T M Krishna’s recent concert at Oosterport, Groningen, Netherlands
Un mélomane indien, apparemment médecin, venu au concert avec ses collègues médecins réunis pour un congrès à Groningen, parle de son expérience de spectateur du concert donné en mars 2009 par le chanteur T. M. Krishna dans la salle Oosterpoort où ont lieu à Groningue les concerts de la tournée de concerts indiens organisée plusieurs fois par an par le Tropen Theater d’Amsterdam.
Le texte intégral peut être lu ici.
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What is important when one presents carnatic music to a western carnatically uneducated audience? To baffle them with chaste carnatic complexity or to mellow the audience and elucidate the greatness through its manodharma? [...].
TMK’s presentation [...] deserves much admiration and ovation. TMK elaborated mainly, Karaharapriya and Thodi in its chaste glory and mathematical intricacy, how one would if they are being presented perhaps at the Madras Music Academy. The suprasensory perception of the beautiful was evident in both pieces and at some point, I was indeed in meditation. However to the vast carnatically unerudite audience, as I realised from the feedbacks I received, it was a mere spectacle of sound and rhythm. While I really appreciated the essence of the bhava of our music TMK wished to portray, I felt he could have drawn the audience a little bit closer to the soul of our music had he, at least presented one item that drew some parallels between carnatic and western classical music at the very end of the concert. [...]
Though many of them enjoyed the concert, their enjoyment was instrumented by what a Hungarian cellist described to me as ‘fireworks’. The audience, small in number and many of them present upon my personal invitation were at loss with exactly what was happening on stage. I am a stout defender of classicm of our art. However sometimes when we tread new ground or when we have to popularise our art to an audience of different ethos, then we have to integrate our art with theirs and draw their mind to a level of erudite sensory perception. [...]
Upon request from a slovakian violinist and a musically untrained Neurologist who were sitting beside me, who wanted to know how the same raga or melody (because they couldnt really digest the heavyness of Karaharapriya and Todi) if treated in a slightly western style would resonate, I requested TMK to render the Madurai Mani Iyer english notes as a concluding item.
English Note par Madurai Mani Iyer
This simple item would have given the audience a perception of not only the extrapolation of the vocal, but also how the Mrudangam and the Violin would adapt, what exactly raga & swara mean etc. Such an exercise is not actually diluting our art, but explaining our art to a baroque audience. But TMK bluntly and aversely refused. [...]
Nevertheless I am not sure how the audience is in other parts of Holland. But carnatic vocal music, in particular, is a hard act to follow for untrained audience here in Groningen. They may applaud on witnessing something different to the usual or being exposed to a myriad of sound and rhythm, but if the aim is more to propagate an understanding of the manodharma of our music, then there is more to be presented than chaste music. Perhaps as a suggestion it might be worthwhile to conduct a simple lecture demonstration before foraying into Todi and Bhairavi and at least contain one item which draws parallels between our Todi/Bharaivi in Haydn or Chopin, purely to explain the very Todi and Bhairavi, at least the next time in Groningen!
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Dr. Hari Subramanian
h.h.subramanian[at]med[dot]umcg[dot]nl
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Prince Rama Varma sings a short interesting alaap in the Western Major Scale followed by the English Note popularized by Shri Madurai Mani Iyer
Autant je partage les interrogations de ce spectateur, autant je doute de l’intérêt de la solution qu’il propose. Je n’ai pas assisté à ce concert de T. M. Krishna, mais je comprends (et j’approuve) qu’il n’ait pas accédé à cette demande.