What is common between pop icons, The Beatles and ace Carnatic musician, Sanjay Subrahmanyan? Nothing. Other than to classify both of them as musicians.
That said, my own musical journey has embraced both these artists and their respective art forms. Thus, it came to pass recently that I found myself booked to attend a morning Carnatic music concert by Sanjay at the tony Bangalore International Centre and late in the evening, shaking it up at a rollicking faux Beatles show at the packed open-air lawns of the storied Bangalore Club. Obviously, the imitation ‘Fab Four’ were not the actual mop-tops from Liverpool, two of them having shed their mortal coil, but four guys who tried to look and sing like John, Paul, George and Ringo.
In that sense, Sanjay was the undiluted genuine article, whereas the pretend Beatles gave us a fleeting taste of a sound that ruled the world in the heady, swinging '60s. As a lover of music across many categories, it has been my view that you need to be able to appreciate the different streams of music in separate, hermetically sealed boxes. They don’t mix, like oil and water. When I was enjoying Sanjay’s Kedara Gaula and Neelambari ragas at the morning concert, my mind could barely conceive that several hours later, I would be swaying with hundreds of others to The Beatles’ anthemic magnum opus, Let It Be.
It is almost as if one had acquired a dual personality. Not quite the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde of R L Stevenson’s Gothic novella fame, but possibly Jekyll I and Jekyll II, as the alter-ego here is also the ‘good guy’ enjoying good music, albeit from vastly varied disciplines.
There were other strange, but sweet, introspective contradictions that I experienced during both these concerts. At Sanjay’s performance at the BIC, I stepped out for a toilet break and, on a whim, decided to fork out a pretty penny for a rich, hot chocolate dunked with marshmallows. Unfailingly, at most Carnatic concert venues, the norm is a refreshing tumbler of filter coffee at throwaway prices. Contrastingly, at the Bangalore Club affair, every one was guzzling all forms of stimulating libation on offer. Chicken kababs and mutton rolls were the order of the day, and that was just the starters. I shocked my family brood and friends by ordering a rava dosa, which went down a treat. See what I mean by contradiction? Hot chocolate to keep me company with the soothing strains of a sumptuous Ananda Bhairavi, and a crisp onion rava dosa, to keep the adrenalin pumping to the driving beat of A Hard Day’s Night and
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. Who is to say which was right and which was ‘not done, old chap.’
Notwithstanding, I will shortly be off to Chennai to take in the December music season, a treat I missed over the past two pandemic years. There I will soak in the majesty of Todi and the lilting beauty of Mohanam. Carnatic musicians will rule the roost. As for The Beatles, that was over Yesterday. While in Chennai, Sanjay Subrahmanyan will be Here, There and Everywhere.