Topic started by Vishvesh Obla (@ dsl-20-141-197.boston.navipath.net) on Tue Dec 12 13:04:14 .
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There is an ISKCON temple near my place at Orem, Utah, and they had arranged for a Carnatic Music concert. The performers were a touring group from Chennai. I have been listening to Carnatic Music through cassettes and playing it too, but it was a kind of curious experience for me to listen to it live after a gap of almost two years. It was so nice to see three young men in dhotis with ‘vibudhi’ in their forehead sitting majestically before the mikes with mridangam and the violin. The first note of the violin, which was a strain of the beautiful raga ‘Hamsadvani’, did electrify me, though it was just an extension of a single musical note to check the ‘sruthi’ of the instrument. How sweet it was to my ears gone sore by the noise of the mechanical cacophony called music here that I hear daily in Radio and TV! They performed for a couple of hours. To see someone playing right before you what had shaped our country as a unique and one of the most evolved cultural systems this world has ever seen was a kind of experience to me. It came to me so sharp, for I was listening to a fine live recital after a very long gap and after SEEING and experiencing a different dimension of Life lived here in North America. The vocalist, Mr.Suriyaprakash, a budding artist, I guess, did a beautiful job of capturing the fine devotion of St.Thiyagaraja towards Lord Rama. I have always felt the devotion this saint had for the lord is one of the most unparalleled one which a human being ever had towards God (We do find St. Francis and a few other disciples of Jesus having such devotion but it is, as I have known, never expressed so vividly in such a musical or any other artistic expression by any of them). The beauty of the live performance was that I could not only hear but could SEE the spirit of such a devotion being expressed by the powerful flow of notes by the singer. The greatness of our musical system lies in the fact that it is not just a mechanical rendering of musical notes. Life is given to it by the spirit of ‘devotion’ to God as in Carnatic music or a powerful play of imagination, which is mostly again religious, as in Hindustani music. Indian Music is so spiritual and I could feel it so much in the rich coloring of the musical notes of the various ragas. This coloring isn’t just a play of playful imagination, but one that is disciplined and given shape by the spiritual sense that India evolved in its long glorious years of its cultural past. I felt so good to know that we still have been clinging to our finest forms of human civilization through our music though we have much falsified our sense of religion and spirituality. We still do have a fine group of people in India to whom Classical Music matters and to whom listening to it is not a false affair like going to a temple without knowing and feeling anything inwardly what religion means to us at all. These musicians were a fine reminder to me that we still have the remnants of our glorious past of our country, though it has been shining as a small spark only. India is not ‘dead’, in the deeper sense of the word, like America, just because of a very few fine things like it. Indian Classical Music is still ‘alive’ in India and let us sincerely hope that it survives the onslaught of the modern commercial world which has been crushing all the finer forms of existence. |
Responses:
- From: b (@ user1.pqproject.com)
on: Tue Dec 12 14:09:59 EST 2000
Whoever said Indian Classical Music is 'dead'?
- From: Siby Koodalloor (@ 203.199.38.35)
on: Wed Dec 13 00:54:15 EST 2000
Vishvesh,
Nice to know to about your wonderful experience.
- From: sairam (@ 165.107.33.147)
on: Wed Dec 13 19:33:16 EST 2000
Indians just not bring software expertise to US but LIFE to this country with their dedication, devotion and perseverance.
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