Margazhi Stress Index. A new way to deal with life.

[Sachi_R]

Dear all, dear Margazhi co-passengers, As the season unfolds, we are embarking on a journey. Like a worried Mrs. Mathrubhootham, or her harried husband, you are getting hold-all, giant 5 tier carrier, savouries, gifts for relatives, soap, tooth brush and towel. And YOU ARE STRESSED.

Intrepid, dedicated, determined, unflappable, Margazhi-seasoned, blasé, perfectly planned and tooled up like a ISRO mission, mobile charged, Mp3 recorder in your coat pocket, season schedule book in hand, stomach ready for canteens, ears ready for music, hands ready to shake in friendship and strike in applause, and yet, and yet, you have that queasy, unputdownable unease about things that can go wrong.
What if.... Yes that and then this? And then... That?

So oblige me. List your top worries and anxieties.

It was Benjamin Franklin who said,
"Reading maketh a full man. Writing an exact man. And conference, a ready man." Let us confabulate to retire your risks, avert your disasters, ease your minds, rest your hearts, and save your troubles.

Come on, list it.

The rabbit in Alice in Wonderland should be a reminder to us that we can do better this season!

[sureshvv]

Attending 1 concert and having the feeling of missing 5

[vijay.siddharth]

Falling sick in the season...
Missing 10 concerts by attending 1...
Not listening to a concert from start to finish...
Music Academy discontinuing its mini meals...

Some University should come up with a Chair for me to research on ways to get stressed out. When (and there is no if- it is definite) I find more ways to stress out, I will post it here.

[Sachi_R]

Oh the stress of out-stressing the most stressed-out folks!

[harimau]

It was Benjamin Franklin who said,
"Reading maketh a full man. Writing an exact man. And conference, a ready man."

Nope.

It was Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam.

And the quote is: Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man and writing an exact man.

[rajeshnat]

Harimau
You are back. That is great. Hope you continue.

[Nick H]

Sitting in the music academy canteen, not too worried about the programme, meeting with people from India, new Zealand, USA, UK, and other various parts of the Internet.

Pocket full of tea tokens (but tanked up around the corner on RS.8 chai) knowing that this is the social-life peak of the year. The other eleven months are for relaxed concert going.

Life is good.

Except.... Being anywhere other than my bed at 9am is painful for an owl.

[Sachi_R]

You're right, Harimau.
Now that you're back, I must be a bit careful with my quotes and references.
Welcome back!

[CRama]

Welcome Harimau. Now it will be sabash. sariyana potti for some of the members.

[rshankar]

Welcome Harimau. Now it will be sabash. sariyana potti for some of the members.

Lets hope that this pOTTi doesn’t end in the same way - with the ‘lights being taken out’!

[sureshvv]

Yes.. I can almost visualize CRama rubbing his palms in glee... Not a pretty sight

[shankarank]

How many don't live in Meccadom? How many of those have taken a service apartment (air BNB type) or paying guest or hotel there?

[shankarank]

if Alice kept looking at the mirror, she is unlikely to find the true wonderland. She will get a mish-mash of subverting narratives that spin the yarn of utopia about music beyond barriers, class and caste. The mirror eerily looks like one of those instruments used in kutcheris. If she starts playing it with her fingers , and learn through skype, she will feel the idea through her bones and nerves! . She will get the true picture of the wonderland that is Carnatic music

[Sachi_R]

Rabbit. Not Alice. Watch. Not mirror. Subject. Not distraction, digression, dissertation, discursion, demonstration, desecration, distortion,....

[Sachi_R]

Imagine you are Shankarank just after a brief toilet break, and the keyboard has cooled down by 1.2 F. Or you are Harimau, just returned from a sabbatical at a South Korean Gompa in the hill, a new outlook on life. Or a Sachi ducking away from the LARGE WEB TV at home constantly regaling the fan girl at home with TMK videos, and you just got nailed by this video:



Click the image and watch 50 min of self-entertainment.

I could survive his discourse until the point he described the Carnatic concert as incestuous.


Whhhhhhat? Really?
I mean, can you come up with a more screwy image?

[shankarank]

Yeah it is all about TMK !! It is all about the person. His music is great , but he has aberrations! Just make it the issue of personalities. The standard media trick and TMK also is no exception. And neither are we. Put his photograph and make it all about him.

Never realize that there are a bed rock of ideas, narratives, ideologies underneath the whole thing and we will never come to debate / discuss those!

Personality based sensationalism sells!

[arasi]

We simpletons say it simply. A pocket dictionary might contain both meanings. Simply two meanings for the word cuckoo, that one is about a music maker, and the other, well, you've guessed it.
Now, to TMK's writing, that is, if I am able to take it, me simpleton...

[shankarank]

Actually I did not get the other meaning until I looked up:

cuck·oo
ˈko͞oko͞o,ˈko͝oko͞o/Submit
noun
1.
a medium-sized long-tailed bird, typically with a gray or brown back and barred or pale underparts. Many cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of small songbirds.
2.
informal
a mad person.
adjectiveinformal
1.
mad; crazy.
"people think you're cuckoo"

Well I welcome the crazy narrative. To wake up people outside the music world! Just like the people inside need pariattam to know how Rhythm gets refined in Carnatic music!

Provocation, even of a mad crazy type, under current circumstances is good. The actual words spoken are irrelevant - just like he says. There is a music behind it. Lets hear it! Music after all is a higher truth than poetry!

Even in communication theory ( of management speak!) tone is 80% and content 20%. Well that tells so much about the statement: "human brain works with meaning" especially in the world where money matters - follow the money to know the truth as they say - read the business press to know the truth as Chomsky says - https://youtu.be/S--S2HKHi6w?t=2551 - which I have to vehemently disagree with!

Chomsky's major discourse at the outset was the invention of "Department of Public information" around World War I - to disseminate information to the public which in this case used the tone to mask the truth and get their consent (manufactured consent) for the war! So the most advanced form of the French republic did not have brains working with "meaning" - according to the most important intellectual alive - according to the New York Times!

Music is higher form of truth , but it can also play the role of mAyA!

[Nick H]

How did you people get onto cuckoos? Oh, never mind!

Primary notable behaviour of the cuckoo is that it lays its eggs in somebody else's nest. Not only does the other species of bird do all the work, but the cuckoo throws the natural children out of the nest.

Our cuckoo palms its kids off on crows.

[rshankar]

Now I know the answer to avar pUnkuyil kUvum pUnjOlaiyil minnalai pOl yEn maRaindAr!
(why He disappeared like a flash of lightning from the grove where the cuckoos coo)....

[arasi]

Nick,
Th cuckoo reference is from one of my posts from one of the many threads--to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest".
I listened to Krishna for a while. Then, I got the answer in my addled old brain by just happening to read about someone who figures prominently in the western art world. He quotes Homi Bhaba's observation:
In-betweenness is a condition of our times. reNDungeTTAn in tamizh, a triSanku state.
TMK's utterings shouldn't rattle me then, nor the way we carry on throwing questions about on Rasikas.org.

Hoping to make it to Chennai. Still not sure when, and for how many days.
If and when I am there, in a state of no care in the world, let me hear music and be comforted, find peace of mind and stay happy. Folks, simple folks, simple joys...

[Nick H]

I actually saw One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest on a plane, last time I went to UK, in 2015.

It was good... but I preferred the Sesame Street version.

[shankarank]

, in a state of no care in the world, let me hear music and be comforted, find peace of mind and stay happy. Folks, simple folks, simple joys...

Good for you. Most of the people should do the same and that is how it should be. I am not even upset if some simple folks walk out of Mridangam tani. But then .. once they become intellects or listen to intellects talk about aesthetics and music appreciation that's when the problem starts.

By the way are you planning any lec dems? If so how do you receive them? What do you take away ? Just fun facts , historical facts? How do you evaluate if at all, what is said?

[shankarank]

"human brain works with meaning" - https://youtu.be/S--S2HKHi6w?t=2551

Before the brains in that conversation ( esp. the interviewer) and many likely in that audience , can process the meaning of the conversation, what is music to their ears, namely atrocity literature on Brahmins, caste, etc has to precede that! That not only sets the tone of the conversation, but also gets the attention of such forums to bring in such a musician.

Otherwise the treatises on music and the books were all there for years now in public domain. So no one knew that there exist classical systems of music in India to have the brain to check it out?

"Human brain works with meaning - that is a fact" , is a kind of subversion peddled by the Left , which thinks it's critical method holds the key to all "meaning". It has created a false impression with most of the educated that they can now think for themselves and ask questions! The entire rationalist movement, with full backing of invisible forces functions with this premise!

[arasi]

Lec-dems? I try to attend a few every year, feel good when I listen to them to find out that there's so much to learn, and how much they know! Take very little with me home. NSG is a favorite. He makes me smile all the time.
And this year, very keen on one of Ravikiran's, of course. Besides loving his music, I like his lucidity and keenness in getting the message across.
Are you going to be there? If so, you won't ask me to paraphrase what I heard when the lec-dem is over, I hope not
I am also surprised that you didn't name the person who quoted Homi Bhaba. I mean, what 'don't' you read?

[shankarank]

Are you going to be there? If so, you won't ask me to paraphrase what I heard when the lec-dem is over, I hope not

Well it will be some years before I can make and plan such trips. I used to be there for at least 3 consecutive seasons. So any report would help get a Window into all these. Not all of them are web cast and MA acts like it is U.S Supreme court not allowing cameras.

I am also surprised that you didn't name the person who quoted Homi Bhaba. I mean, what 'don't' you read?

Is that a sublime retort to this below statement of mine?

So no one knew that there exist classical systems of music in India to have the brain to check it out?

I am not well read on lot of literature - I told you I am a tech junkie. But I don't complain that those have been denied to me in contrast to the claims made by TMK in his video!

When I want to read physics I take an hour and 1/2 bus to MK University library passing through Thiruparankundram via the back route through villages that still perform animal sacrifice to West Madurai District to read the most advanced literature on science. Quite a contrast would you say?

Can my classmates claim Physics was denied to them? Or CM ? Lakshmi Sundaram hall would not check their knowledge or caste?

[arasi]

I assumed you live in the US, but you live in Madurai??
No retort on my part--sublime or otherwise
I read very little nowadays. Not that I read a lot before

[shankarank]

I was narrating the past in the present - as that would add more gravitas . The mention of my classmates should have clarified the tense anyways.

There are more questions that need asked based on the premises in the current lecdem-dom TMK included.

All my classmates of various castes have received rAgA tunes ( I purposely avoid the term Carnatic music idiom) in various forms of music from films MSV down to Ilayaraja. A R Rahman was not yet in vogue.

With all the forms, Alap to svara prastara demonstrated, TMK claimed rAgA is the core of Carnatic music, irrespective of whatever forms executed. Without rAgA expressing itself it is not music at all it seems. And Mridangam is not essential - which means the kind of sarva laghu combinations unique to some of the forms ( and won't occur that much in film music) are also just not required for completion of the form to be called (Carnatic) music.

If so how can we claim that all my classmates were denied Carnatic music? You see how Mridangam being called not music plays a central role?

His argument hangs on a slender thread - of kampita gamaka, that dreadful tODi or varALi Alapana that put off many people in the local tyAgaraja utsavam.

To say that kampita gamaka defines Carnatic identity is as ridiculous as saying :cough: :cough: brahmin culture is Indian culture!

But all gamakas , especially kampita belong in the layam column as much as they belong to Sruti column. No Bhajan can be easily set to varALi or bEgada or sahAna - the Bhajan must itself display some Rhythmic scope! There are not that many tODi Bhajans either - they are more like kritis almost.

Should we say whoever is denying Mridangam is music - are denying themselves Carnatic music?

Is the argument framed in a simpleton fashion?

[sirsub11]

It's been ages since I posted on this forum, but I recently wrote a piece titled 'The tenuous universe of Carnatic music', carried by Deccan Chronicle dt 20/11/2017 which may have some passing relevance to the subject under discussion. Dive in and agree or agree to disagree. Cheers.

http://103.241.136.50/epaper/DC/CHN/510 ... aip2_7.jpg

[sirsub11]

May I quickly add that the word 'esoteric' in the headline was put in by the publication, perhaps for column width alignment!

[sureshvv]

Nice article. Agree with most of what you said. An area which you have omitted (may be deliberately) is the economic impact of the music season. This may be at least part of the reason for the buzz (both positive and negative).

[shankarank]

May I quickly add that the word 'esoteric' in the headline was put in by the publication, perhaps for column width alignment!

Print alignment! - that says it all about how much of "brain processes meaning" is a fact

That is a two dimensional spatial analogy for tone! . May be that is the etymology for the word, toner too

[Sachi_R]

Sirsub,
Great question.
I have also been exercising my mind on this.
I also have a number.
The total universe of Carnatic listeners is about 150000, give or take 20%

That breaks down as follows:
10000 around the world, who attend at least 2-3 concerts a year, listen to tapes, internet, webcast etc.
25000 who consume CM on the digital platforms, mostly Youtube etc.
40000 who listen to CM during surfing and watching for cultural and movie stuff, per chance. but listen to the songs at least for a few minutes.
Or newsy links...example,Bombay Jayashree nominated for an Oscar, MSS stamp released, TMK gets Magsaysay etc.
Remaining are those who do passive listening, like passive smoking. That means CM falls on their ears.

Out of all these, there is a core 5673 people who buy tickets.
That includes surely me, and I think you.

[Nick H]

5672.

I'm sure you would have been kind enough to include me in the headcount.... but I don't buy tickets!

(What's the number for free concerts, then?)

(ok, ok, I admit it. I gave, at some time in my life, as a final resort, bought the ticket. But I am not a core ticket buyer.)

[shankarank]

Looks like Sachi has hacked his way into the balance sheets, accounts, text messages and emails of Sabha Secretaries to know the full count estimate correctly!

Reminds me of something we happened to observe. A certain vINa player and daughter residing in the U.S of a yester year carnatic musician of India was waiting outside Rani Seethai Hall when me and my brother with tickets ( we paid for) were passing through for a Crazy Mohan drama. We saw her being led inside by one of the drama troop members. My brother rued : "See she the one wearing american georgette saree didn't pay for this drama" and getting it free!

We the paying audience , not only receive our dose of entertainment, but subsidize a lot of artistes' cross art tastes and artistic development! We should be proud of it