Classical is a hoax word, says T M Krishna

Power and privilege determine what is classical and what is not, says renowned musician-activist T M Krishna.

T M Krishna’s latest book, The Spirit of Enquiry: Notes of Dissent hit the stands on May 31. Not many musicians write, but the 45-year-old Karnatik vocalist from Chennai has been prolific in the world of letters. His writing covers not just music, but also a range of other subjects. His earlier books are Sebastian and Sons (2019), Reshaping Art (2018), and A Southern Music (2013).

Combining music and activism, Krishna has questioned several conventions in Karnatik music and provoked animated public debates. Excerpts from an interview

Congratulations on your new book, The Spirit of Enquiry. It comes exactly one year after Sebastian and Sons, which is about mridangam makers. So how did this book come about?

I have been writing columns in many publications. And my publisher suggested that we bring some of them together, curate it to tell the story of an individual’s thought process, perceptions, changes and nuances. Sometimes I disagree with what I have said in the past. We chose 50-odd pieces.

What prompted this title?

Well, you know, I think the word ‘enquiry’ has been with me for a long time, both ‘enquiry’ and ‘inquiry’. Sometimes you think of it as being something that is internal, personal. This book tries to say that the spirit of enquiry has to be this conversation between the outer and the inner, whether it is politics, art, or thinking about people. It is not isolated intellectualisation that you do for yourself or in yourself with no connection with the outer, with society.

One of the questions you ask yourself is how to define classicism. You have been redefining many things, collaborating with musicians other classical musicians had never interacted with. For example, you have recorded a jugalbandi with a Kaleeshabi Mahaboob, a woman nadaswaram player, playing ‘Jagadoddharana’. Your essay says classicism needs to be rid of its cobwebs. How would you define classicism?

I think it’s a hoax word! I don’t think the word actually has any aesthetic meaning. See, classical, non-classical, folk are all categorisations, and human beings love categories. That’s how we seem to understand the world. Maybe that is one of our fundamental problems. But beyond the philosophical struggle, what does it mean when we say something is classical? I think that’s the question we should ask ourselves aesthetically, and in one of my essays, which is actually a transcript of a talk, I break down every one of those aspects that we think makes something classical, from training to intellectualism to ideas of sophistication. You know all these words come in… ancestry and antiquity. If you look at them carefully, there is nothing aesthetically defining the classical. It is ultimately a power group that decides what is classical and what is not.

Depending on which is the power group, they tag an art form associated with them. An interesting part is that it also influences the way you hear, the way you see. So the classical sound becomes something you identify with, you aspire to. So it is a complex web. And I don’t think the word ‘classical’ really has any aesthetic potency.

What I would say is that every art form, within its own aesthetic body, its own intention and structural sphere, has ideas of rigour, sophistication and nuance. Now to compare x with y is fundamentally flawed, because x and y are never equal in societal placement. So we are actually comparing something that is unequal, right? The moment you do that, your senses indulge in hierarchical perception. So if you come from a classical world, your visual, cultural perception, everything changes and you are looking at everything with that lens. Can we give up that lens and enter another medium? Then we may find that the words ‘classical’ and ‘folk’ need to be disturbed. I try my best not to use the word ‘classical’ unless I have to explain something to somebody. Otherwise, I just call the art form by its name, period.

An interesting passage in your book talks about our nostalgia for film songs, and what we consider classics in film music. You make the point that this is not just nostalgia — the songs from our youth, when we felt rebellious or romantic, that makes them classics. We choose songs going back to the ragas, or what we consider classical. For example, you say, Kolaveri will never be considered a classic.

Exactly. So it is intriguing, right? It is a sociological object, but in public imagination it doesn’t become a classic, like a melody. And we say ‘Oh the melodies of those days!’. What do we mean by that? If you dig deeper, you find that this notion of what is classic or what transcends generations leans towards sounds that are close to the world of classical ragas. But that is also changing. And why is it changing? Let’s think about that. I speak for Tamil cinema — I think Hindi cinema has a long way to go. If you look at Tamil cinema, you do find that the people making films are coming from a larger spectrum of society, there is a larger assertion of Dalit identity. Now, that also impacts the sound of the cinema, the music of the cinema. The moment that starts happening, this notion of what is precious in the past will also start turning on its head. That’s very important.

In the last section of your book, titled A Savage Inequality, you talk about caste and discrimination. And elsewhere, you ask a question, ‘How do you separate the art from the artist?’ So how do you look at art created by Wagner, or someone named in a campaign like #MeToo?

How does one deal with this as a society when you have accusations of sexual harassment and different kinds of violence? Wagner reminds everybody of what happened to the Jews, and what do we do? There are two positions that people take. There’s one that says that such a person’s art must be completely dumped in the dustbin. That’s it, just forget it, wipe that person out. The other says that the art and the artist are separate beings. I find both problematic, and I think both need to be seen a little carefully. To me, the reality is, artists accused of sexual harassment or other violent acts have also created what we could call exquisite art. I believe we should disturb their exquisite art with their personality so that our experience of the art is disturbing. So, in the in-between of those positions, there is a reality check for us as a society. I must add a caveat that this answer is a philosophical observation and does not address survivors of such violence.

An essay talks about your reservations about Thyagaraja. What exactly bothers you? What are the three questions you might ask Thyagaraja, if you were to
meet him today?

Wow! I mean, in all his body of work, there are about five or six compositions that are troublesome in terms of their lyrical content, because there is caste and there is gender discrimination in them. I don’t expect him to have the modern progressive outlook that we expect today, but what we have done with Thyagaraja is fundamentally the problem. So you have positioned him as a semi-god, as a saint, and the community of Karnatik musicians take whatever he says as gospel. Therefore, there could not be another human being equal to him.

Now, the moment you do that, then everything he says has to be seen carefully. That’s my point. Secondly, let’s not forget that we are singing his compositions today. We are not singing them in 1822. We are singing them in 2021. So every time a song is sung, it comes alive in that moment. It doesn’t remain in Thyagaraja’s society, it is talking to larger groups of people today. So we have to reflect on our context. What can we do? If you are willing to celebrate some of the lyrics, even in today’s context, then you must be willing to be critical of some things he has said. It is about intellectual and artistic honesty. If I met him today, my question to him would be, ‘In your seeking of Rama, why didn’t you see the reality beyond your circle? Because if you have found Rama, shouldn’t you have seen it?’ The second is, what was your process of creating a new raga? It is because I have some reservations about it.

A section in your book is devoted to current affairs, and politics as it is unfolding. Broadly, how do you respond to what is unfolding in the world, and what is happening in India?

There are two things here, right. One is, we respond to a present situation, and we all need to respond in our own ways because the present situation is polarising and the environment of hatred has become central. We need to respond to keep it in check. At the same time, we also have to reflect on why we are here. I have a problem if you don’t do this, because this has not happened yesterday, or the day before. This has been brewing for a long, long time. I mean, the Babri Masjid demolition was one of the biggest moments in it. But even before that, we have to see that there has not really been healing and conversation among different people in this country. I think there is a failure of modernity in India. There is no point in declaring yourself a democratic republic, putting out a Constitution, and all that, unless you have the sensibility to understand what it means to be democratic, have conversations, differences or be secular.

We are a society of fiefdoms and clubs, a society that discriminates. Depending on where you are, your access, friends and social cluster is determined. So I think there is a lot of work to be done. And we have work for at least the next two decades. If you want to really undo what has happened now, and also not create a cycle, we can’t forget about today and go back to how we were, because how we were was wrong, and that’s why we are here today.

If Thyagaraja talks about scholarship and music in Mokshamu galada — ’does one with no knowledge of music have any hope of attaining moksha?’— Basava comes from a totally different perspective — Aanu olidante haaduve… ‘I sing as I please, because I mean no disrespect to you.’ There are these perspectives to music, these two perspectives to artistic expression… Who are the poets and musicians who might actually help us heal?

I say healing is important. But that healing will also have to be contested healing. Healing cannot be just about finding soothing things, it is also about finding things that challenge us. I want Perumal Murugan to challenge Dikshitar, Basava to challenge Thyagaraja. So I think the answer is both in the past and in the present. That’s very important. We also have this tendency to go back again and again to the past to even talk about healing. What about today? What about you and me? What about writers today? What about singers? What about compositions today, poets today? We can find healing in the present. We can find the language, the raga and the dance in the present. That interlocking between the past and the present is where we can find healing, going forward.

What do you think of the sounds in film music across the country? Do you see a new diversity? Or do you see a sameness? How has the soundscape changed?

In the Hindi film industry, honestly, I don’t see a huge change in its sound. I mean, I may have missed something. And if I missed it, I will stand corrected. I think sound changes only if there is a sociological churn. Otherwise the sameness continues. I don’t see a huge mix of people from different cultures really, really pushing forward in Hindi cinema as yet. It has been happening in Marathi cinema for some time now. It is happening in Tamil cinema. In these two film industries you can definitely hear it in the sound, and it is refreshing. It is refreshing because the stories being told are changing. The perspectives of the stories are changing. The people telling the stories, the narrators and how they see a certain situation, context or emotion is changing. The moment the angle of the camera changes, the sound has to change. So I think a lot of what may happen with the sound in the film industry depends on who is telling what story, and the moment that starts shifting, the sound will have to shift.

The Spirit of Enquiry: Notes of Dissent is published by Penguin.