Finding voice to enrich the music

Singers in Indian classical music, especially Carnatic vocalists, have historically been prone to afflictions of the voice, sometimes creating serious problems for their careers, even ending them prematurely in a few cases. Overuse of the voice is often cited as the prime cause of damage to the vocal chords, as in the case of teachers of music among these performers. The wonderful musician Neyveli Santhanagopalan has been a case in point. There are also unfortunate examples of medical causes of loss of voice.

Another quite credible but not often accepted cause of voice problems among Carnatic vocalists is the reluctance to adopt voice training methods. Why do we need voice culture or training when we have our traditional abhyasa ganam or song exercises from the time of Purandara Dasa—ideal for the purpose—is the oft posed question when the subject of voice engineering is raised. How many musicians continue these exercises into their adult years would be a moot point.

One way of preserving the voice is to literally pay lip service to vocalisation, relying on amplification via the microphone, rather than the whole-body approach to singing where such parts as the diaphragm, torso and lungs come into play, rather than just the throat and mouth. Many Carnatic vocalists croon or sing nasally when they are not barking into the mike, with resonance a major casualty. Not only can you save the voice from strain this way, you can also create the illusion of sruti perfection, which is hard to achieve in full-throated singing without hard years of practice.

Like some popular musicians, I am tempted to use a cricketing allusion here, namely that it is much easier to bowl accurately if you do not aim for sheer pace or sharp spin, an easy route run-of-the mill bowlers tend to take.

The stories of vocalists who lose their voices temporarily or permanently can be tragic and traumatic. One famous story with a happy ending however was that of Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar who rediscovered his voice years after he lost it—thanks to divine intervention, he was convinced.

A more recent, if equally miraculous, instance of such good fortune has been that of the loss and subsequent recovery of the voice of Ananth Vaidyanathan, who while seeking expert help to restore his voice, trained to become a voice guru himself. He has since improved the singing voices of hundreds of young musicians, many of us know.

The current Chennai music season has been no exception to the general run of weak voices, especially among the men, though a refreshing contrast was provided by the vibrant young duo of the Trichur Brothers during their recent Music Academy concert. Quite apart from strong voices, the brothers also showed sensitivity to the nuances of raga music and pushed the envelope in manodharma quite adventurously. Listening to them that afternoon, especially while they did a ragam-thanam-pallavi in the raga Dwijavanti, the suspicion crossed the mind that they like to listen to Hindustani music. My conversations with some experts revealed certain reluctance among them to put their stamp of approval on their music. Mine is a dissenting vote.

Through the decades, there have been Carnatic vocalists who have been less fortunate than Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar. The names of Balaji Sankar and Rajkumar Bharathi come to mind as those who never made a comeback as vocalists, though Bharathi has reinvented himself as a hugely successful dance music composer.

In the midst of such gloom, I was very happy to see a glimmer of hope while listening to the Music Academy concert of Papanasam Ashok Ramani, who seems to have regained some of his long lost sruti suddham and gamaka aesthetics. It will be a great day if he returns to his winning ways of the 1980s.