(TM Krishna, source net. all pics sourced from net)
Parai dance and Paraikkoottu are subaltern dance-music
cultures from/in Tamil Nadu. Subaltern is a very academic word. To make it more
straight, let me say, they are the Dalit percussion and dance forms, sometimes
played in the occasions of death. T.M.Krishna, the Magsaysay award winning
musician, in his book titled ‘Reshaping Art’ quotes Deepan, a Parai dancer: “The
reason we perform during death is simple. If a human being does not dance
listening to the sound of the Parai, then we can confirm that he is dead.” I am
fascinated by this statement. This book published by Aleph in its spotlight
series at once a good read and a problem in itself.
(Reshaping Art, book by TM Krishna)
This book is problematic because of the author himself.
Hailing from the Brahmin community, after excelling in the technicalities and
nuances of Karnatic music, and even after gaining considerable number of
rasikas for himself, T.M.Krishna decided to chuck it all. Slowly and steadily
he realized how Karnatic music had become an exclusive caste-ist and classist
genre where the paraphernalia of its teaching, learning, practicing and
performing is fixed around a dominant religion, its upper caste value systems.
Krishna explores the history of Indian dance and music which are hailed to be
classical these days and says how these genres had to fight with the western
art forms to gain legitimacy as classical forms. In the course of such
authentication, these forms demoted some original forms and styles as vulgar and
made the performative spaces sanitized of subaltern/Dalit music and dance
forms.
(Gana exponent Michael)
T.M.Krishna made waves in the elite music scenario of
Chennai which is the high seat Karnatic music as he decided to take his
performance to the sea beach where his audience where random people from the
fisher folk and the curious onlookers who generally did not attended music
concerts of ‘this kind’. The aversion of the audience slowly turned into
curiosity, then to engagement and later into participation. Today T.M.Krishna
is a champion of the idea of democratising music and dance and to this end he
even barges into the public transports with his team and performs kacheris. He
also works with NGOs working in slums and performs for the slum audience and
also has initiated ‘poramboke music’, music from the left over places/spaces.
(Marana Gana Viji, one who sings of death)
Krishna means well and he tries to puts it across well but
often he climbs up on the high horse of preaching about the sublimating side of
art. Though he debates the word spiritual and spirituality in the book, the
language slowly climbs up to the abstraction that stands close with the
classical understanding about classical arts. Krishna knows one thing that even
if he is a pioneer in breaking the barriers from the up to include the ones
from the other side of the fence, the ones who work from the other side of the
classical line of art and music do not need Krishna’s mediation. Tamil Nadu has
this rich tradition of folk and subaltern/Dalit/Adivasi music and dance
traditions and with or without Krishna’s intervention these will survive
especially in a situation where Dalit discourse is gaining traction and parlance
among a larger audience.
(Paadariyen Padippariyen scene from Sindhu Bhairavi movie)
While discussing this aspect of the varieties of musical
performances, Krishna feels the heat and he is anxious about the fact that his
interventions may go redundant sooner than later. So he warns the practitioners
that the popular culture is out there to incorporate or co-opt these subaltern
musical and dance experiments for commercial purposes leaving the masters of
subaltern music high and dry. The fact is that it has already been done and it
has been going on for quite some time. It was Ilayaraja who in early 1980s
brought in the subaltern sounds and music into the mainstream Tamil film
industry but value addition that he did was the smooth camouflaging of those
music styles with the dominant Karnatic styles. But Ilayaraja has always been
unapologetic about his heavy borrowing from the folk traditions. In a film
called Sindhu Bhairavi (1985) by veteran director K.Balachandar, there is a sequence
where the protagonist who is a Karnatic musician is asked to sing in local
music style by one of the female audience. Ruffled by the demand he mockingly
asks her to sing it and prove whether lofty ideas could be sung in local music.
She sings. That song brought National Award for Chithra. Krishna has not minded
this fact.
(Ilayaraja)
If you follow the episodes written by Krishna you would come
to know that it is Krishna like a missionary going around and attending the
Gana performances, Koottu performances and parai performances. The
practitioners of it don’t come seeking Krishna’s interventions. If you look at
the number of Gana singers in Tamil Nadu, you would come to know that many of
them are much more popular and influential than Krishna himself. But mind you;
they are dark skinned hip hoppers who do not articulate themselves in English.
Listen to the Gana music of Marana Gana Viji, Gana Sudhakar, Gana Michel and so
on, you would come to know that Krishna is a nobody to preach them and in a way
‘include’ them. The reality is, they just don’t want. But Krishna tries his
best. If you look at the Tamil film industry, the major fast numbers that have
become cult songs are taken from Gana styles and Parai style or Koottu style. Aalumma
Dolumma of Ajith, Anjele of Surya, Varuthapedathe Vaaliba Sangham of
Sivakarthikeyan, Mari of Danush and so on come directly from Gana base.
D.Imman, the new music sensation of Tamil film industry picks up his songs from
the street, I say.
(music director D Imman)
Krishna feels the heat of being rendered redundant by his
ilk with the arrival of Dalit music. In such situation he can do nothing but
join the subaltern force. In the early 20th century in Kerala there
was a social movement called ‘To make the Namboothiris human beings’, which
meant Making Brahmins into human beings. The Brahmins where ill treating their
women almost confining them into homes and rendering them as sex slaves. The
rebellious Brahmin youth wanted the things to change. So they made several
efforts to change the discrepancies in customs and rituals so that humanitarian
revolutions could be effected within the community. To certain extent they had
won it through theatre activities. What Krishna has to do today is to go back
to his Brahmin origin and try to change the thing there. That means, there is a
huge need for him to fight within the community than seeking allegiance of
Dalit musicians to push his idealistic views on inclusive music. Krishna tries
a very done to death rebellion; taking Karnatic music to sea shore villages and
into the public transport system. Of late he has also started singing the poems
of Perumal Murugan. I feel that he is just cashing in on the popularity of
Perumal Murugan’s literary life and the controversies around it. Tomorrow he
would sing a chapter from Arundhati Roy’s essays or novels. Or he would sing a
chapter from Das Capital in Karnatic style. But what difference would it make?
It remains in the Karnatic style. To change the content you need to change the
form also. Filling in content in a given form was the early modernist tradition
where the poets filled the poetic forms with erotic content. When the real
modernists and progressives came in, they facilitated changes in ‘form’ also.
Sad thing is Krishna could never become Gana Micheal. He can be T.M.Krishna
only. There is a latent book inside this book because someone from the other
end of the spectrum also should write a book on how they see Krishna’s Karnatic
music at slums and in buses. Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak asked, can the
subaltern speak. I say, of course, not only they can speak, they can sing too.
They would say, please, Krishna, mind your business.
