A journey in to Musicscape -4

9/16/2017

I don’t know if S.B used this opportunity of writing this forward to vent out his pent up frustration and thus anger to blast the musical fraternity of his time left, right and center. There seems to be a deep lament in his tone, which was probably justified even then. Can’t imagine, what he would have spoken or written if he had to live now and witness the current state of affairs. We can’t just ignore his observations and utterances as just a talk of a “PERISU” (elderly) who does not know how to accept the present and move on, but truly must introspect! Though might seem like an excess of lament, he has his points well said!

While it is true and more and more youth are attracted to the art form and even boldly plunge into it as a career opportunity, the combined skills of music, language facility, researching into the old texts, ways of masters have been sorely lacking. The concert packaging, coveting the so called prestigious Sabha opportunities, and chase after concert opportunities abroad and thus establishing as a successful artist and becoming a commercial enterprise ambassador have become a treaded path of many.

Well.. am I joining the lament-band of SB… ? His lament is from witnessing the artists and the art itself, from close quarters, during the cusp of a generation of old timers that had achieved great and “his” timers.

He does it well and with authority.. So continuing from where I left yesterday…. Here S.B goes…

“How sad is the level of Pallavi singing these days!. For this deplorable condition prevailing today, I totally and unreservedly blame only most of those prominent musicians of “YESTERDAY”. Except for ‘Mudikondan Venkatrama Iyer, G.N.B,. and Alathur Brothers and a few more (I think he has added ‘more’ for people to fill in their favorites), the majority of the others took no care, interest or efforts in learning, striving, and maintaining the proper ‘Laya personified’ and ‘Thala interwoven’ intelligent , intricate, involving, intellectual, inspiring, and inimitable PALLAVi singing. They thought it was wise not to take any risk! They were just satisfied traversing the “safe-sure-successful” path. “Success” mainly depended in not achieving the ‘impossible’, but only in as much maintaining all that was ‘possible’. That’s why we had (and suffered from) a surfeit of “Aadi thaalam – Mukkaal eduppu- PARIMALA RANGAPATHAY” and “sundu viral - sama eduppu -THILLAI EESANAI” pallavis. How so pathetically easy! How so shamefully simple and elementary!!.. WHO CARES!? One just made “mountains out of molehills” with no substance but with lot of pretence! Effortless success was assured! And the fame won was safeguared! Just imagine as to what would have tragically happened if the same, very same ( course of utter safety) was also adopted by those of the still previous eras… like “Maha Vaidyanatha Iyer” himself for instance or Poochi Srinivasa Iyengar or Namakkal Narasimha Iyengar or…. (the list seems endless)…

So, SB continues his blast on the state of affairs and the Vidwans of the period responsible for it for next few pages! Without much further continuing on the perceived negative tone, I would continue with content of the book here on. Some interesting tidbits about Maha Vaidyanatha Sivan and the PALLAVIs mentioned in this book, which are truly interesting…

For those of you, who are interested, I will scan both the Tamil and English version, and make a PDF on a later date (as per my time availability) of the entire forward for an interesting read.

So.. more to continue...