Music and Competition

While unexcitingly scanning through the TV channels, on a homely Sunday evening, I came across a boisterous debating session, in a popular Malayalam channel, which to my astonishment was apparently a film music competition. It was a verbal fight between some among the audience and the judge. One of the music candidates couldn’t get into the next round. And the judge was sued by the audience for that. In the dramatic turn up of events, the judge decides, to quit the event, the anchors attempts to reconcile the issue and pacify him, while the audience still debated on the issue of a few marks, which could push the candidate into the next round. Finally, the anchors decide to conduct a viewer’s SMS poll and the candidate requests the TV viewers to send SMS supporting her so that she could get into the next round.

This whole pandemonium churned out some thoughts in me on music and competition and that’s what I am going to pen down here.

First of all let me express my innate wonder over the competitions in music. What is music? Whatever form and genre be it… Is it something solely for competitions and marketing? Is it solely for entertainment? Is it something that is to be compared and evaluated? I wonder…

Let me express my deep agony over the society in which I live, where everything is a competition. Education is a competition. Ranks, marks, grades, and later, placements salary, cars, mobile phones, bungalows…Marriage is made a business...Everything is compared. We Indians evaluate people through comparisons alone. We ourselves legitimize everything evil like, dowry, corruption, etc through our own casual approach and silly thoughts.

Coming back, how can we compare the music in and from different individuals? If there is a competition in music, I believe that, it is simply a testimony to the ignorance and the pathetic level of approach of the people towards music. Is there a concept of ‘small’ and ‘big’, in music?

For instance, in a classical music competition how can a judge compare the Thodi and a Sankarabaranam sung by two different candidates? And if both the candidates sing Thodi, how can he compare the two Thodis?

Can you compare Semmangudi’s * Bhairavi with that of MDR*?? Definitely not. Why?? Because their approaches to Bhairavi are different. Their delineations are different in structure and intensity of ‘sangathis’. It depends on their general philosophical outlook to music. The mood Bhairavi generates is different in different individual. The interpretations are different, independent and exclusively original. Their voices themselves are far different. But Semmangudi’s nasal voice and MDR’s basal tone are both beautiful. Both voices have their own kind of taste and charisma. And it was their constant search for their own individuality in music, which produced the ever green music from both. The music woven by Semmangudi in his nasal voice can never be imitated or reproduced. It is his own. It is his copyright. He has put a stamp on his musical identitiy. And that has grown to a style or bani of his own. Same was the case with MDR. It is said that, if two MDRs sat beside each other, to sing, one can’t win over the other!! So much instantaneous and unfathomable was his innovation and originality! Such music was simply from the soul. And every human being has got a distinguished soul for himself. If one can appreciate this concept, he will never allow himself to be compared with someone else and he will never be interested in lauding a music competition.

So, music or art in general is about learning to live as oneself, carving a niche for oneself and sticking to one’s own distinctiveness. Does this get projected in a music competition, where the most common and vociferous film songs are repeated over and over, a thousand times, to create a total mental and physical cacophony? (I can’t opine that the Carnatic Musichood is totally free from such trends)

Nowadays, music broadcasted through the mass media lacks originality. It is by and large, not from the heart. It fails to appeal us (who truly value music), emotionally or intellectually. It is simply a preprogrammed exertion of memory, vocal chords and an inherent ability to imitiate. (I am not generalizing though). It lacks sensitivity, it lacks what we Carnatic musicians call Bhavam. Where is innovation, where is the subtlety? Does it emotionally ignite us somehow? Does it bring in us the sense of serenity and harmony?

When we don’t have sensitivity towards music, we are ready to compromise on anything, we are ready to go for competitions or similar marketing assignments and let our art be compared. In return we earn the false appreciations, from the community we live in… from the corporate world, we work for.

The students are made to see music or painting or dance, as a method to earn prizes and accolades. This is what has been happening in most of the cultural youth festivals in India (except in a very few movements like SPIC MACAY). They are not inspired or encouraged in the right manner to enable their minds to direct towards the emotional and the philosophical arena of an art. Then how can we stake claim for a student to be creative? If you ask someone, about the sole reason for him to listen music, he would immediately reply...”entertainment”. The students are never made to think that, music is just not for entertainment, it is for the process of purification of mind. For a man who has learnt the art of controlling his emotions through music, salvation (if such a concept exists) is simply attainable through music. Each musical exercise is a kind of purification of mind. It upholds the fact that peace and pleasure are inside ourselves and we need not madly run behind the materialistic entities and gratifications, like a musk deer constantly searching for the origin of the smell of the musk.

And why does this happen? Is it because human being is compromising on his humane capabilities and sensitiveness, for an intellectually inert and emotionally barren modern life? Can’t we do something to impede these ‘crimes’ on music and arts in general? Can’t we create a slight progressive development in the attitudes in our fellow Indians?

So, do we still need competitions? Whom are we trying to please by winning a competition, when we fail to please our own soul through our music? Anyway I firmly believe that, unless and until, we Indians, learn to forget the ‘art’ of comparing, we are never going to rise morally or intellectually, though financial accomplishments may come along.

Let me stop by recalling (again?) the definition of music given by MDR

M-Morality, U-Universality, S-Spirituality, I- Individuality, C- Creativity.

Musically,
Sankar

*Semmangudi- Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, the bhishmacharya of Carnatic Music.

*MDR – MD Ramanthan, a doyen of Carnatic Music.