Carnatic Music is Eternal but it is worthless in the wrong hands.Let all Carnatic Music lovers share this and raise their voice for this cruel injustice.The plight of the genuine artist,especially those who have taken up music as their profession,is a serious issue.It is saddening that in spite of their prowess they have been saddened in their profession due to various factors.Fortunately in Kerala the Carnatic musicians are largely encouraged by a huge gatherings in their concerts and by paying reasonably good remunerations.However,like all the other areas,the field of Music is also dangerously infested by money mongers,who donning the garb of brokers importing musicians from Tamilnadu and arrange venues for them in our place of worship in festivals.The middlemen are the artists who even show the guts to accompany the musicians on stage apart from making secret agreements with them.This has to be borne silently by the singer to reciprocate for his help as he has no other choice.The brokers may be not necessarily be artists;they can even be any big shot for instance.When music becomes a commodity the loser is the music lover who is denied the chance to enjoy real music since honest artists refuse to bend their backbones before such gimmicks staking their God gifted talents. Next is the Government colleges are another music area which has turned out to be a mortuary of true music.The worthless theory-based syllabus and untalented teachers,innovation dreading authorities-these factors speed up the swan song of the future of music.The failure to produce a single talent bears testimony to my findings.Improvisation only in the title of the subjects,UGC demands that the teacher should master English students,the costly instruments and computers are resting in peace in glass coffins in the colleges.Populist genres like film songs,film music etc being taboo in the campus,those are also have become inaccessible for the students.As a result ,students graduating out of the colleges tun out to be unworthy for either music or the society. Yet another field is where music is sold is the TV reality shows.Here it is the channel which decides who is the best singer...so called the instant singer.The producer who increases channel rating by bolting the possibilities of the body demands from the participants something more than perfect imitation of the veteran singers.Added to this the greed of the parents whose vying with each other is a common scene in reality shows.The Malayalee audience now conditioned to the Mangleesh of the Jury has learnt to accept their verdicts unquestioningly,thereby easily gliding into the role of the Global citizen.Here too the future of music is at peril. The Tirupathi temple has always remained a spiritual sanctum for musicians lovers.It is heard that the program called Nadaneeranjanam which was a forum of true artists is also now maligned by greedy middle men.They pocket the reward given to the singers by offering them the instead a closer view of the deity which is otherwise virtually impossible due to the overwhelming crowd.The growing popularity of the programme has given greater opportunities for these miscreants to thrive.What if music dies in the process?or is that musicians are falling into self-dug traps? Media reviews are probably the only evidence to show that Carnatic music is still alive. However here too are dangerous trenches.It is shameful to see some musicians striving to find permanent spaces in the columns by inviting media men home for birthday celebrations[which often recur many times a year!]and win their favour. Lists of songs are often sent to the journalists who write reviews on them without taking pains to listen to the concert.they the unabashedly flatter the singer by inserting jargons like mellifluous soothingetc which make both parties happy.But is genuine music happy? The situation in the Guruvayur is all the more disastrous. The Chembai Music festival which began with the noble intention of commemorating the stalwart of Carnatic music, Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar and promoting unpolluted music is now become a place of pandemonium. This programme is now hegemonised by commercial interests and hence no longer a coveted platform for the gifted singers and music lovers.The finale of the programme has become such a cacophony, hearing which the Bhagavatar would rise and run for his life due to horror and shame.Needless to say true music is in its death throes and genuine musicians and music lovers its mourners.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 02:07:20 +0000
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