Sunday, June 3, 2012

Pran sangeet

This is an article translated from the original by Sanjay Chakrabarty

Pran Sangeet

One

Music [1] is the soul of Indian civilisation. It always has been. Music was graced with the status quo among the sixty four formal (and many informal) arts in ancient India. It snugly held on to its niche, and being the pinnacle of all arts, blended nicely into the hyper-polymorphic Hindu culture. Today, fingers from all over the world are jostling in Gangetic mud to dig out that ancient treasure trove of India. Indian music has become staple research and a field of unbridled enthusiasm in Western Universities.

What, may we ask, were the circumstances in India that have achieved this level of excellence in music? At the risk of stating the obvious, it might be said that India has been the melting pot of Asian cultures. Throughout the ages, immigrants from the middle east (Aryans), central Asia (Huns, Pathans, Shakas) and far east (Mongols) have crossed paths in India. Each one has seen the other through their respective cultural adolescences, and their fusion (if I might be allowed to use the word) has propounded Indian music. And guess what, we aren't done yet! In the last two centuries, European and more recently, American music has slowly but surely merged into the Indian mainstream.

Its only recently that the internet has delivered digitalized Indian music to every corner of the world. But in its analog form, the cultural globalisation of Indian music was complete by the early days of the British empire.

To recollect a few geographical details, India is tropical country. Like all tropical countries, the humidity has seeped into our heartstrings, and rusted our lungs. It has made us, among other things, pensive, indolent and stubbornly romantic. It has also gifted us our legendary sloth. We have never been lured by the lust of conquest. Hell, on most occasions we could not even gather up the energy to put up a decent fight against invaders. We are generous and forgiving in nature by default. We would rather treat, listen to and learn from somebody than beat 'em up and shove them out. Which is why India, as a nation, has never remained free for a century at a time. Politics does not seem to interest us. More than any other civilisation, we believe that the whole of the universe is made of a homogeneous, indiscrete entity, which we call Brahma. If Brahma spans everything - men, beasts, cattle, trees - then there is no point making artificial distinctions between 'us' and 'them'. It's all 'us' and no 'them'. And when 'them' ceases to exist, the question of 'Independence' becomes redundant. Whatever 'freedom fighting' has taken place in India were knee jerk reactions of a few angry young men, to avenge momentary atrocities performed by 'them'. There has never been a consolidated revolution spanning the breadth and depth of India, no mass uprising. Thus time and again we have somehow managed to drive 'them' out of our land, but never from our heart. After almost a hundred years of Muhgal-Maratha debacle, when Shibaji was finally able to dissuade Aurangjeb from his southern mission, you would have thought even the slightest morsel of Muslim culture would have been erased from Maharashtra. However, Muslim exponents of music, and Ragas such as Yaman and Multani, still elicit the same encores from a Maratha audience as they do anywhere else. As Bengalis, we have fought wars with Clive, bombed Kingsford, and shot at Simpson, all the time reciting verses from their very countrymen Shakespeare, Keats and Shelley. We have never been free in the truest sense of the word, which is what gives our culture its riches. The culture shock is most evident when you compare Indian nihilism with British imperialism and American consumerism. There was an actual period when the sun did not set over the British empire. And the discarded remains of an all American feast could feed an Asian three times over.

However, very early during the Raj, the British had realised that it was cultural, not political harmony, that had kept India together for ages, in spite of its million different customs, languages, rituals and idiosyncrasies. And the mosaic of Indian culture had been embroidered by Indian music, because music transcends the boundaries imposed by language, customs or location. There is no way for a Tamil to speak with a Bengali, or a Manipuri with an Oriya, without resorting to an intermediate language, which the English longed to provide. But to the utter dismay of the British, the diverse races in the country were already sewn together by a rich heritage of rhythm, tempo and melodies. By doing away with words and seeping across languages, Indian music threatened to cripple the 'divide and rule' policy envisioned by the British. By a sheer stroke of perverted genius, they came up with a flawless plan to lobotomize music out from the Indian psyche. They called it the 'education system'. It ran through hours of dull drones in classrooms, schools and colleges, stamped a person with random numbers and degrees, and placed him in clerkship posts where the proximity of the British beckoned him, and he could console himself with the sordid self-delusion of becoming one of 'them'. Without having been touched by the Breath of God, which is music, he was forever condemned to a mental Gulag. Music was surgically dissected from 'education', and unfortunately it was a few well endowed Indian musicians who assisted the British. It was in keeping with our dubious tradition of producing a traitor every now and while; traitors like Meer Jafar who turned in Nawab Siraj-Ud-Daulla, and his empire of Bengal to Lord Clive; and traitors like the Indian leaders who, at the turn of independence, held up the country in a platter before the British to slice. But petty politics apart, the British never ignored music in the curriculum when raising their own kids. Oxford and Eaton and every lesser known school in England have compulsory music classes back then, as they have now.

From the hymns of the Geeta to the lyrics of Geetanjali, music has played at the heartstrings of India. It's easy to push music out of a syllabus, but near impossible to eradicate it out of the India. Even during and after the British period there were a few mohicans who stood firm on their ground, struggled against the onslaught of the new 'education', to hold up the aegis of their cultural heritage. They ignored the thousand allures of the 'modern' society, lived in a self induced quarantine, starved and ostracized, to cling on to whatever remained of music, steadfast as ever. But despite their valiant efforts, what remained in India after the Raj was only something like music, not music per se. And you can't substitute something like music for the original thing. For so long the truth dwarfs, it casts increasingly taller shadows, until it has regressed beyond recognition. The time then comes for truth to lie dormant, until it is ready to burst out of its shell again.

What was the inciting factor that brought the decay of Indian music in the British period? Lessons from history suggest that it was the very foundation of culture, language. Spoken language is the basic, primordial form of language. The language we speak is a a vulcanized, hardened form of spoken language suited to go about our daily business. When moulded by the cement of grammar, it becomes the canonical form, written language, destined to create literature. Since the onset of the twentieth century, written language was effectively blended with logic, numbers and figures to create the the new discipline of 'technology'. The surge of technology coincided with the two World Wars, and because English speaking nations emerged victorious in both, English was the DE facto language of technology. The writing on the wall was clear: master technology, master the world. The world chose English as lingua franca, not because it appreciated English literature, but because English had a head start on technology. Thus when the 'British' empire had regressed to the confines of an island in North Europe, the 'English' empire remained secure, as it is to this day.

The early twentieth century India had submitted to English language in the office, in matters of trade, in the schools, colleges. In some rich households, English had also penetrated conversation. However, the British faced tremendous resistance while trying to barge into Indian music with English. While Western Music had its foothold on most of parts of the World, it stumbled in the orient, especially in India. The British leveraged their position as rulers to cripple Indian small industries, social infrastructure and Indian systems of education. But no amount of political, economic or 'educational' pressure would make us fall for 'English' music. We bit the bullet and held our fortress strong.

However, luck favored the British, finally. Underneath the surface of these political and economic ripples, a monster much more sinister crept below our feet. The British had laid out railroads, telephones and telegraph cable networks all over India. Everybody preferred the new age 'automobiles' over the horse drawn faetons. We had embraced technology with all our heart. We had hungrily devoured all the comfort and facilities it provided. Fate, it seems, is not missing a sense of irony. The same technology we had thought to be God's gift to India, was in fact the harbinger of catastrophe to Indian music. Under the auspices of the English language, several new technologies merged in a vile orgy, and the hybrid of culture and technology was born - the cinema. With its lusture, the cinema captivated the Indian mind, overhauling every other form of culture. To add to the misery, cinema in India has never come of its own as a medium. Cinema in Europe is a distinct art form, a kaleidoscope of moving images. But Indian cinema was conceived as a random mix of mythology, folk musicals, dance drama and street opera playing over a western background score. It did not matter what was playing as long as something was playing. All the actors had to do was spend a few minutes in front of the camera, dancing, or more often making a caricature of dance, to the beats of some oriental or western rhythm, or maybe no rhythm at all, maybe just being slapstick; in short, whatever random idea came to their mind at that moment. It was the wild wild east. The cinema thus produced was nothing more than a few frames of nonsensical song and dance sequences held by duct tape. However, it was a hybrid medium our people had never seen before, and like hybrid tomatoes, it was a sellout. Music was condemned to playing second fiddle to the cinema, a jolt which it has not yet recovered from. In this pristine land music had been the pinnacle of abstraction, the supremo of all arts, indeed - Saraswati herself, the living breath of God. However, with the runaway success of the cinema, music was reduced to being no more than a score, a 'number' that played on screen. If music was God, then God himself was subjected to the direction of a few 'music directors' of Bollywood. And even the 'music director' was a pawn in the big scheme of things. A film song is really the collective bastard of the opinions and prejudices of the financer, the scriptwriter, the director, a third grade word juggler who calls himself the 'lyricist', a music arranger, and the humble 'music director'. To add to the misery, the medium of Cinema lags behind every other art form in maturity. Music, the finest of the arts, can be blended into the precocious genre of the Cinema only in its most abridged and mundane form, losing much of its enigma.

Why then the mad rush over the Cinema? Why does the box office keep ringing every friday evening? It is precisely because of the reason stated above. As an art form, cinema is yet to reach puberty. It is a novelty. And the human brain is programmed to dig anything new. The post partum mother provides selfless care to her newborn. The teenager yearns for the newest fashion. Fashion houses push on new designs every fortnight. Designers experiment with new fabrics just to keep the flow going. We become obsessed with anything that is new, sometimes at the cost of whatever that was old. Cinema is the most popular medium precisely because it is also the newest. Thus the hitherto unknown prodigy can attain instant fame on a friday evening by lending his/ her voice to a film that has, for reasons obscure, managed to be a 'hit'. Nothing succeeds like success. For the student of music who aspires to be a singer some day, mastery of tune, rhythm, tempo, expression and mood is survival ration. But the playback prodigy, wanting in all departments, never gradautes to be a singer, and remains forever a student of the 'music director'.

To playback in films, one needs backing either of a financer, a producer, a director or a 'music director'. After the music release, there may be either of two outcomes

If the film, by virtue of its vices, manages to be a hit, then the hitherto playback singer is catapaulted into instant stardom. All of a sudden he or she is in dire need of buckets of black money. Fortunately, once a star, cash flow is not a problem. It is not uncommon among so called 'playback singers', the aforementioned students, to charge twenty to forty lakhs for an evening. Public money. No license necessary. Even a driver, who earns a mere five to seven thousand over a months work, has to renew his license at a cost of two to four hundred. However, the millions earned by these students of music is entirely duty free.
On the flipside, if the film sinks at the box office, then the student is broke with nowhere to run. Private tuitions (frankly, the cultural decapitation of a few kids) and dad's pension scheme becomes his lifeline. Often, he will seek luck among the stars and spend whatever little he can on gems. When that fails, there is always alcohol or drugs to resort to. The story of a wannabe copycat.

To summarise, film music had become a parasite thriving on the success of the screenplay and cinematography. Heaps of film songs pile up daily, and the total of films songs in India runs in millions. Songs prodcued en masse, lyrics customized to suit the screenplay, with decades of experience in plagiarising tunes. Even with all that 'expertise', the musical value of this mass of film songs is close to nil.

Thus amongst this multitude of 'songs', very few could actually qualify as having any musical worth at all. Songs are not integral to life as music is. A song, unlike music, won't elevate you to a higher plane or guide you in the maze of life. Songs can only be liked or disliked. And even that 'liking' depends on the cultural upbringing of the audience. Unfortunately, even that scanty premise of fondness has been maraudered by the juggernaut of 'films songs'. The stellar popularity of films has made 'music' and 'song' synonymous terms. The identity is reflected no better than in stages small and large, where copycats of varying calibre, dressed up as film actors and swirling to some western beat, perpetuated the decerebrate song and dance routine of films. With props, accessories and sets, the stage was made to resemble a movie as closely as possible. In effect, the 'film song' was recreated on stage, and branded as being 'music'. Such 'musical programs', 'functions' and 'shows' are the most familiar images of 'popular music' in India. Such is the power of cultural imperialism, the remote control of the West over the third world. Who needs to build political empires when you can reign over the minds of your subjects? Why go into the perplexities of running the entire gamut of an administration, an army, a police system, an intelligence bureau, and a thousand other chores of an empire, when you can loot all the wealth you want just by intoxicating the culture of your dominion? Why go into war when business is doing so well? Slowly and subtly, the West drains our wealth and corrupts our brains, as it did a century ago, the only difference being now they do it in the comfort of their own homes, and they call it 'business'.

The American pop stars don't give Hollywood a damn. They are connoisseurs of purity. In their market of fresh shrimps and lobsters, canned prawns hardly find a buyer. They dump all their junk into the third world and take whatever's fresh and green. The hybrid 'film song' is of no interest to them. Not only the US, every global pop icon of the West, whose popularity beats that of our 'playback singers' by gazillions, despise doing any playback at all. To lend their voice to some movie hero, and to cash in on the populariity of the film, is an unimaginable act of blashphemy for them. Michael Jackson, arguably the pop phenomenon of the last century, has never done playback. His popularity is not the least bit hurt for the want of it. The west is born free, like their music is. We have been in shakles for centuries, our sense of music has likewise remained juvenile. We cherish our national oxymoron, a 'music director', which reflects more than anything else, our misliteracy. In European and American movies, the same person is referred to as a 'composer'. The 'composer' in their films does not have to put tunes over actors' lips, but set the overall mood of a film, which he is free to do in his own way. Leaving aside 'music', even the word 'song' fails to elicit an unique brainwave in us. The vision of musical grandeur, its stochastic effervescense and ethereal fragrance, have all been replaced by the moving motifs of the film. Film songs have played contractors, and borrowed their popularity from the film. The psycho-acoustics effects of this unholy pair has been danegrous, if not catastrophic. Popular music in India is of no use to upifting of the population. For however popular the contractor may be, he will never replace the president.

In parallel runs the stream of 'qualified' singers and instrumentalist, stamped by degrees and diplomas in music. Their lack of popularity is compensated by their degrees. These people either sing or play some instruments, but they are solemnly regarded as exponents of 'music'. Once upon a time it was common knowledge in India that 'singing' is only a fragment of the kaleidoscope of 'music'. But the certified experts of music seem to have least grasped this fact. They sing khayal or thumri 'songs', but are adroned with titles like Sangeet-Visharad, Sangeet-Martanda, i.e. monarchs of 'music'. With no scholastic or musical background, they take up graduation and post graduation courses in music just for the kicks of singing on stage someday. Alas, the horde of M.Mus and B.Mus seldom make it to the big league. Professional stages abhor them; neither do they find a niche in musical research, nor can they flower as a composer. The only thing that never abandons them are the volumes of classnotes taken over there degree courses, which in a slightly remixed version, would serve good to the next generation of B.Mus and M.Mus. This Mendelian process of transmission of inherited notes goes on, the university spews out cadres of certified 'musicians', and the Government keeps on spending millions in salary to these humanoid scanner-printer-copiers. In addition, the same notes fetches the teacher of 'music' a few extra bucks in private tuitions. To sum up, the so called 'professors' of music are paid in cash white and black, respectively, by the Government and private students. But all they can do is paint a grey portrait of music before their students, an image conjured of black letters over white paper. Generations after generations of certified musicians thus pass out, but the nation shows no sign of coming out of its cultural hibernation. What is the use of the degrees then?

Obviously, they are not completely useless. All Indian Radio and Doordarshan have posts for 'musicologists'. Tabloids and journals pay some pet experts and critiques for their 'music review' columns. Some of these people make their living just by 'cultural committee' memberships. And for those wretched souls who find nowhere else to parasitize, the only viable option remaining is to do private music tuitions. Without disparaging any profession, it can safely be stated that the 'music tutor' is one of many paid servants of the middle class household. Like the sweeper and the laundry boy, the music tutor visits once weekly and picks up his dues. The only thing that sets him apart from the rest is the cold cup of tea, stale snacks and mock respect offered to him. Through these subtle gestures the middle class fuels his residual self-image of being a 'gentleman', and not one of the 'sweeper class', a masterful implementation of the 'divide and rule' policy.

Lastly, in a country obsesessed with the marriage of their daughters, the degree certificate shines as an 'extracurricular activity' when bargaining for the wedding. Thus in degree courses of music, boys are outnumbered by girls by abstruse ratios. The degree in 'music' might not be producing any music, but makes wedding bells ring fast, thus finding some tangible utility.

Two

Standing out of this mess are the Pandits and Ustads of Indian classical music.Though lagging much in popularity behind the playback singers, they excel in their art and occasionally, even in musical knowledge. They also elicit much more respect from the educated and intellectual class of listeners. The music of ancient India, whose expanses far surpassed the present political borders, once the music of half of Asia, was kept fertile to the modern age by these few exponents. Without ever inclining to western music, they were able to express the ideal of Indian music, and often even western music, to the west.

However, over recent decades, the rot seems to have spread even in their own domain. The indifference of Government towards classical music, the media's lust for quick cash, the film producer's urge to produce instant 'hits', deliberate hindrance to mass education even in a democracy - reasons are many.

Who is a Pandit, or an Ustad? There is no official answer, no certificates issued, no trusts, board, committee, foundation, society to decide the awards. Not a single piece of document regarding Pandits and Ustads. But Pandits and Ustads are looming at large. Newspapers, radio and television are abuzz with Pandits and Ustads whenever a hint of classical music is concerened, without any formal enunciation of the titles in a documented form. As if someday a hobo proclaims to be the president, he will henceforth be called 'President'.

Two, music education in universities is largely ignored by the Government. Dozens of universities offer Bachelor and Master degrees in music. Scholars have pulled out volumes of theses and research work on music. Even a PhD in music is not unknown. Why are these bright minds, who have explored the breadth and depth of music, not suitable for a title? Because they are not performers, they are unbeknownst to the people. And in a democracy, people are power. On the flipside, among the many Pandits and Ustads of classical music, hardly one or two have completed Masters, a handful did their Bachelors', and that's it. They prosper and continue to be known as 'maestros' of music, while the Bachelors', Masters' and PhDs in music have vanished into obscurity.

This hardly comes as a surprise. Consider a Masters' in mathematics. To even get close to admission, one has to do his maths since primary school. An 'F' in high school would close the doors of mathematics for him even in state universities, let alone the ivy league. But no such screening applies to a Bachelors' or Masters' in music. Music is 'extracurricular' in primary and high school. Any random combination of subjects in high school would let you take up a grad course of music. A handful of high schools offer 'music' as an additional subjects, but let's not go into 'additionals'. The vast majority of children pass out of school without the faintest idea of music. But then any random bloke gets into a B.Mus and climbs upon the stairs of exams to PhDs. To sum up, musical education in our country is the proverbial castle on air - no foundation, no basement, a penthouse beginning at eleventh floor. However, the abundance of 'popular music' in its diverse forms (audio and audio-visual) in television almost makes up for its absence in school curriculum. In this age of 'music on the go', it is near impossible to find a public place, car, bus, train or even a rickshaw, where some song is not playing. Alongside a thousand other commodities, CDs and DVDs of music albums are showcased in store windows. Entire libraries of music can be freely availed off the internet for free. 'Popular music' has become ubiquitious like air or water is. And like air and water, 'popular music' is an effective vehicle for disseminating a poison, the ultimate bio-terrorism. As the toxin of 'performing art' gets infused into music, the nation sleeps over it, waiting for the bubble to burst in some distant future. Like jewels over a mummy, an army of B.Mus. M.Mus, PhDs, Pandits, Ustads, Padmashrees and Padama-Bibhushans witness, and blissfully ignore, the crepitant decay of Indian music.

There are yet more unresolved issues. Even a the post of a peon requires at least secondary school qualification. However, 'Padmashree' and 'Padma-Bhushan', titles of national recognition, have been rewarded by Government to rank illiterates. Miles away from any kind of education, these individuals, mostly 'Ustads' and few 'Pandits', have been catapaulted to national stature only by their so called 'popularity' among the classes. Democracy makes everything possible, even if it means making a mockery of the education system.

In ancient times, when Monarchs ruled India, the award of titles was governed by a select group of courtesans - the avant garde of scholars, poets and researchers among the King's ensemble. The proficiency and intellectual enigma of an 'Ustad' awarded by the King was thus never in doubt. In vedic times, the wannabe Pandit had to prove his mettle by interconverting between forms of energy, or even transform the inanimate to life, with Para sounds. Tansen and Baiju, maestros in the court of Akbar, could beckon wild animals, set pools of water aflame, and melt stones away, with the sheer thrust of their music. Even during the Raj, a mere two hundred years ago - in the fragmented empires of colonial India, Pandits and Ustads were expected to make people cry, or make trees shed their leaves, with their music. But what did democracy do to music?

In the intial few days after independence - the connoisseurs of music, now released from the King's refuge, took up the responsibility of selecting the Pandits ans Ustads. In the absence of any official board, council, society or academies, the drawing rooms of the elite served effectively as certifying authority in music. When even the comfort of the drawing room were withdrawn, and post-colonial India plunged into economic gloom, the maestros as well as their audience, in gangs of a few, assembled in temples, treesheds, graveyards, burning ghats - any theque which offered a few hours' silence. The hours passed by with de novo compositions, sharpening of skills and ex tempore performances. They escalated into that higher ground of intellect - the ability to create and alter moods on the fly with the means of music. Members of such gangs, even in the mid twentieth century, attained superhuman musical skils. However, the dearth of appreciation has plagued musicians of the world throughout the ages. To cherish the spontaneous, ex tempore flow of harmony rippling out of the maestros demands a special skill set on the part of the listener. To the naive brain, such things are too subtle or intricate to have a grasp upon. To those listeners who were well up with their cerebral faculties, such Maestros were next to God. They were the Ustads in the truest sense of the word. Like a fleur de mal, they lived their life in abject poverty, ignored and often ridiculed by the masses. Days and nights have gone by in their quest for the perfect tune, for it is that perfection in pitch that will cleanse the soul of the listener. They bled from their hearts so that somebody else could attain divinity. They were saints, e.g. the venerable Ustad Abdul Karim Khan or Lalan Fakir. In matters of creating music, they bowed to none except the final creator. No amount of money, power, fame or 'national award' would lure them away from the righteous path. In this regard their music were a step in advance from the King's courtesans; because although the King seldom interfered with his laureates, some regal influence would always remain imprinted in contemporary music. With the King's and their empires gone, music proliferated freely under the auspices of these Ustads. The masses will, naturally, struggle to keep pace with their acheivements and thus their music will be regarded as too eccentric or incomprehensible.

This applies not only to the Ustads of India, but in general to every great musician. The 'father of European music', Johann Sebastian Mach, found appreciation in only a select few contemporaries. While they remarked that the sheer genius of Bach has gone by unrecognised, the public and newspapers were quick to retaliate that they didn't care a straw for the genius, nor did they see any reason for such. All they required was an obedient pianist, which Bach wouldn't be. How could he? How could a creator like Bach reiterate the old? Thus he became the Germany's national dilemma. As a copybook pianist he had a whole nation of fans. As a composer, the same nation became his adversary. However, foes turn friends over time. Today, the composer Bach enjoys far more fanfare than the pianist Bach. But the body being, among other things, fragile, does not live enough to see the day. Thus Bach died of a botched catarct operation in the hands of an inexperienced surgeon, only because he could not afford anybody better. Like all creators of all ages, Bach was rewarded with indifference and poverty, a modern day crucifixcion.

On the death centenary of Mozart, the other forefigure of European classical music, Bernard Shaw wrote

There are operas and symphonies and even pianoforte sonatas and pages of instrumental scorings of his, on which you can put your finger and say, 'Here is the final perfections in this manner and nobody, whatever his genious may be, will ever get a step further on these lines'

But what about a a hundred years ago? In his deathbed, on 14th of August 1790, Mozart had written to his friend: "Put yourself in my shoes, will you, please? I am sick to my stomach, troubled by circumstances. Just don't seem to recover my prowess by any means. And I am also broke. Maybe a payement is coming next week. Please, could you arrange for some money? Whatever little - would be a great help!" Note the 'whatever little' - the language of beggars, homeless and hobos. A few hundred years on, the same phrase reiterated in the Ustads who had seeked refuge in the slums of Kolkata. 'Whatever little' or nothing at all, a loaf of bread, half a glass of wine - the Ustad won't mind. He sings for the almighty, and if you are at the right place in an opportune moment, you can also have a taste of that divinity, and return with a heartful of frangipani. Even in that wretched state of existence in the filthy slums of Kolkata, the Ustad had kept his spirit aflame, and his brain functional, striving only upon black tea and bread, for days together. His only demand was a listener of class, of intact cerebral function, who could transgress the limits of existence, and accompany him on his journey to the infinite. This demand being met, the Ustad would then launch himself into creation of new universes with music, and expand his soul until he has become one with the Creator. Sky is the ambition.

The period around independance of India was the darkest hour for Indian classical music. Out in the wide open, devoid of the auspices of the King, the Ustads and Pandits had faced the dual challenge of making a living for themselves, and keeping music alive. Not surprisingly, the later was their priority. Their livelihood depended upon the recognition and support by contemporary public, people who could hardly comprehend, let alone appreciate, their music. Thus in the period between the last days of the Raj and the seventies, the Ustads and Pandits grew used to the perennial cash flow problem. As the poet Najrul would have put it, the 'priceless' creations of these great exponents were availed by society at no price at all. When the nation ran out of admirers, the Ustads, on their quest for an appreciative audience, looked beyond boundaries. They traversed oceans, flew across continents in the rudimentary aeroplanes of the past, looking for somebody with an intact cerebrum, somebody who could judge the worth of their creation. A few of them did not even bother to merry-go-round around the world. Living in filthy slums, immersed in drudgery and gloom, often going for days together without a square meal, they had passed on the art of making music come alive - to their disciples. In the troubled times following independence, the motto of the day was simply to make money, a lot of it, in anyway possible. If engineers, doctors and even upbeat land-sharks could muscle around with money, why should the poor musician be left behind? Thus a large cohort of push-sellers and marketing managers moved into the nascent 'business' of music. Let the 'life' in music be damned! Life and death hardly matter in business! A tuna made of gold will fetch a lot more dollars than a live one of similar proportions. The general perception among the musical fraternity was: let's forget the living tuna, heap up gold, and purchase any number of tuna as and when required. Only a handful of maestros realised that all the world's gold won't get you 'life' in exchange. 'Life' can not be manufactured, unlike gold. So it was imperative, they thought, to leave everything aside and keep music alive, because 'life' is too dear, and too short, to be bartered. Like Haridas Swamy (guru of Tansen), they felt that music was the laughter of God. They belived that worship, to please, and thus to become one with – God – is the final destiny of man, a consummunation no mundane distractions could match.

Such abstractions belong more to a life of seclusion rather than that of 'society', and maestros of ancient times, such as Haridas Swami, remained lifelong a recluse in far off woods. However, the likes of Pandit Gyan Prakash Ghosh, Ustad Badal Khan & Ustad Alauddin Khan preached and practised this truth in modern times, just half a decade ago, in the slums of Kolkata and the remote village Myhar. They are, in the truest sense of the words, 'Ustads' and 'Pandits'. Successive generations, mainly the sons and disciples of the masters, inherited thier vocal and instrumental skills, but only a few managed to step into the domain of 'music'. The rest were lured away by the West, which by this time had opened its doors to Indian classical musicians. A generation of 'flying musicians' were born, who spent the greater part of their careers in international flights and terminals, rubbing shoulders with their Western counterparts. The result was a group of singer-players who called their creation a 'fusion' between East and West. However, apart from fuelling the Western fantasy of the 'oriental' experience, this commercialised brand of music has failed to leave any residue, let alone philosophy, behind.

Next arose a generation of pseudo-Pandits and psuedo-Ustads, who could aptly be called the 'vultures' of classical music. The saprophytes lurked behind the real Pandits, following them in their conquests – native and foreign – hoping for a share of their fame. The big cats run and hunt down game, but the vultures only scrap out bits and pieces of the prey when nobody's looking. Likewise the pseudo-Ustads basked in the reflected glory of their real counterparts, to the extent as to make the distinction impossible. At the later half of the last century,when soclialism, feudalism, communism, liberalism and every other 'ism' had finally merged into one big banner of 'utilitarism', the vultures knew their time had come. They dressed up, picked up mannerisms, and put on gargantuan wigs to feign as 'Ustads' and 'Pandits'. With an ever-dwindling supply of the real ones, it was hayday for these pseudo-Ustads and pseudo-Pandits. Never venturing into the realms of meditation, they picked up whatever putrified remnants were left in the garbage can of their predecessors. Their collective cacophony was mistaken to be music by everybody, young and old, media and Government agencies, and encores rained down upon them. Thus were born the barage of self-professed 'Pandits' and 'Ustads' of music. In their eccentricities and fastidiousness, in fashion and exposition, in their regal lifestyle and princely nonchalance, they surpassed the greatest of Ustads and Pandits. Like deft salesmen, they specialised in convincing business houses and industrialist to shower money, music reduced to being only an afterthought. Add to that the changing course of Business itself in India. Hitherto it was carried forward by generations of entreprenaurs and socialites, for whom business was just not the means to reap profit, but to push India into the modern age, to bring on the winds of change in the jammed wheels in mud straddled bullock carts of India. But somewhere in the sixties, business was suddenly democritised and given an 'academic' status by so called business schools. The focus on welfare, social upliftment and philanthropy was erased from the next generation of industrialists; what remained was only profit. Newly passed out MBAs from business schools ushered in the 'western' way of doing business in India, and showed how a golden tuna could be exhcnaged for tonnes of live ones. The combination of the musical vultures, and marketing managers bent on selling dead tuna, proved to be lethal. For awhile, 'classical music' in India sold out to business houses, and money was held more important than 'life' of music itself.

In the dearth of appreciation of quality music, it is no surprise that the pseudo-Ustads and pseudo-Pandits attained several times the popularity of their true counterparts. When film songs became the musical mantra of the nation, the 'pseudo's quickly adopted the newest fads. The combination of 'false' film music and 'pseudo' musicians was an instant hit, so much so that sponsors flocked around the duo in no time, and this new hybrid was blown into astronomical proportions. Soon, the pseudo-Ustands and pseudo-Pandits begin to receive media attention comparable to playback singers. The holy union between the produced a shoal of hybrid-pseudo-playback-Ustads and Pandits, and their juggernaut ran over the country. Maybe this surge will run for a generation or two, but it is downright nauseating to even think of where things will lead to after that.

Other than that, it's heartening to see the collective intelligence of the audience is growing each decade. The present generation is no longer wooed by the pseudo-exponents. They are disgruntled listening to Ustad Bade Ghulam and some random 'Khan' being pronounced in the same breath. No longer are they lured by the hybrids of classical and film music. To them, the association is growing to be as revolting as stale milk rotting in the cupboard, and as irksome as pickpocket. The tides are slowly turning back, it will not be long before the hybrid class is refused altogether.

Three

For a long time now, the scenario of music in India consists of a handful of singers, a hell lot of music tutors, the elites called Pandits and Ustads, students of music, and the audience. To be a singer, you need to sing, and that's it. To play an instruments, just go on playing it, and you are done. Do these things with some passion, and you may well turn out to be a Pandit or an Ustad. If not that, there's always the arena of copy-singers, pseudo-Pandits and pseudo-Ustads. You'll need a teacher to grow, to tell which things to do when, and you'll need luck. Success, in music, remains elusive as ever. In a batch of hundreds of students, only one or two will make it to the big league. The rest console themselves with the false pretension of 'becoming a better person' through music. Lady luck is the all-pervasive phantom of the 'music industry'. Nobody can foretell when and how she will take sides; whose fortune, among the thousands of aspirants, she is going to turn. For the rest foresaken by her, there's nothing but despair, and their own rotten luck to blame. Those among the failures, who can't adjust to harsh reality, seek refuge in palmistry, astrology, horoscopes, gems and stargazing – in an effort to repair their blemished luck, or they surrender to some addiction, first alcohol, and then drugs. Middle class loathes music as a 'career' – a profession plagued with unccertainity, depression and stress. Everybody knows, and expects, singers to have some tragedy in their life. The corporates groom new singers to face the challenges of the trade: never say die, never back down. Life, to them, is much like the sensex, with its hills and troughs. Keep on pushing. It takes only one reality show to the top.

To sum up, the life of a singer sways between superstardom and ignonimity, affluence and bankruptcy, fanfare and hate mails. Few can endure such frivolous oscillation between the extremes, most just fall back in the race and give up, disgruntled and diseased.

Meanwhile, the audience at large votes for the their kind of music. Often the choice is mistaken due to lack of education, sensibility, or both. Thus listening to such music serves nothing more than just the ears, with the accompanying waste of time and money. The ubiquity of music means even the time and money can be spared! Something's playing on the DVD or the FM all the time! Be it a temple, rail station, a bar, or even an auto-rickshaw, 'music' follows you. There's no relief from the everlasting chatter, the flurry of ads, and the occasional 'hit song', playing on myriads of FM channels. Music, music everywhere, not a moment to feel.

There was a period when classical music blossomed in the 'music conferences', which were held by independent associations. When these true cenobites were no longer able, financially, to hold conferences on their own, they handed it over to corporates, which effectively killed the spirit of the conference. Now the itinerary were decided by CEOs, who, amidst their busy time in selling washing machines, soap, steel or liquor, never really learnt to appreciate music. The true music buff could not afford an 'Ustad' any more; thus the CEO, musically impaired by hybrid film music since his childhood, now takes up the onus of holding up Indian Classial Music. Jesus wept.

Film songs continue to enjoy their celebrity status, for the plain reason that they have been lipped by the hero or the heroine, and bask in their (the hero's) reflected stardom.

Such, to be succinct, is the scenario of 'music' in India, where even in graduation courses, 'music' is introduced by the teacher to his students, to be nothing more than a 'performing art'. It is the 'performance' that captures all the limelight, not the art. All said and done, 'performance' is what matters in the exam, or on stage.

The better part of my life has been spent in redemption of this gigantic misjudgement committed by my predecessors.

To start with, I have already been tagged as a 'music director', for the simple reason that I must, as a matter of obligation from within, make music. Music occupies each of my conscious minutes. But alas, this being the twenty first century, my creation would not fetch any material returns without the vehicle of cinema. This material body would eventually perish without those returns; and I doubt whether my spirit alone, unaided by my deceased body, could go on with composing music. I have to bear the dubious honour of being a 'music director', for the same reason Adam bit the apple. I seriously doubt my stature as an 'artist', but still occasionally get referred to as a 'Pandit'. For however little Indian Classical Music may I have learnt, I have boarded the shoulders, and occasionally the playful laps, of giants. For the meagre little I have inherited, I still receive the odd invitation to sing a Khayal or a Thumri. And for this and this alone, the cross of being a 'Pandit' [2] is thrust upon me. Having never submitted to the household weekly job of teaching music, I have nevertheless shared my morsels of knowledge with a select few devotees of music. To my utter dismay, I have been branded as a 'music teacher', as if that phrase even has any meaning.

However, in reluctant acceptance of all the blemish, as a humble disciple of music, a composer, as a friend to all friends of music, by virtue of the meagre abilities bestowed upon me by my ancestors, I beckon you to arise out of the slumber, to refuse the idea of 'music' as song and dance, but that it is a way of life, an upliftment towards the divine.

It is only since the last century that the onus of perpetuating Indian 'music' has been thrust solely upon performers, both in public and in private sectors. Granted, a handful of performers have escalated to 'music' in its truest sense, but the legion of singers and instrumentalists have nothing to do with 'music'. To draw an analogy, in the countless temples of India reside battalions of priests, the 'performers' of divinity. It is their charisma, their unflinched utterance of wronged Sanskrit, their quixotic rituals performed before an idol, that runs the business of religion in India. Like 'music directors, they have effectively trasnformed God into a commodity. However, even among the inglorious lot of priests, there will be an occasional Shree Ramakrishna, who was nevertheless a priest, but a lot more too. He had transcended the boundaries between the temporal and the perpetual, he had became one with God through his Puja. In India and the world, he is known to his disciples simply as 'Param hangsa', the divine incarnation of God. However, the fact that he was also a priest belies his divinity. There are thousands of priests, the clan of idol worshippers in India for whom God is an excuse, and devotion is a career. This is what sets Shree Ramakrishna apart from the rest. For every million copy singers, there will rise one Bade Ghulam or one Amir Khan. The rest have only so much to do with 'music' as your regular priest with God.

For example, to enumerate the Indian singers who have had the most live performances around the world in the last few decades - Lata Mangeshkar, Mohd Rafi and Pandit Rabishankar will top the list. With their orchestra, glitz and props, they have set fire on stages across the world. But they are yet to spawn a genre of music of their own. There is no 'Lata Sangeet', 'Rafi Sangeet' or 'Rabishankar Sangeet' as yet. But the person who has never set foot on stage has somehow managed to set his kind of music apart. Rabindra-sangeet. In a purely conventional sense, his voice did not 'suite' singing, he remained as one of the audience, not the performer, in most concerts. He never bothered writing instrumental music, or any orchestration at all. His prowess lies in his lyrics, which combined with his ethereal tunes continue to mesmerise. Neither a singer, nor an instrumentalist, not a 'performer' in any sense, he dealt in pure sangeet.

This should not give the impression that being a vocalist or an instrumentalist is in anyway a hindrance to 'music'. On the contrary, the vocalist or instrumentalist is at least one step closer to 'music'. The proverbial 'Senia Gharana', which derives its heritage from Tansen himself, is one of the many forms that 'music' manifests itself. It comes as no surprise that Tansen himself was a vocalist, performer, instrumentalist and a composer. So was Lalan Fakir, the quintessential composer of Bengal, a vocal and instrumental virtuso. But above all, these maestros had captured a snapshot of the infinite within their mortal pile of flesh and bone, through their music.

It may flatly be stated that vocal and instrumental music are only fractions of the musical continuum. If music as a whole is hundred, vocal and instrumental music will amount to no more than five. However, that 'five' fills up its very important role of being a 'five'. Without that five, 'hundred' will fall short by five. The problem lies in the mass delusion that 'five equals hundred' ! People in India, and around the world, seem to have taken for granted, that singing and playing instruments is all that there is to 'music'.

The Vedic theory of 'music' classifies 'sound' in four strata

Baikhari
Madhyma
Pashyantee
Para

Baikhari – The 'sound' of physics textbooks, i.e. that which is produced by vibrating objects, be it the strings of a sitar, the larynx of a loudmouth lawyer, exploding gunpowder of a bullet, blaring horns in traffic, even high frequency waves beyond our auditory capacity – everything is Baikhari. You have to be completely deaf to get rid of Baikhari.

Madhyma – For every conscious being, there is Madhyama which is keeping its consciousness running. Whenever you think of something, anything, you are invariably talking to yourself in your head. For every waking minute the soliloque inside our mind goes on. This is madhyma, the silent voice of consciousness. When Madhyma shuts down, you are either asleep or dead.

Pashyantee – The sound that transforms between the senses, converts different feelings into one another. According to Hindu and Buddhist scriptures, only people with some background of Yoga, either in this life or in previous one, can feel and utter Pashyantee. Etymologically, Sangeet is Sam + geet, where 'Sam' means totality, completeness. However, the totality of the cosmos is beyond the cognitive realms of the hopelessly puny few billion neurons that we call our brain. Pashyantee makes conception possible, it transforms and sums up between experiences to give is a glimpse of 'entirety', which is known as the stage of 'Dhaaranaa' in Yoga. For any art to prosper, it is necessary to transcend the domains imposed by the 'form', and to leap into its 'entirety' or Dhaaranaa. Nature has built our neural circuits such that cross talk between our sense organs is not only seamless, but necessary at times. The sight of a delicacy is 'mouth watering', even though the eye and salivary glands are separate organs altogether. Great works of art also elicit similar feelings. A look at the 'Mona Lisa' and you could almost hear her chuckle. Pashyantee is the medium for transduction of sensory information between sensations. One of the essential duties of a 'musician' is to create pictures with sound, i.e. transduce visual to auditory data with Pashyantee.

Para – The final yogic plane, the culmination of human endeavours, Para can transform between matter and energy, can reverse entropy, and bend space-time. Physical processes are typically unidirectional. The brief candle exhausts into light and heat. Creatures are born, they live and finally die. The possibility that death can be reverted is as improbable as a candle being recreated from light and heat. From the fragments of Indian scriptures that remain, it seems Para was not alien to Vedic India. Para has been mentioned as the conductor of cosmic fugue, the transformer of elements. Mortals can feel Para only at the pinnacle of Yogic planes, the Samadhi. And once Para is mastered, the physical world becomes his dominion. It is not rare to find instances from history where disease, or even death has been reverted by the likes of Jesus or Shree Chaitanya. When we say that something 'works like a charm', do we mean that charms and spells, even in if a distant past, actually worked? Para is that spell, that hymn, which when combined with an ordinary arrow, could transform it to a weapon of mass destruction, as has been frequently cited in the Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata. It is painful to listen to that same Para spells, now converted to a few meaningless phrases, vandalized by the lips of a half-educated priest, for no purpose other than to impress a clueless audience before an idol of God. Sad but there's no denying that this is where it all has come to.

Whatever is being hoarded as 'Sangeet' since independence is almost all Baikhari and hints of Madhyama. A few master composers and performers have been able to retain the ever diminishing flavor of Madhyama in their renditions. But most of the 'musical' activity that goes on in this country, which is singing and playing songs, is Baikhari to its brim. One can not board his own shoulders. Baikhari fails to explain itself, let along Madhyama, Pashyantee or Para.

There is ample evidence that the practice of Madhyama, even Pashyantee and Para, continued uninterrupted from the Vedic ages till very recent past, the time of Shree Chaintanya as Keertan songs. However, everything except the shrillest Baikhari was systematically wiped out by the British, courtersy the 'assistance' provided by our very own Pandits and Ustads. Like in every other field, they have drained our best, and stuffed the vacuum with straw. Our Baikhari and Madhyama have occupied their syllabus since the fifties. 'Acoustics' can be a crude translation of Baikhari , anything that can be heard; and the closest discipline, if not exact word, related to Madhyma, is psychology. It is no coincidence that 'psycho-acoustics' occupies a whole paper in graduate courses in American & British universities, a subject that Indian universities seem to have carefully avoided. Pashyantee and Para remain our last forte, ideas that Euro-Americans are yet to grasp. However, their enterprising nature will eventually win over us, and the day is not far when they will master of Pashyantee and Para . Meanwhile, we being Indians, will sing and dance along with our 'Icons', 'Mahagurus' and 'Lil Champs', while our ancestral treasure is plundered.

Four

What we perceive today as 'Sangeet' is a shadow of its forgotten past. Todays vocal and instrumental music, of whatever calibre, fade away into oblivion in comparison to the glorius immensity of 'Sangeet'. Syntactically, sangeet is the set of 'sounds' that encompass everything, everywhere. It is the harmonic expression of the fulfilment of human life, not just an 'item' playing on a track. Sangeet is life.

To emphasize my point, let's have a look at the bare necessities of life. Does sangeet provide means to our well being in daily life? If not, then there's no use for sangeet or whatever. Let's delve into a little detail. Food is our primal, animal necessity. The production of adequate amounts of food to sustain the ever burgeoning human population is one of the several issues facing the world today. Until we find alternate means to food production, agriculture remains our principal source of food. Several decades of research has shown crop increase by several times with application of music in farmland. Plants, it seems, devour music more than human beings. Russia has been employing music in its fields since 1964. America has stepped up music in farming, resulting in overproduction of wheat each year. Research is on in Europe, Americas and even in India, regarding effect of music on production of vegetables. However, 'research' carries so little importance in our country, that the monthly remuneration of a top notch scientist is still a split fraction of the money that say, a playback singer, makes in an evening. Our research projects thus remain chronically anemic for want of funds. But at least the effectiveness of sound in practice of agriculture over chemical fertilisers has become known in India, which is no small achievement.

Food is followed by health. The commonest diseases of the developed world today are, predictably, ischemic heart disease, depression, hypertension and stress syndromes. Medical research has proved that sangeet can play the role of a 'vaccine' for this set of non communicable diseases. However, this won't be sangeet in its conventional song and dance sense, rather Sangeet as a set of related feelings and ideas. Diseases are misplaced feelings, emotions and ideas, which can be tilted back to normalcy with specific kinds of Sangeet. Research regarding the psycho-acoustic aspects of commenced right after second world war; the fruits of the research has already afforded protection for millions of people from disease.

In education, Sangeet plays an even more vital role. Exercising the intellectual faculties with Madhyama and Pashyantee, rather than Baikhari, improves the receptiveness of brain several times. In my little personal experience I have met students who have improved grades spectacularly, by exercising Madhyama and Pashyantee. In the present educatio system of ours, which is largely a test of memory, Sangeet can be doubly beneficial. Not only does Sangeet improve memory, but the theory has earned its proponent, the swedish neuro-anatomist Roger Perry, a Nobel prize. Again, this Sangeet will not be Baikhari; there's no better distractor of the brain than mindless Baikhari. It has to be focused Madhyma or Pashyantee, which helps the student to unlock his potential, rather than sway between feelings.

Housing. Bigger the better. Period. Or is it? Is a house measured only in square feets? What makes a house become a 'home'? Is it the best furniture, or interiors, or architecture? If so, why is it so that even in such well constructed abodes, people fail to stay together in harmony? What is the adhesive that has gone missing? Why are families disintegrating at a frivolous rate? It is peace which makes a house a home, irrespective of its building material. Thus families in rural India stick together under their thatched roofs and earthen walls, while the urban nuclear family struggles to stay together even in their 5 BHK flats. Sangeet can bring piece and calm to any household, and irrespective of sqaure feet, can convert it to a true 'home'. The spirit of India has always disregarded the brick and mortar; true homes are not made on 'plots' but on the terra firma of our heartland. Our homes have kept us together, kept our society from the invasion of 'psychiatrists', as has happened in America. This is because the stream of Sangeet, narrowed down by ages of silt into a rivulet, nervetheless still flows in each one of us.

There are times when oceans seem to have dried up, the sky becomes a greyish blur, hope fizzles away into despair. However, the thick vapour of sobs, the heavy wind of sighs, the tremendous negative repulsion of hopelessess, all culminate into one big cloud of agony; and when it finally rains, we are reminded that monsoon is near, that the river of Sangeet will flow in its full vigour again, that God has not abandoned us. Today's generation, more than ever, has realised that culture is what lies at the core of being an Indian, and Sangeet is the truest representation of Indian culture. They have flocked around the one true Sangeet, leaving aside their careers, fame and sometimes even their formal life. A revolution is brewing in the cup. Pran sangeet is the harbinger of this revolution to the world: India will awaken, Sangeet will reinvigorate itself; for at least once, life will live true to its name.

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[1] Still searching for a better transliteration of Sangeet

[2] In Sanskrit, a party crasher