Tiago Roger on the Lake Geneva shoreline

Warning: The following post may not make sense if you cannot immediately recognize that the Hungarian minor scale is really just Keeravani wearing a bowler hat.

Somewhere in the place we call the “past”, two subspecies of the branch Homo Sapiens Madrasicus split. The evolutionary difference between them had to do with music, and the intervening years have, rather unfairly, kept these two groups more apart than necessary. I am talking about the two kinds of music that caused this schism in the first place. Interestingly enough, both genres contain the word “Classic” in the adjectives used to describe them.

1. “Classical” music, a.k.a Carnatic music a.k.a Raga and Rule
2. “Classic” rock, a.k.a 1970s music a.k.a Rock and Roll

Since I enjoy both genres immensely, I feel rather strange that I don’t have much company (with the exception of him, perhaps). If one were to draw a Venn diagram of this situation, A (ulta U) B would not just be tending to zero, but sprinting towards it in all earnest. In other words, the union of both of these sets seems to have resulted in divorce without any marriage counseling. Therefore, this post seeks to make the first moves in reconciling fans of “Nagumomu” with the fans of “Smoke on the Water”.

And talking of those 2 songs, here is a typical conversation between 2 folks, KD Gandhari and Vaadaamalli, who find themselves sitting next to each other on 47A from Besant Nagar to ICF.

KDG: You know that feeling when you go to a concert, and you wait 2+ hours for your favourite song, and they don’t sing it?

VM: Oh yes, I do. It’s happened to me many times. It feels like eating a Mirchi bajji and being informed that there is only boiling hot water available to drink. Not a good feeling at all.

KDG: I mean, for example, this song, one of my all-time favourites, is such a global hit, that not performing it at a concert completely defies explanation

VM: I fully empathize. It happens pretty frequently with my favourite song as well. Huge hit, and yet, all to frequently ignored in the playlist.

KDG: I love this song sooo much. The beauty of the minor pentatonic with the descending full scale..hmm..delectable

VM: Yeah. I can just feel the harmony. Roger was at his best.

KDG: Agree. Roger must have known right away that he was composing one for the ages.

VM: Yes. Totally unforgettable tune, that one.

KDG: Amen to that.

VM: Totally. The lake must have been such as inspiration

KDG: You mean the river

VM: No. Lake.

KDG: Why do I get the feeling that we are not talking about the same song?

VM: Yes. This sudden cognitive dissonance involving the type of water body is rather jarring. Like C and F# being played together all of a sudden.

KDG: I am referring to the river Cauvery

VM: And I, Lake Geneva

KDG: Aaaaaaaaaaaah. I’ve been talking to an insufferable classic rock fan

VM: Aaaaaaaaaaah, I’ve been wasting my time on a pompous music academy peter party

(Cold silence ensues)

So that’s been the typical tone of conversation so far, but it doesn’t always have to be that way. Classic Rockers and Classical Raagers can get along. On the face of it, both genres seem about as far from each other as Anu Malik and original compositions, but that’s just an illusion. There are many similarities between Classic Rock and Carnatic music.

For starters, both these genres have a strong live-performance-creativity element. One has Kalpana swaras and the other, extended Guitar leads and one has Thani avarthanams and the other, pounding drum solos. Carnatic music is about reaching the Higher Being, Classic Rock is about generally being high.

So, here we go: Tiago Roger’s Smokin’ lead

and Deep Purple plays Nagumomu

Peace out.

Saroja Gulaal Nikaalo

Hello Everybody,

Howareyoufineaa?

Advance apologies for a generally rambling, pointless, rudderless, multi-topicked post on many things in general and nothing in particular. Since the seminal “How to attract blog readers and influence millions” told me that individual blog posts must be

• Focussed on a single theme like a sniper rifle on its target in order to be linkable – Blog aggregators (like Desipundit, Blogbharti etc) will have trouble writing summaries for your post if it deals with multiple, unrelated topics.
• Have a kickass start, six-pack middle and mind-blowing end in strangely reversed anatomical order.

I have decided to follow those rules religiously. So this post will deal with

• Holi,
• Concerts at Tambram weddings
• Fusion music

Friday was Holi, a spring festival where people throw coloured powders that symbolically contain Neem, Kumkum and Turmeric but really contain Lead Oxide, Copper Sulphate and Aluminium Bromide instead, on each other. Yet another fine example of the great Indian tradition of carrying forward the ritual meaning while leaving behind the rational significance of using real herbs to immunize people against the coming diseases of summer.

But hey, leaving aside the toxic chemical hazard, it is a festival of colours, a chromatic orgy of fun, games and bhang.

My friends in Delhi also inform me that it is also the one day when you can surreptitiously make physical contact with women without being accused of harassment or eve-teasing.

Do Holi colours also have subliminal psychological overtones? For e.g, does Rinku smear Bunty with a lot of green to suggest that she doesn’t quite appreciate his flirtatious overtures with Goldy? Or does Monty hint at his upcoming poor board-exam results by covering his father with red? I don’t know, but it’s an area that deserves some serious research funding.

And as somebody who knows a few design folks, all of whom suffer from an annual migraine at looking at the random, uncoordinated riot of colour that is Holi, I propose that we create a “Color safe Holi Zone” where there will be strict adherence to colour palettes such as

I can imagine conversations such as

Designer 1: Happy Holi (and attempts to smear a shade of bright green on Designer 2)

Designer 2: Hang on a minute. Is that #BCDD11? You’ve got to be kidding me. Did you even see the other colours on me? If you’ve got #E6FF0D I’m ok. Or even #D2FF00 for that matter, but #BCDD11 is a strict no no.

And on Sunday, I attended a wedding where the backdrop was provided by the bride and groom collecting gift tea sets from invitees and the background music was provided by Mandolin U Rajesh playing fusion music.

For the uninitiated, the definition of Carnatic Fusion music:

A genre of music where the brahmin carnatic notes steadfastly refuse to mix and harmonize with the non-brahmin western notes and instead, continue to live in the agrahaaram of the usual Raaga alaapanaas and kalpanaa swaraas while the rest of the band tries to figure out if Am and Dm go well with Natabhairavi.

But to be fair to U Rajesh, he is an incredible instrumentalist and it’s not really his fault. There were two problems there:

1. The is a difference between Carnatic and Western music that most musicians seem to completely ignore – Let me explain that with a graphic.

So, carnatic notes slide around on roller skates performing acrobatic pirouettes called Gamakam and Brigaa while the poor western ones are stuck with plain old legs. And in party where there are people who wear both plain old shoes and roller skates, I’d imagine that there will be quite a few unseemly collisions.

And that is usually what happens at most “fusion” concerts.

2. The whole thing about concerts at weddings: Picture this.

• Musical notes are are sent out from U Rajesh’ instrument go on a bold journey to the listener’s ear.
• Non-musical notes such as discussions about Soap serials, the birde’s saree, the quality of filter coffee, and the upcoming annual 22-yard Monsoon (the seasonal rain that arrives in Chennai as soon as an international cricket match is announced) form a loud, chaotic queue in front of the listener’ ear.
• Musical notes plead – “Please let us pay a visit to the Shrine of the Ear”
• Non-musical notes retort – “Get in the queue. We ain’t done yet”.
• So while the A minor scale and Natabhairavi wait in queue, a particularly nasty non-musical note whispers “Did you have dinner? Please have dinner before you go” into the listener’s ear.
• Listener leaves to go eat some food (and waste a lot), leaving behind disconsolate notes that wither and die a sad death

So I strongly urge people to stop these wanton deaths and instead, play a CD at weddings.

Guide to Rendering Yeoman Service to Rasikas By Writing Formulaic Carnatic Concert Reviews in The Hindu

Bollywood has The Formula and it involves shirtless, six-packed heroes, shampoo-model bimbettes and graceless music. Jerry Bruckheimer has The Formula and it involves car chases, lots of explosions and cliched dialogues. Back in class 12, even I had The Formula and it involved mixing Toluene and concentrated Nitric acid in the vain hope that I could mass produce TNT. Carnatic artistes have The Formula, and it involves RTPs, tukdaas and thani-aavarthanam coffee breaks.

But did you know that The Hindu Carnatic concert reviews also had The Formula?

This blog has been offering useful career advice, no, wait, let’s try saying that in thehindusanctimoniouswindbaggy style. It has been rendering yeoman service to the blog-reading public on alternative careers.

So let’s straight get to the Guide to Rendering Yeoman Service to Rasikas By Writing Formulaic Carnatic Concert Reviews in The Hindu.

We first need a title. It must be short, sweeping and entirely uninformative. For mostly positive reviews,

• Brilliant Collaboration
• Lingering Effect
• Stirs the Intellect
• Rich Tapestry of Emotions
• Of Harmony and Melody
• Strict adherence to Baani.
• Fast tempo settles intro sober stride

For a slightly censorious effect,

• Needs more refinement
• Touched the intellect, not the heart.

In case the reviewer, i.e. you, fell asleep during the concert and didn’t pay too much attention, best to play it safe and stick to details you clearly know, like,

• Talent from Bangalore
• An evening of beauty

Now that we are done with the title, we proceed to the meat, sorry, the curd rice of the review. Make a list of song verses and raaga names, and use the following sentence constructs around them.

• The artiste set a fast tempo and then subsequently settled into a sober stride with {Song}
• {Artiste}’s exposition of {Raaga} was {evocative/solemn/filled with emotional hues}
• Longish phrases and full of catchy brigaas
• {Raaga} with its intrinsic melancholy filled the air with a solemn feel.
• Extrapolation at {specific verse of song} backed by emotional hues and varying streams of kalpanaa swaras.
• The gradual development by {Artiste} surfaced several of the bhaava-loaded angles of the raaga with a few touches of fast-moving brigaas included in between.
• {Artiste}’s voice easily traversed all the levels
• {Artiste}’s aalaapana in {Raaga} always steered clear of unwanted flights but strong and solid phrases progressing step by step by emphasised the core of the raaga
• It was a fluent, breezy aalaapana, very brigaa-oriented, the notes clearly emerging from the depths of {Artiste}’s throat.

And at the end of the review, add a few words about the able accompaniment of the violinist/percussionists and you are done.

And now, it brings me to the obvious question. Why? Why does The Hindu do this? Why this formulaic, politically correct insipidity? Why don’t we have English equivalents of Subbudu? Not that I completely approve of that man, but imagine the sheer entertainment value.

ps: For the uninitiated, Subbudu was a legendary Carnatic critic whose reviews were mostly droplets of concentrated sulphuric acid masquerading as Tamizh words. His wit wasn’t just biting, it was a T-Rex. A hungry one.

So what would a contemporary English Subbudu-style review look like? Some snippets.

If notes were goats, this artiste’s rendition of Karaharapriya would be the equivalent of a lost herd, roaming aimlessly in unfamiliar pastures, bleating plaintively for help from the shepherds in the audience who have already given them up for dead.

He went on to plead “Mokshamu Galada” and I was inclined to suggest that our chances might improve if he, in particular, stopped pleading.

Her attempt at the raaga almost made me stand up and ask her to stop and instead, ask the audience to play random ringtones from their cellphones in unison. One had good reason to believe that the random ringtones have a greater chance of hitting the right bhaava of Saaveri than her rendition.

It’s good that Vedanthaangal is far away from the Music Academy, because the migratory swans there might mistake {Artiste}’s dhwani as being the sounds of the enemies of Hamsas.

I would advise the singer’s voice to take some training from her hand. During the concert, it seems to reach greater heights with far more facility than her voice.

It was not Kalpana (imagination) swaram. It was Kal Banaa (Made yesterday) swaram.

The Glossarie of Carnatick Season Terminologie for Peter Purposes

It is the Chennai music season and if you are a newbie, and feel hopelessly lost as the elite carnatic crowd throws around complex sounding jargon, this is the guide for you.

Aaaha – Exclamation used by peter-vuttufying rasikaas to show off their advanced abilities at recognizing subtle nuances in the music. If you are a beginner and do not quite know when to aaaha, use this guide, and be assured that most of the crowd around you is aaahaing randomly. So as a starting point, you can aaaha at:

• Any time the performer seems to be raising his hands in the direction of the sky. Aaaha. Besh.
• Any time the performer closes his eyes and simulates an aneurysm using facial muscles. Umm. Aaaha.
• Any continuous stretch of something that sounds high-tempo. Oooho. Aaaha

Aalaapana – The slow, careful and thoughtful exploration of the entire audience for all young, nubile, marriageable girls by American accented, Carnatic-loving NRI guys who have come back to Madras in search of a full-time cook and baby incubator. The exploration usually starts low, in the ground floor of the Music Academy, in the VIP areas first, and then goes high, towards the balcony areas, before coming back to earth in the realization that local chicks are not impressed by greenbacks anymore.

Gnaanam – The fine art of raga identification through the careful honing of ones ability to eavesdrop on raga identification dialogues from far away. Sample for the Newbie

Absolutely Appaavi: What raaga is this, I wonder?

Comfortably Gnaanam: Hmm..hmm..err..sounds like Aahir Bhairavi..hmm. (switches on advanced eavesdropping in-ear device). Beep. Real expert located sitting 4 rows away, and is heard saying “Oh..Chakravaaham”.

Absolutely Appaavi: Oh. Aahir Bhairavi.

Comfortably Gnaanam: (Closes eyes for a moment and feigns deep concentration) No. no. Not Aahir Bhairavi. This is Chakravaaham. Very similar, but the nuances give it away easily.

Absolutely Appaavi: Aah. You have so much gnaanam ya.

Kalpana Swara – The concocted, imaginary technical details of a song’s raaga, taala and composer by a kadalai-puttufying rasika who has bought his carnatically ignorant girlfriend along to try and impress her with his encyclopedic gnaanam. The newbie is instructed to use the following styles to impress his own girlfriend.

• This sounds like Karnaataka Devagandhari..
• This has a chaayam of Nalinakaanthi…
• This is definitely a janya of Dharmavathi, but the exact name escapes me..
• The lyrical style seems to suggest Syaama Sastri, but I could be mistaken

Niraval – The creative exploration of various conversational topics by a boy and girl who have been set up by match-making maamis to socialize at a season concert to get to know each other before tying the knot. The boy is usually an IT or MS-Phd type whose abilities at making small talk with women are slightly worse than an alpha-male hippo trying to dance Mohiniattam.

A good niraval session involves two basic themes

• Boy (Vocalist) trying to show off coolness, broad-mindedness and yet, a love for simple things like curd rice
• Girl (Violinist) trying hard to figure if she is going to get stuck up with an unromantic, possessive egomaniac

The initial sangadhis are simple

• So where did you go to school/college?
• Who’s your favourite actor/actress/food item?
• Work related stuff. Do you have a friendly boss?

And then it starts to get complex

• Are you comfortable with my friends eating non-veg?
• What is your favourite city and where would you prefer settling down in life?

RTP - A verb that suggests that the performer is going to waste 45 minutes of the audience’ time by getting away with just 4 lines of verse, rehashed aalapana, pre-composed niraval and full mugged-up kalpana swara. Sample dialogue: Did TMK RTP today? Oh? Yes aa? With RMKP also aa? Oh. Full heavy matter no? (RMKP = Ragamalika Kalpana Swara)

Taalam – Of late, with artistes exploring strange new raagas and hard-to-follow time signatures like 5/4 and 7/4 more often than not, the first few sangadhis of a really popular song (like Nagumomu or something) cause everyone in the audience to heave a sigh of relief and vigorously proceed to clap to the beat. As the saying goes – Familiarity breeds Taalam. The newbie is advised to follow along. A few aaahas at this point will help too.

Tani aavarthanam – Coffee/snacks Break.

It’s official. Bollywood Music is the only form of music in the world.

No. Not because they plagiarize from every possible source of audible sound (20 Hz to 20,000 Hz) in the known universe.

It’s because Radiocity says so. They had the fortune of conducting India’s first Corporate (I mean the English adjective, not the Bipasha Basu starrer) Music Quiz, and I had the misfortune to participate in it. And I went all the way to Bangalore to do that yesterday.

Why would I do that? 2 reasons.

1. I consider myself to be fairly musically aware, with a wide ranging taste in multiple genres spanning from Tamil hip-hop to Mississippi Delta blues. So a corporate music quiz sounded like a good idea.

2. Seriously? Reason #1 is total bull. I really went because an ace, megadude, ultra-geek quizzer from my company invited me to join him, and since our man is generally not in the business of losing quizzes, it made sound financial sense (Prize money minus travel cost = Still big money).

But we two Tamil payyans from the glorious city of Chennai ended up learning a very important lesson taught by the corporate folks at Radiocity.

When an event is held at the Taj Residency (and not at the Municipal Grounds),

When the company’s ad jingle (Votha Votha Votha Votha fun) is played 750,000 times so that all numbers in the 90s and 100s with one decimal are erased, and replaced with the one that matters – 91.1,

When 99.95% of the quiz revolves around Sunidhi C, Lata M, Asha B, Alisha Chinai, Shankar Jaikishen, Laxmikant Pyarelal and Kishore Kumar ,

and when 2 provocatively clad jilpaans hand out audience prizes,

It’s official. Bollywood music is the only known form of music in the world. Questions on Indian classical music, Western classical music, Blues, Alternative, World music and Indian folk music are not tolerated.

So while the both of us were prepared for,

Who composed the pathbreaking “Marriage of Figaru”, which goes (in tenor voice) “Feeeee garu, super feeee garu”),and was first performed at the Sydney Oppaari House?

Answer: O-Naikoottam Mosart

Which legendary MC, member of the Yo!Thiruvayyaru 3-nity Company composed and produced the 18th century carnatic-hip-hop classic “She Cant, He Met He”

Answer: Mu-2 D

Which hyperfast expert of the Fender Veenacaster played a seminal version of the Indian national anthem?

Answer: E Gaya3

Who sang the vocal parts in the famous “Piscean Symphony”?

Answer: Gaana “World-Emperor” Ulaganaathan

Which Born-again Muruga devotee sang a Reggae version of the Sashti Kavasam in the 90s?

Answer: Appaachi Ummaachi Indian

Who is the God of Basslines?

Answer: Ilayaraja

And instead, what we got was all Bollywood. And no self-respecting,  Ilayaraja-worshipping, Rahman-loving Chennaiite will consider Bollywood “sounds” circa 1980-2007 to be music. So we stuck around, enjoyed the free booze and free food, and came back to Singaara Chennai.

And oh, we scored 10/20 in the prelims and didn’t qualify. So just in case you were taking this post seriously, let me warn you that I am just being a bad loser.

And Radiocity,

I mean, apart from the free booze and food, i.e.