It is truly appreciable to observe that a number of young professionals and amateurs performing both dance and Carnatic music are drawn to the cultural arena with a view to exhibiting their talent before the audience. Certainly amazing, to see the crowding in every school, of students, eager for attaining proficiency, in the art, proves without a doubt, how much hold the classical arts have on our young minds.
It is also relevant to address now the question of the attraction of pop music and cinema tunes, have on the young minds. Has this, breaking into the ramparts of classical arts and begin to corrupt the tastes of younger groups? Though it is inevitable, such changes in taste of people, but yet, one constant factor remains, that dance and music have not lost their appeal to the hearts.
While on the subject, I wonder at times, is there any need for improving the capabilities, for greater devotion to the classical arts of music and dance? I have always found that a core of dissatisfaction exists when listening to performers, who often excel each other, in their expertise, more than, in drawing the audience by their exertion to fulfil and they should render for pleasing the soul not the intellect merely.
Many times, the artist try to show off their skills and adequacy in technical knowledge (kanaku), which impels them to indulge in niraval and swara prastharas, ultimately the soulful keerthanas of the great composers recede to the background and the scope of enjoyment of them to listeners, much reduced by this baneful practice of display of erudition. Sometimes, the same patterns in swara singing clog, the even flow of the Sahitya too, at times with insipid and lacking in imaginative pabulum.
I desire that the performers render the keerthanas of the great musical composers, eschewing unnecessary swara essays and Miraval, which could occasionally be employed, to add flavour and frill, to the musical structure.
Even in dance, mostly the dancer follows the language of the Sahitya and not the Bhava, with the result, it descends to a mere histrionic display. Still worse, is the fast emerging desire, among some of the foreign returned dancers, to improve the traditional system, with new fangled notions of choreography and presentation, that rarely preserve the pristine purity of the language of the gesture and movements.
On the whole, one wonders whence, this mad race among the artistes, to reach the goal of novelty and surprises end? We should realise that the soul of enjoyment virtually exists, when artistes and art lovers, both come together with the same experience. I wonder whether the uncontrolled expansion, in the field of performing, has regressive consequences, both to the art and its performers, since palpably, the latter cannot take the audience with them all the time.
Sometimes, the trend of modernity of remix particularly in dance when the sequencing and synchronisation, has no bearing on the intent of the composer, will disappear soon. Let not the modern trend invite our censure, though we may have our eclectic tastes.
(The writer is a well known music critic who has won awards both in India and abroad for propagation of classical arts and music)
