I am slowly beginning to appreciate Carnatic Music. The other day, my mother and her music troupe had a group-singing on the Pancharatna Keerthanas by Thyagaraja
I enjoyed the rendition of the music. In fact, it got me thinking on the nature of Carnatic music and the structure of its 'key deliverables'.
The most striking characteristic that came across was the consistency of structure that these compositions maintain. It struck me as very mathematical.
You are given a sub-set of Swaras from the 7 musical notes - and the entire composition is a collection of complex permutations of exactly the same subset.
It is amazing how the consistency is maintained throughout the whole song !
Probably, there are very few music forms in this world which have this immaculate structure built into them.
Pop music, on the other hand - is a collection of totally random musical notes - where the listener can make NO correlation to any antecedents or consequents of one particular section of the song. But hey, I do like pop music too !
So, that brings me to propose that appreciating a particular genre of music over another has entirely to do with your state of mind at that point of time. For Carnatic music, you need to be in a relaxed, calm state - almost completely switched off from nagging thoughts and worries. Here the music is akin to medicine administered in minute doses - giving the 'patient' a world of time to heal !
Visually, Carnatic music should look like this :
kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk
kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkKLkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk
kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkKLMkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk
kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkKLMNkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk
kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkKLMNOkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk
Notice how the music slowly SWAYS into different sets of musical notes without abrupt jumps. I would ascribe this pattern to Old Hindi film songs too.
Now, Rock music is propably at the other end of the spectrum ( Imagine substituting all the 26 letters of the alphabet into the above pattern - and throw in some Chinese characters too !! ) But again, I need that music when I am bouncy and jumping ( say , I won a zillion bucks in the lottery :) ).
Different moods, different music. That's what makes life interesting . For those with the perception that Carnatic music is for the older generation -
Hey You ! Carnatic Music Roxx !
9 comments:
Lovely!! I especially liked the representation of the notes of carnatic music :) But I beg to differ when you say that carnatic music is only for the time when you are free from nagging thoughts. On the contrary, when you are bogged down by too many cares and worries, and then listening to soft carnatic music is very soothening :)
But yeah, rock music has its own charm .. :)
cant comment......i am one of those people who cant stand classical music...nothing agst it...just cant stand it :o)
@hitchhiker
when you are bogged down by too many cares and worries, and then listening to soft carnatic music is very soothening :)
I tend to prefer silence :)
@kandy:
Actually you will appreciate the variations more in Hindustani music where most renditions have very less lyrics (sometimes, just one line), but the same lines are repeated again and again with subtle changes in tune. Truly amazing. And if you have a tabla around, it just gets divine. The way the intensity is built is awesome.
I agree that Carnatic music makes complex structures out of just a few notes. But pop music is not as random as you say! In fact pop has much simpler structures than classical. Ask any musician who performs both.
Even I was thinking last week that rock music is almost noise. They use all 12 notes, vocals are at a different pitch from the instruments, the rhythms are funny...I just don't get it :(
The staid part of Carnatic music is the rhythm. It gets monotonous after a while. I think bhaavageethe and semi-classical music (exemplified by old film songs) vastly improved on this.
One last crib is the lyrical content. Manasi Prasad writes about this in an article (PDF). (see Page 18)
impressive writing kandy..impressive :-)
Hey Kandy.. Congrats on Getting through IIMB :)
I would disagree with a few of your observations.
It is wrong to say that other forms of music doesn't have patterns. Pop/Rock has patterns, but not as strict as in classical. It is wrong to say that it is random. True, you will find different patterns in different stanzas. But it is kind of piecewise continuous. In fact you can find signatures of particular raagas in most rock songs. This is an example.
The difference in these different genres is actually in what they convey.
Rock songs give importance to lyrics and the ambience it creates than the tones or nuances.
BTW, the greatest thing about Carnatic music is that half of it is improvisation. :)
That was the toughest training I had...learning to improvise, while staying within the constraints of the raaga.
@chaos
Thanks :)
@deepak
Interesting perspective there - thank you !
Just remembered this post of yours while I was listening to a singer Hemachandra who used to perform on SaReGaMa......just realized that whatever he sings, has that touch of perfection because of the base he has had (I guess) in Carnatic.....and that's another reason why I love Carnatic.
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