Disharmony
During the last week, I’ve been watching the theatrical exchanges between Carnatic musicians I admire and the Madras Music Academy, an organization I grudgingly patronize for want of a better one in my hometown of Chennai. Here is a perfect moment, I think, for an overhaul of the Carnatic scene in Chennai.
At the outset, I must commend the Ranjani Gayathri (RaGa) singing duo. Few people in the music world ever take a stand on the sensitive issues skewing the arts scene in Chennai.
Carnatic music has mostly evolved in the small Brahmin community of southeastern India. This is a conservative enclave of shrewd people in whom the need for self-preservation is greater, seemingly than the love for the community. Rarely will one speak for the other and this mentality is certainly seen among the practitioners of the arts themselves. While Chennai was in the grip of the #metoo movement a few years ago, it was surprising to see how few senior female artists in the world of classical arts shared their own experiences or sought to put measures in place to ensure that such things did not happen to others again.
The Sounds of Silence
Thus far, most practitioners in the world of Carnatic music have cared more about safeguarding their own tenuous position in the firmament than about espousing causes impinging upon the practice of their art. Brilliant young female violinists who were spurned or oppressed over a decade ago by senior male artists—I have knowledge of how one such played out—have not demanded their pound of flesh. No one dares to throw stones at the other. Even supposed equals prefer to just let things be, just as lions gingerly walk past elephants at the Tanzanian Serengeti.
On the plains of this musical field, then, it’s always about the survival not just of the fittest—but also of the quietest—with one musician surveying the other in the manner of the cheetah atop a baobab tree. Passive aggression is a great virtue in every walk of life and, certainly, one of the greatest assets in Carnatic music…for who knows where the next performance opportunity will come from, or who knows whose rump who must kiss when? Given all this, to take a stand on an issue takes gumption and, certainly, moral courage.
RaGa take a stand
On March 20, 2024—for this moment must indeed be memorialized—two of the most talented Carnatic artists today, the RaGa sisters, took a stand. A coterie of musicians soon followed suit, riding on the RaGa coattails or palloos. It is indeed a red-letter day in the annals of Carnatic music when two successful women who know their worth sought to upbraid an institution like the Music Academy that, while it has set lofty goals for the standards and performance of Carnatic music, is weighed down by its own privilege and sense of entitlement. The RaGa duo informed MA that they were boycotting the organization during the upcoming December 2024 concert season.
The controversy began with the announcement by Music Academy a few days prior, of awarding 2024’s title of ‘Sangita Kalanidhi’ to musician T. M. Krishna. He qualifies based on his art, the august institution declared in its announcement. On social media, the RaGa duo stated that the reason for their withdrawal from Music Academy’s conference 2024 was because the conference would be presided over by T. M. Krishna. Among their many reasons was that he, T. M. Krishna, had trampled upon Brahmin mores and Hindu sentiments; furthermore, they said he had defaced the contributions of illustrious Carnatic composers and musicians while simultaneously lauding the work of politicians who had risen to power by openly promoting hatred towards the community of Brahmins.
Off key
This award announcement from MA has cleaved this small community of artists who operate in this eco-system—for or against T. M. Krishna. All of India loves a villain. T. M. Krishna’s stature now matches that of India’s favorite mythological villain from the Ramayana called Ravana—himself a brilliant musician, of course, who had a tendency to separate people from their heads.
Some of the things T. M. Krishna does are downright unbecoming of a being with glorious musical gifts. Still, the fact remains that Chennai could absolutely use many more talking heads like T. M. Krishna. It’s also not untrue that given his clout in Chennai—rising from his privileged background, his musicianship, his literary skills, and, not to forget, his silver tongue—T. M. Krishna could have achieved more by being less belligerent. My late father loved his music but frowned upon his predisposition for truculence. Everything in life, my father remarked, had to be done in moderation.
Finding the right note
Even iconoclasts needed to pace themselves, by my father’s dictum. It seems so simple. Why can’t a man who modulates his singing voice exquisitely deal with people using a gentler tread? Why won’t he temper the voice behind the mike in the way he modulates his voice while singing Amar Jonmo Bhumi? Those who once respected the man for his music now hold the cudgel to him over his views, and, shockingly, his music, too. Several writers had the gall to write that T. M. Krishna makes mediocre music. Sandeep Balakrishna of The Dharma Dispatch writes that T. M. Krishna is “a wealthy, well-connected and mediocrely talented Carnatic classical musician.” Would anyone call Arundhati Roy a mediocre writer just because she leans left? It’s disheartening, yet not entirely unbelievable, that people do not see one aspect of a human being as being discrete from the other.
It’s obvious that those frothing at the mouth do not often care to read T. M. Krishna’s books or some of his more thoughtful articles or listen to his talks or interviews in their entirety. It’s also clear that the divinity that pervades the music these artists make ends as soon as they descend from the stage. To them all I must say: Let the divine also permeate your life a little, both on and off stage. Remember to listen to Krishna—I mean the mighty Krishna from the Bhagavad Gita—whose advice you must always take in moments like this: “Do not react in a frenzy but always respond in clarity.”
Calming controversy
As a community that has lived far too long with one eye closed to our privileges, we are desperately in need of more thoughtful articulation by those who feel the need to enter into a healthy debate with others in the artistic fraternity. We must also develop the civility to agree to disagree. We may speak after we have heard, a piece of advice that will also certainly serve T. M. Krishna well in his own life.
I’d like to share a remark by Dr. Gautam Desiraju to Abhijit Chavda in a discussion about this fiasco. Desiraju opines that the announcement of an award such as the Sangita Kalanidhi needs to make the broad music community feel, right away, and without exception, that the person in question was completely deserving of it. This observation seemed to nail it all reminding me also of what I learned all those many years ago in English literature class in college. While discussing the fatal flaws of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes, I gleaned that Othello’s was his lack of trust. Hamlet’s was procrastination, of course, but Romeo’s was his passion, just as that of our hero (or villain, as the case may be) at the center of this controversy. T. M. Krishna’s passion may be both his greatest strength and his greatest flaw.
Rewriting the score
In the fallout of this squabble, however, it’s clear that what Chennai’s music scene needs now is a way of fostering intellectual discourse between thoughtful musicians and equally astute minds in other fields who, collectively, could set new agendas for Chennai society as well as for Carnatic music; perhaps, one day, there will be a confluence of minds and a debate on art, privilege, class, patriarchy, language, divinity, humanity, poverty and society.
In his latest interview for the Times of India upon the announcement of his award, T. M. Krishna is more muted in tone and hopeful: “The current generation is far more ‘thinking’ than us, and they will take it forward. I may disagree with some of their ways, but social and cultural conversations are robust. There is a need for us to go beyond just acceptance of one another. There needs to be an embrace. There’s a huge difference between the two.”
The beat of the mridangam
I imagine a day when Indian musicians will interact with scholars from the rest of India whose sole purpose is to consider how art enmeshes with culture and society in a country as stratified as India. Chennai needs to begin demonstrating both vision and largesse. Why is it that the city that reverberates often to the beat of the mridangam is unable to tolerate some controversial pages from the writings of a musician who, cantankerous as he may be, is also insightful?
He wrote Sebastian & Sons: A Brief History of Mrdangam Makers to both highlight the systemic oppression of men who work with leather and also expose the dichotomy of the cow as the giver of milk, of beef and of leather. Why is it the same Chennai that celebrates, daily, the sound of the nadaswaram prefers to wink away the fact that the community of nadaswaram musicians are sometimes still forced to moonlight as barbers in order to make ends meet? When will Chennai understand that sometimes introspection about our past can, in fact, make us healthier as a species for the generational evolution of our kind?
An inconvenient truth
Life demands that we introspect and question, a point that T. M. Krishna seems to make often. Clearly, most people would rather not, for it costs and can be very inconvenient to oneself. Fifteen years ago, at a Carnatic music competition in the United States, three Carnatic music stalwarts decided they would not give two contestants (in the interests of full disclosure, my son was one of the two), the same air-time of five minutes each to perform in a contest even though they gave the full five minutes to the child who followed those two contestants.
As soon as the contest ended, I walked up to the judges and asked them why the two previous contestants had not been given their full time allotment and were shot down, instead, at 2.5 minutes. My son was eliminated from the contest, of course, a fact that became obvious later. It was the price I had to pay for asking questions of a system that resents individuality and dislikes cross-examination. Over the years, I’ve learned that subscribing to groupthink dilutes accountability. As long as people do not question—at the risk of losing their place in the pecking order—nothing will change.
Nudging the patriarchy
Sometimes, in the interests of progress, old orders need to be challenged. Probing the life and choices of someone who is not alive anymore seems disrespectful and insulting to some in the Carnatic world. Yet, it can throw light on how one could navigate the present.
In a 2015 feature on the late M. S. Subbalakshmi (MS) for The Caravan Magazine, T. M. Krishna narrated her evolution in a patriarchal society of Brahmins around the time of independent India. MS features also in his book, A Southern Music (2013, HarperCollins), and the sections on Subbalakshmi and another doyen, D. K. Pattammal, illustrate how these two stalwarts negotiated the stage dominated by patriarchal men at a time when the industry believed that men produced superior art. The musician-author alludes to the attitudes of male accompanists who shied away from sharing the stage with female vocalists while shining the torch on the misogyny that is yet to be openly debated in Carnatic circles in the present day. It’s a shame that even today, senior singing divas keep mum on the subject when, in fact, a man, however incendiary he may be, has pried the door open for them by a few inches.
An evolving musical ecosystem
So, yes, Chennai has a lot of talking to do, thanks, in part, to T. M. Krishna. We can’t just want Carnatic music alone; while acknowledging all the beauty and divinity behind this art form, we must absolutely acknowledge, if not seek to probe and comprehend, the hurt in several pockets of society and also find ways of integrating the system with the rest of the community. After forty years of life in my adoptive nation, imperfect as it may be, I’m aware that what has made for a fairer, more egalitarian, and, certainly, more transparent society is the insistence on debate and inquiry in order to learn, grow, innovate, and evolve. These aspects of Western life do need to be deployed in the Carnatic world.
I return to an observation I made last December which, it turns out, was noticed by some musicians who participated at the December festival. We need fewer performance opportunities during the Chennai December season. Fewer venues will concentrate people in bigger spaces, forcing more engagement, hopefully, between the public and performers. Fewer opportunities will also free up artistes, both senior and junior, to attend and participate in the work of others. Artistes do not seem to attend performances by their peers often enough.
More musical venues
This deeper public engagement in the classical arts will happen only when other efforts also buoy the ecosystem. Why is it that Chennai, the heartland of Carnatic music, didn’t care enough to build the magnificently conceived and curated Indian music experience museum that’s now Bangalore’s pride? My frustration, throughout my visit to the museum in December 2023, was that it should have been set up in the epicenter of Carnatic music, Chennai. There’s a reason that the New York Philharmonic, The Juilliard School, Manhattan School of Music, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center, and Broadway, all, reside in the same city and make New York a vibrant metropolis.
What’s needed today for more transparency in my old hometown is several rival organizations like the Music Academy so that the monopoly of one sole organization as the torchbearer for Carnatic music is checked. We need one institution to set the standards in music but we need several top-quality performance venues that uphold the highest standards of music established by a committee of people in a clear separation of church and state. During every December season, artistes save the best of their performance repertoires for the hallowed halls of the Music Academy. This, too, must change for it creates an entitlement in the institution and, in turn, an ensuing dependence on the part of the artistes to be featured on that stage.
A note of caution
Lastly, infighting serves no one. I came upon a thoughtful book review by R. Jagannathan and I’m afraid those who are out for a fight must remember that a tiger loves to hang back and watch two pythons in an ugly tussle. Any trouble in the rapidly dwindling Tamil Brahmin community makes those outside the community sharpen their knives. What Jagannathan notes is that while today it’s about the issues in a small community of Brahmins, tomorrow this attitude may come back to bite the larger community of Hindus. I see why he urges caution. Fight away, but remember to find common ground—even with enemies. Survival has always required us to find ways to work together.
Among other things, I think what T. M. Krishna says—if you strip him clean of his vexatious tendency to bully and shout over the heads of others—is to open up Carnatic music to the rest of society: “Take it to temples; take it to schools; take it everywhere, not just to places of privilege.” He quotes the state of Kerala as a supreme example of an arts-conscious society and he’s absolutely on point. Let others who have not had the chance to partake of the music, thanks in part to societal drawbacks, have a chance to be part of our Carnatic music world.
Many of what he says are common sense suggestions for the longevity and sustenance of our classical art form, and, in turn, our community. To this point about needing inclusivity, Vedic scholar Dushyanth Sridhar points out in this engaging discussion with Barkha Dutt, that his online lessons are attended by people across different strata and that no one is banned from partaking of lessons in the Hindu scriptures. Such bans may not be explicit, yet they’re often deep-seated in the mind of those from oppressed communities, argues T. M. Krishna, and hence the awareness must continue to be created in the arts world.
Speak the truth
In summary, T. M. Krishna’s presence in the Carnatic music galaxy is a reminder that we actually need more thinking artists in South India who articulate with lucidity, empathy, and sensitivity. In a recent post, a rising young Veena star, Ramana Balachandran, countered T. M. Krishna’s skepticism over the devotion on display during the inauguration of the Ram Mandir temple at Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh in January.
To Krishna’s accusation that Narendra Modi’s demeanor was wanting in true “bhakti”, Balachandran had the following comeback: “On this note, I have had a friend tell me that he finds your tears, and emotions on stage fake. I didn’t agree because I am quite moved by your music and believe you are yourself genuinely moved too. One explanation might be that he was conflating something about you that he didn’t like, with your stage persona. And I believe you might be doing that to Modi ji here.” Touché! We need younger mavericks like Balachandran who do not toady to people or fawn about them, who speak truth to power and air their contradictory views even to artists twice their age with fearlessness and transparency. This stance will open up dialogue in an arts field that is famously opaque and stodgy.
I circle back to the point I made at the outset about the timely protest last week from the RaGa sisters: Given the price of fame, taking a stand on an issue requires moral courage. Ironically, what applies to RaGa applies to T. M. Krishna, too, in equal measure. At least he sticks his neck out while holding a mirror to our faces—at the risk of mango pickle being hurled on his face.