount to the artiste/s whose recordings are selected.

The songs should be popular ones, like
Nagumomu
Jagadoddharana
Thaye Yashoda
Any Perumal Murugan song
Any Javed Akhtar or Tamil film number - classical based.

Of course, in this wonderful forum, there would be software techies who can morph the lyrics into gibberish, using easily available good music, from TMK or someone else. Then it is easy, but perhaps needs consent from the singer.

Please note the entire exercise will be done in a good-humoured spirit of scientific analysis of the Carnatic listener's response to Sahitya. I am serious in underlining the word good-humoured.

What say?

I will leave you with an all-time great performance by the one and only Charlie Chaplin - click to watch:


(however, Chaplin's peerless acting creates a whole story by music and mime, using French-sounding gibberish Imagine if it was only the sounds, without any gestural/mime/musical suggestion of romance and dance)

[SrinathK]

@RSachi In the past, owing to my linguistic inadequacy, after the first 2 words of the pallavi, the rest of the song was all gibberish and could have been anything for all I cared. I went through my entire varnams course thinking it was a bunch of random syllables spaced far apart as a kid -- an extended akara sadhakam exercise. Nagomomu was just a memorized label for years.

This continued Up and until I had the lyrics of all the songs on the screen in front of me and I started to take languages a bit more seriously (But I still can't follow most of what's sung without those lyrics pages).

TMK might offend composers by saying this, but he has a point. For most of us, our CM experience is indeed not lyrical and we've learned to like it without the slightest idea of what we are listening to. For HM, the lyrics ARE junk once they get to doing heavy aakharas. As a statistical observation (made not only by him, but also by nearly everyone who has ever heard Carnatic music), it nevertheless suffers from bias.

You can do one thing, make a poll over these languages - Tamil, Telugu, Sanskrit, Kannada, Malayalam, Hindi & Marathi and have a survey of how many of them know at least 0, 1, 2, 3 or more of these languages well enough to follow CM. If you want to make your survey more interesting, make it Telugu + 1 or Telugu + Sanskrit + 1 and put those who don't know Telugu or Tamil or Sanskrit in a different category.

Then you can make a distribution of known CM compositions by language. Put them up side by side and prove the hypothesis that gibberish lyrics might actually be successful...

[Sachi_R]

Great idea!

I am now certain where TMK sir is coming from. He may not have bothered at all to understand the lyrics!

But then he surely deserves credit for the way he fools you (surely me!) when you connect with the lyrics and think how well he is leveraging the sahitya

Say he sings a song of Perumal Murugan. Imagine how bad the great poet would feel to know that Sri TMK thinks it is as good as gibberish.

[Nick H]

Do the lyrics matter might be subdivided...

1. Does the meaning of the words matter. Is the musician (even instrumental) adding the weight of their personal feeling to the performance?

2. Does the exact sound and combination of the words matter? The scansion, the micro-stresses and micro-rhythms, inherent in the flow of sounds and syllables.

For the purposes of this conversation, let us put question 1 to one side. Let's consider question 2.

Question 2, my answer is yes, it matters. It is an inherent quality of the sound, regardless of question 1. Therefore the gibberish generator is not going to work, or it will need to be very clever indeed to replicate the sensation of listening to the original words. I guess that is possible: a human, of course, could do it. Drama students do this stuff in elementary class.

I have become quite keen on the experience of a TMK concert. I am not necessarily so keen on the TMK-reading experience. I would take a wild guess that, regardless of whether he is singing about the "divine," drought in the fields, or post boxes, he would, for instance, choose a neraval line with great regard for the sensation (I'm not talking -alism ) of the words.

[Sachi_R]

Yes, Nick, TMK is not brushing aside the sensation.
I agree that 2.matters a lot. That Chaplin clip nails it.
And now add mime, gesture, emphasis, modulation etc., eg niraval, that's a different level of sensation.
And now add meaning (1.) which some understand. All south Indians I think will understand some 100+ common Carnatic lyric words for sure.
Thaye Yashode, baalan.. Maayayi.. kaal silambu.. So in a lyric like that, a number of words would be understood.
Does it add value? I think YES, It's a big deal for me.

But the more I think, the more I think we need to run that test!

[vijay.siddharth]

One thing we could try is to substitute the words of a popular Carnatic song (like Nagumomu or Upacharamulanu) with swear words in an obscure foreign language (like Uzbek), and see if the singer can deliver it with the same bhavam!

[MaheshS]

A fellow forumite called Gautam did / does this, the lyrics are all in English, he says that it's a translation of existing krithis. I tried listening to a couple of concerts, but couldn't understand any words at all ... so even though the lyrics were certainly not gibberish, the whole package itself didn't make much sense to me.

[Sachi_R]

Vijay,
Here you go...
http://www.youswear.com/index.asp?language=Uzbek

The key will be to get someone to sing after substitution without realising the meanings. But I believe it is only a question of time before Sri. TMK goes and sings in the Uzbek capital

[Sachi_R]

But Mahesh
If I remember, his reason was precisely to connect more with the meanings, since Indians understand English better than their own languages which are akin to Uzbek to them.

What a gem of a thread this is:
Three views:
1. Lyric meanings are as good as gibberish
2. Replace lyrics with swear words from Uzbek
3. Replace lyrics with English translations.

[rshankar]

Why replace them with gibberish? We have vocalists singing padams in exquisite rAgas with very explicit sAhitya (including, but not limited to descriptions of what could rightly be called rape) with nary a blush. IMO, a half-way intelligent person can only do it if they're totally unaware of the lyrical meaning, OR if they truly believe that it's all part of some (twisted but nevertheless) divine lIlA. Of course, it could also be done in mockery!

[vijay.siddharth]

I am reminded of a review of a concert by Vijaya Siva last season, where the violinist almost dropped the bow upon learning the meaning of 'Samayamide Ra Ra'! Being Vijaya Siva, he followed it up with bhajans!!

[Sachi_R]

Ravi,
Truly ignorance is bliss.
I remember someone wrote re. TMK that a rasika went up at the end of the concert and politely enquired from him, "sir, what was the raga of that xxx song you sang?" TMK replied, "Oho, you mean you identified the ragas of other songs!?"

[kvchellappa]

TMK sings meaningful sahityas most of the time with even pronunciation intact, only talks and writes gibberish. We got to know him by music and perhaps there our interaction with him stops.
It is a fact that most of us do not understand (or care to understand) meaning in the sahitya. But, is it true that the meaning is unimportant? In PUC at least, I sat through many classes without following much of what the lecturer was saying. Would it mean that the lecturer could have talked whatever he pleased? For that matter, we may not even fully connect with the music right through.
The point is well made that in a musical composition music (swaras) come first. To stretch it beyond that and blabber that even the composer did not care for meaning or bhakthi is sheer nonsense and deserves to be called so.

[kvchellappa]

From FB:
"Radha Bhaskar
My prog yesterday " Raga Anubhavam of Sri Thyagaraja." Felt very satisfied to have presented Thyagaraja's musical genius beyond being a spiritual saint. An analysis of his works is a revelation of his unimaginable understanding of the science & aesthetics of music ! Delving into his kritis gives us endless musical treasure !!"
This sounds sensible to me.

[Sachi_R]

+1
But nobody is going to get a Magsaysay for saying something like that

[shankarank]

Why replace them with gibberish? We have vocalists singing padams in exquisite rAgas with very explicit sAhitya ..

Yeah! when S. Balachandar took a movie that imagines how one could commit murder 3 different ways - he was promoting murder or worse he was a murderous thug!

If we are secularized Christians, we need to acknowledge that first!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhfhTC1jCTs

where the violinist almost dropped the bow upon learning the meaning of 'Samayamide Ra Ra'!

So VS managed to unsettle somebody right here in the comfort zone http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Koc ... 327608.ece - clueless people!

[shankarank]

It is a fact that most of us do not understand (or care to understand) meaning in the sahitya. But, is it true that the meaning is unimportant?

sangIta and sahitya relationship is explained here:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/24158449?s ... b_contents

A baby may feed out of one of them! Children are being taught music , and many sing on stage young - which means they enjoyed it already somewhat. But do they have the world experience to understand the meaning in even a basic first draft?

Emphasizing one does not mean de-emphasizing the other. My cousin told me her first impression of Smt. Aruna Sairam - one thing I liked in that concert was her pronunciation was crystal clear - which means she has not had that experience eaves-dropping on AIR relays some 40 years of her life!

May be she did'nt evolve to become an avid MMI fan , but then did she understand the sAhitya because it was clearly pronounced by Smt. Aruna Sairam ?- not really - but she did get fed!

[narayara000]

TMK has gone off the rails trying to be "innovative."
How can you convey the meaning and bhavam of a krithi while not singing the sahityam properly?
Words are as equally important as music.

[shankarank]

narayara000 , these issues belong in the realm of a Guru Sishya conversation - a privileged one that we cannot intrude into. Once somebody is a sAdhaka and start drawing audience , if we cannot enjoy them it is more for us to introspect why there are others enjoying when we couldn't. If musician anyways does not draw any listeners because of such issues - they will themselves deal with it I suppose.

TMK's issue is about him making general public statements more than whether those statements have merit or not. The latter is not an issue for me - the statements may have some merit - but they should , in the raw form he discusses them , be part of a guru Sishya conversation.

For general public the discussion needs to be more nuanced and probably some narrative driven!

My opinion ( since he made the statements publicly anyways) is that TMK fails to contextualize many such issues within the traditional scheme of things. I don't think he needs to undermine the tradition to make such arguments - even publicly I mean.

I have engaged in critique of these musicians - only with a view of a sense of tradition that I knew as a listener - and a traditional responsibility that I expect them to shoulder - not into the specifics of their music.

[shankarank]

Words are as equally important as music.

Clarity is a subjective issue - just like many other things. How many youngsters tune into "Voice Of America" broadcast from Ceylon or something, to pass the TOEFL exam?

MMI probably had a very spaShta pronunciation internally - and so may be MDR. But not everyone can see that.

[kvchellappa]

I disagree that a child enjoying music or even other living beings being sensitive ( or sensible ?) to music negates the value of a sahitya in music. Even an adult, as I alluded to, may enjoy music without sensing its meaning. Such arguments do not devalue the place of meaning in sahitya and music. Much of human life is concerned with meaning, but not a tailor-made one, so says an author. It is a cliche that music is a language by itself, and it is fact that we enjoy music in languages we do know nothing about. All these arguments cannot take away the role sahityas played in growth of carnatic music. Even TMK concedes that the sahityas are inevitable to learn the full range of a raga, before one can develop manobhava. His contention is that it is just the structure that counts. But, there is fullness where the structure aligns with a meaning. That is the experience of a great many who have mastered this art. I find it impossible to believe that all of them have been pushovers and one individual is the sole authority on this issue. Meaning serves, even if a subsidiary, role in carnatic music.
Not all singers mouth the words well (maybe they are americalised), but those that do with music intact appeal more. Should we say DKJ and DKP did not sing as well because they made the mistake of pronouncing correctly?

[sureshvv]

This post is inspired by an oft-repeated, highly publicised, and confident, opinion of Sri.TMK that words and sahitya and meaning DO NOT MATTER to musical experience in Carnatic music.

If the Earl of Poromboke really believed that he would not be singing Perumal Murugan songs!

[shankarank]

All these arguments cannot take away the role sahityas played in growth of carnatic music.

First, we have to value lot of things for their sacredness - and that is not demanding a faith. sAhitya even without the sound of the consonants at the level of time intervals encode the specific metrical arrangement of syllables of your ancestors! At this time we are not even distinguishing the stress levels of the consonants - just two stresses ( equal or unequal) separated in time!

Have you seen your parents with your eyes? Have you not innately felt the goodness in them? Where is faith in that?

The time intervals are music by themselves and that truth is falsified when a musicologist says Mridangam is not music and some people walk out of the tani. I excuse the elders - but in many cases when it happened - it was not just the elders with Diabetes!

A violinist spoke apparently recently in an ArangETram - " I am a violinist - but still I contend that sAhityam is important!!" He is right in the "important" part - but I am not sure he right in the "sAhitya part". The tillana he plays every syllable of it is sAhitya. The mallari he plays is sAhitya!

You see there is lot to imbibe ( understanding may be the wrong word) before we hear the first syllable! Forget understanding lyrics!

[kvchellappa]

Sorry, sir, I cannot understand this at my level of knowledge.

[MaheshS]

This post is inspired by an oft-repeated, highly publicised, and confident, opinion of Sri.TMK that words and sahitya and meaning DO NOT MATTER to musical experience in Carnatic music.

If the Earl of Poromboke really believed that he would not be singing Perumal Murugan songs!

Sabash!

[shankarank]

Let a musician whoever it is do an entire Alapana with andi mazhaiyish Akaram of TVG! Not even one syllable stress - te da ri na etc! And do just that and engage the audience for whatever time - 2 hours.

Then I will accept sAhityam is not required! But then it is not required for him and that audience!

[shankarank]

Even TMK concedes that the sahityas are inevitable to learn the full range of a raga, before one can develop manobhava. His contention is that it is just the structure that counts.

Well , again some raw form expression that can be done with his disciples. Upto the disciples to learn sAhitya meaning somewhere else!. But that statement also encodes another subliminal message : the sAhitya if it prevents you ( because it part of an oppressive casteist past) from listening to this aesthetic music - shed your doubts - it is not important!

That is so unfortunate if that's what will draw someone who hated this music for whatever reason , did not pay attention to TMK's good voice before this is said, but now comes and relates to it because he likes TMK's political positions. That is a civilizational uproot-ment via liberal paradigm from somewhere else to intervene and cleanse a society of its ills!

[vasanthakokilam]

shankarank, I find it difficult to understand what your position is. I really would like to follow that since it looks like you are addressing some deeper issues but I can not latch on to them. Please help.

Also, when you wrote 'andi mazhaiyish Akaram of TVG! Not even one syllable stress' you seem to be equating laya with sAhityA/lyrics. True?
If so, aren't we adding complexity to the issue by taking a word with a common well understood meaning and giving it a very specific meaning. In this context I will go with 'Lyrics has laya' but not everything with Laya is lyrics.

But having said that, the reason I thought I will ask you this is to understand if your basic point is that 'what matters is the structuring of the music with many levels of stresses on the consonants ( many degress of vallinam, idayinam and mellinam in terms of emphasis on consonants ) and you are trying to keep the natural language meaning of the lyrics a separate layer.' I think this is what Nick was getting at as well. If that is not your point, please state your position and elaborate. Thanks

[shankarank]

Well the conventional definitions held in the lakshana tradition is one thing. I was getting more cosmological in my view - how letters and sounds are viewed as sacred , something even Dr HMB delves on it in his sangIta kalpadruma. The conventional definitions are good for Guru - siSya conversation in the formal sense. In the cosmological sense, what helps form words is the difference in stress of the consonants before you can ascribe meaning to it. The long short form , the meter gives it beauty before you ascribe svaras.

When taking view of the whole tradition in a public discourse, sAhitya has to be viewed in a similar broader sense especially by those who claim to have bhakti and look for bhAva in them. They have to treat all aspects with a sense of sacredness. That I have rAma bhakti and enjoy the bhava expressed by tyAgaraja , but then complain that the artiste did not convey the bhava, but I walk out during tani - as it is not pleasurable to me; Well that does not sound legitimate! It invalidates all your claims. A Mridanga artiste imbibes the art from the Guru SiShya parampara and does sAdhana just like any other artiste and that must be valued as sacred and respected.

A musicologist that claims Mridanga is not music, has his entire life of work invalidated by that statement! If as many musicologists and musicians claim - vaggEyakaras gave kritis to express what is otherwise an asbtract concept of rAga! Well true, but also so many artisans for generations toiled to put Sruti on the right side of Mridanga to help express the asbstract concept of laya. If that is not treated as sacred , then sacredness, bhakti have no meaning!

A tillana composer composes the jati lines as well as the sAhitya lines with the same sense of sacredness, putting to use the same consonants, one for musical beauty , the other for semantic beauty. We have to treat them both as sacred. Sacredness does not enter only when some line refers to a deity! Please note that important point.

I refer to all of it as sAhitya in a cosmological sense, as Dr HMB explains the consonant "sa" how it arises from creation in his cosmology of sound.

And if you are not a person of faith (again this means what it means to each of you!) , and claim to listen to music for aesthetic pleasure, the least I would ask is to have respect for the tradition and its sacredness. You should be able to appreciate the sincerity and hard work of artistes and their Gurus, and that can be seen / felt with your own senses. Even a sense of sacred, beyond just respect does not require faith.

The Andi mazhaiyin Akaram is a whimsical retort or challenge that I issued to artistes - in a fit of frustration - don't take it too seriously. Akara is also a sacred primordial sound In a cosmological sense sAhitya is yet to be born!

[SrinathK]

CM has an experience for every form of music from silence to the abstract to the rhythmical to the lyrical to the technical.

The question is now -- when anyone, rasika or artist talks about how they prefer the lyric-less to the lyrical or the melodic to the rhythmical or the silence to the sound -- are they expressing their individual preference? Or is there something that does or does not resonate with them? Or is it merely a rationalization of their own limitation in a particular matter?

I can talk about how many people can't listen to CM because the lyrics don't make sense to them as an example. I have known people who have no patience for raga alapanas. There are people who walk out of a tani avartanam because rhythm makes no sense to them on it's own or it's just not that important to them. My own best friend is an example. He prefers instrumental to vocal for 2 reasons -- 1) he's heard too many vocalists out of tune and 2) He can't follow lyrics. To him, music is all about the sound.

It won't be wrong to say that for a lot of us, the lack of importance we give to lyrics is because of our own linguistic illiteracy and many of us have grown up with CM conveniently with that disadvantage. For the lyrically adept, their experience of CM sometimes becomes a horror show of incorrect pronunciations. I myself don't believe I am going to ever appreciate the lyrical side of CM properly unless my grasp of the languages becomes intuitive.

In this I can recall the incident of TRS singing Thyagaraja in Andhra when a rasika comes up to him and laments about how good the music was and how much better it would have been had Thyagaraja composed in Telugu!!! It led him to learn that language properly....

But think about it, an interpretation like this is only possible if you appreciate the lyrical side : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdV6-3zUd2o -- this is an example of lyric guiding the rhythm, the melody, the mood, the musical ideas AND the technique demanded as well.

[Sachi_R]

SrinathK,
As always, I find so much insight in your post that I can well relate to.

When the concert features a song whose lyrics are beyond my comprehension I almost always go find the sahitya and go through the lyrics as soon as possible, most of the time the same night.
For me, sahitya (maatu in Kannada, now used as a technical term in CM vs dhaatu which means melody/music) works at 3 levels:
1. It reveals the core communicative intent of the composer. I feel the composer decides what he/she is going to say in words, before sculpting the krithi as a combination of maatu and dhaatu. So for example, when Shyama Shastri sings Devi Brova Samayamide, the episodic context and meaning is for me at least 30-40% of the value of my musical experience.
2. Sahitya employs superb imagery and idiom and metaphor most of the time. It is really poetry. The recent Purandara Darshana event over 3 days in Bangalore with 350 artistes singing over a hundred krithis in 43 sessions was for me a lyrical treat, and gave an insight into the profound vision of Purandara Dasa. I later reached out to Sri Muni Rao and he poured a deluge of bibliography on the Saint's life and works. I have acquired some of those works since.
3. The Carnatic composition is a soundscape studded with musical moments like a wonderfully manicured garden. The words, pauses, intonations and take off points enrich the music beyond anything else I feel. So losing that comprehensive musical experience takes any other genre down a notch or two for me.

Your points about what a listener latches on to, sahitya, melody, rhythm, drama, atmosphere, celebration, technicality, skill, virtuosity, novelness, mix-and-match potpourri, orchestration, fusion etc. also resonates big time with me.

I heard the exquisite piece of music of Tamil lyrics sung by Ramakrishnan Murthy in his concert at First Edition Arts, since posted on You Tube. I managed to get the sahitya and share it in my comment on You Tube.

Thank you.

[narayara000]

I agree with everything Sachi_R said

[Nick H]

I agree with the last posts of Sachi, Srinath and Shankarank!

Bottom line: if the lyrics were irrelevant, the composer wouldn't have bothered with them, right? Although to add a shade of grey to that, it does not mean that the melody cannot also stand alone.

Re the anecdote above...
I don't know the mother tongues of each of you, but haven't we all met Telugu speakers who claim that the lyrics have already often been replaced with Gibberish?

[kvchellappa]

Every experience is valid for the experiencer. What hurts is when someone, riding high, calls in question the experience of others and even reads into the intent and mood of the composer to suit his pet preoccupations of the moment, and uses offensive language to air his defiance of custom. An average listener does not have the depth and insight of the top notch rasikas here, a delight to read their erudite comments, but still matters in patronising the art. I read a sufi story. An old man is approached by a man from another city and asked about the city. The old man asks him how the city from where he came was. The man says, 'People are selfish and wicked.' The old man says, "Same here.' A little later another man who also asks the old man the same question describes his city as 'friendly and welcoming' and the old man says to him also, 'Same here.' A merchant who observed this questions the old man why he gave opposite views about the same city to the two persons. The old man says, 'Each person carried his own world with him.'

[vgovindan]

As with the language - there are two aspects - the communication and literary - so is with Music. The core purpose of music is communication. The 'literary' aspect of music is not appreciated by those who have not been educated in appreciating literature. It is one thing to read tirukkural or Bharati for appreciation of poetical style; it is totally different to be 'moved' by what is being conveyed - it has the capacity to change one's attitude. There is a dialogue in the film 'Sankarabharanam' about the word 'Amma' being uttered by different people - baby crying for milk, baby who is afraid, a beggar etc. The intonation and emotion attached to each of the situation cannot be codified - it is to be felt. It can be conveyed in the same way only by that person who has understood the pathos or whatever emotion attached to it.

Though I am not well qualified in CM, I can surely appreciate it. 'nanu pAlimpa naDaci vaccitivO' - by tyAgarAja - for example - is totally contextual. Anyone who wants to sing that song, should place himself in the position of either tyAgarAja or Rama - the singer and the listener to emote the lines. I cannot explain beyond this.

There are Ragas which are typically suited for certain situations - nIlAmbari for lullaby. The so called rakti rAgas are not called so without reason. However, rakti phrases are hidden in every rAga in some corner - only an expert musician can bring these out. But whether he has that innate capacity to emote it, depends on how one is 'moved' (nAdAnubhava) or whether it is simply an exercise in demonstrating one's prowess and talent - the egocentricity.

From the example of the video of Charlie Chaplain, it is clear that - as has been classified in Tamil - the dance form conveys its own meaning notwithstanding the words. Of course, the music has to be suitably tuned to express that. The video is not an extempore presentation, but a properly rehearsed one with suitable musical notes and pauses. Therefore, what may sound 'gibberish' is not necessarily gibberish, if this example itself is taken. Therefore, it (the video) also powerfully brings out that the listener's knowledge of the language is less relevant than what is emoted. Thanks for the nice example.

It may all be mythology to say that when sage Agasthya sang - against Ravana - the mountain became liquified (melted)
(கரைந்தது). But the example is not a total myth for those who can 'feel' what that liquification (melting) conveys.

[arasi]

Govindan,
Thanks for getting into the 'heart' of the matter...

Chellappa,
Loved your sufi story. That's sufficient to reflect the feelings of some of us about feeling-less music, with or without lyrics...

[arasi]

This sometimes heartless world
Drives us to music heart-felt--
When music misses having a heart,
Poignant words to go with, at times--

Listener, where would you turn?

[shankarank]

what helps form words is the difference in stress of the consonants before you can ascribe meaning to it. The long short form , the meter gives it beauty before you ascribe svaras.

I was part of a Hams club radio group and learnt Morse code formally. It has no stress differentiating syllables , except the short tone and a long tone and all English letters were represented by a combination of long /shorts.

Of course we know the binary is the lowest form required for information also. Long/short is more than beauty looks like!

Thiru Haridwaramangalam , says vinyAsam has begun once long short has been expressed!

https://youtu.be/ndAOOcGMF1k?t=205

[Sachi_R]

Shankarank,
I recently watched a serial on Netflix called Elementary - a modern version of Sherlock Holmes. It is extremely well done.
Holmes says in one episode that every telegraphist has a signature way of doing the longs and shorts. By listening to recordings where the modern day criminals in NY used Morse Code for transmitting secret messages, he catches the thief through his signature.
Perhaps you know what I am speaking about. Holmes used a technical term for it - I forget now.

[shankarank]

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Koc ... 327608.ece

A critic of folk, classical divisions for art, Mr. Krishna said: “Real aesthetic experience of an art form would only be possible if we dumped our set aesthetic notions. The real experience of beauty is only possible through empathy, and it is imperative to dump a habituated idea of beauty to enter the beauty of a new form and experience it.”

An art experience had an underlying idea of democracy, with its ability to express, share, interpret, rediscover, and reconcile with the conflicts arising from disagreement. While it is easy for a practitioner of a privileged art form to shun his/her identity, an artist from a marginalised community will have to uphold it, which brings to the fore the inherent inequality in art appreciation and how well this can be negotiated, he added.

Any native society that did not celebrate it's chandas ( verse and meter) got crushed. A Vietnamese doctor doing residency amidst other doctors, and who can't speak well, gets discriminated!

The marginalized societies today have to do just that! - simple! whatever their heritage language is they will have to celebrate the substance , form, then content - all of it. Then they don't need to wait for the empathy of the privileged!

If they evolve their concept of beauty and cherish and get fulfillment out of it, that is a complete experience - we don't need to ask if that is equal or un-equal to the sense of beauty of the privileged.

And of all people anybody subscribing to any iota of an idea from Karl Marx - should not even mention the word democracy in the same line!

[shankarank]

But whether he has that innate capacity to emote it, depends on how one is 'moved' (nAdAnubhava) or whether it is simply an exercise in demonstrating one's prowess and talent - the egocentricity.

An artiste trained in guru-Sishya paramapara once he ascends the stage , it is not helpful to get into GuNa dOShas of that person.

Feeling and emotion can happen in so many ways. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3O0PhhD6B4 . But a tradition that wants to remember its past and cherish it is different!

That is why I like this one from Abhinava Gupta:

http://www.ikashmir.net/abhinavagupta/article4.html

Abhinavagupta though agrees to many of the suggestions put forward by Rasa theory also points at its various limitations. According to him art is not just about evoking certain feelings but a real work of art in addition to possessing emotive charge needs to have a strong sense of suggestion and capacity to produce various meanings. This is where he refers to Dhvanivada. He says that for a work of art it is not enough to be having abhida (literal meaning) and laksana (metaphorical meaning ) but it should also possess Vyanjana the suggested meaning which has absolutely nothing to do with the other two levels of meaning. Thus an aesthetic experience cannot be experienced like any ordinary mundane experience. A true aesthetic object does not simply stimulate the senses but also stimulates the imagination of the spectator. Once the imagination is stimulated the spectator aesthete gets transported to a world of his own creation. This emotion deindividualises an individual by freeing him from those elements which constitute individuality such as place, time etc. and raises him to the level of universal. Thus art is otherworldly or Alaukika in its nature.

[vgovindan]

"Real aesthetic experience of an art form would only be possible if we dumped our set aesthetic notions. The real experience of beauty is only possible through empathy, and it is imperative to dump a habituated idea of beauty to enter the beauty of a new form and experience it.”

A new musical Picasso - whose art I never understood.

Is it a new definition of 'beauty' or arrogance to acknowledge that there ever existed anyone knowledgeable - a la (philosopher) J Krishnamoorthi?

[Sachi_R]

Do you know, dear folks, we have totalled over 8000 words already on this topic of jibberish! And still nowhere near the start of the proposed experiment


Definition of a Pandita Abhinava Rasikottama:
One who can discuss the meaning of gibberish in several thousand words!

[arasi]

ji, lagtA hai, hamE ishq hai is ajIb Angan mE
'jibberish' par bhI, sangIt sAth parvarish karnE!
kyA kahEn, hum tO kEval Am lOg hain, jab gIt
dEvtA ban kar hAmAre pAs rahnE par bhI

Seems, we in this enclave have the desire
To nurture gibberish along with music!
What can I say, mere mortals we are--
When music divine lives alongside

[Sachi_R]

स्वागतम्।

[SrinathK]

Every experience is valid for the experiencer. What hurts is when someone, riding high, calls in question the experience of others and even reads into the intent and mood of the composer to suit his pet preoccupations of the moment, and uses offensive language to air his defiance of custom. An average listener does not have the depth and insight of the top notch rasikas here, a delight to read their erudite comments, but still matters in patronising the art. I read a sufi story. An old man is approached by a man from another city and asked about the city. The old man asks him how the city from where he came was. The man says, 'People are selfish and wicked.' The old man says, "Same here.' A little later another man who also asks the old man the same question describes his city as 'friendly and welcoming' and the old man says to him also, 'Same here.' A merchant who observed this questions the old man why he gave opposite views about the same city to the two persons. The old man says, 'Each person carried his own world with him.'

That sufi story taught me a lesson. The next time someone asks how important lyrics are in a concert, they are probably the best persons themselves to answer that question because unless they are looking for a change / evolution of perspective, what it means to them will always be most important.

@RSachi, I can pardon myself for the occasional gibberish syllable owing to my linguistic illiteracy, or mumble just a bit when I am exceedingly bored for those harmless laughs that children have over gibberish baby talk, but I cannot deliberately subject my favourite songs to the horrors of such a prolonged experiment.

[Sachi_R]

SrinathK,
I well understand your position!

[shankarank]

And still nowhere near the start of the proposed experiment

Well we at least tried putting some sense into things considered as gibberish!

[kvchellappa]

"Quod Ali cibus est alibis fuat acre venenum" ascribed to Lucretius.
What is food for one man may be bitter poison to others.

[shankarank]

amRta varshini pArtAl (sacred kaTaksha of divine mother) najum amutamAgum.(poison turns nectar). heard in a discourse..