Acquired Tastes

Living in a country where "new music" is produced every single week with the release of each new movie, it is more than easy to forget the true music of our beloved country lying hidden behind all this fluff (to put it incredibly lightly). What am I on about? No not the Indian Rock band scene, I'm actually talking about Indian classical music. Now I shall wait a bit while you adjust your jaw back in place as its no doubt fallen to the floor, but yes I do enjoy classical music, more importantly I have tremendous amounts of respect for Indian classical music. I especially enjoy the instrumental music that it has to offer, not that I'm undermining the vocalists in any way but its just the way I'm wired, I always tend to focus on instruments rather than vocals.

I had the pleasure of attending a wonderful concert by the great Pt. Hariprasad Chaurasia at NCBS, organised by the very admirable organization that is SPIC MACAY. It was a small affair at the quaint open air theatre at the National Center for Biological Sciences (NCBS) and the setting was to put it simply, beautiful. But I'm actually not here to talk about the concert at all (which was great by the way) but rather to talk about Indian Classical music itself.

I have had the great opporunity to learn about the intricacy's of western music thanks to the good folks at Nathaniel School of Music and that I must say has really helped me appreciate Indian classical music much more. You see music albeit an art has its fair share of rules. These rules, as I see it, are primarily meant to make the music more discernible to the average listener. The big jumps in notes, the placement of some notes over the others are all meant to make music more accessible to everybody.

Indian classical music on the other hand actually has a completely different set of rules, which are more focused on making music more grand, complex and intricate. But you see complexity and intricacy are great words but they do make the music harder to appreciate. Because you have to concentrate, pay attention to the minor changes in notes, the little vibrations and the like. And in this age of shorter and shorter attention spans its sad to see Indian classical music suffer. Which is why I appreciate organizations like SPIC MACAY who are trying to instill some of that attention back in us.

But to those of us who do pay attention, such kind of music does present a very rare quality which isn't seen often enough in music today. . . . Potency. The power to emote and move and to force those vibrations through your body is incredible in such music. Only this has the capability to move you to tears or instill awe in someone by the sheer level of complexity involved. In comparison you could say it is like fine wine, it is an acquired taste, it may not be for everyone but for those who get it is quite simply brilliant.

Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia was asked by members of the audience what his song was about and he simply replied that it was a prayer. It is a musical submission to God who he said, we might have missed it but, was in the audience. That to me is quite reassuring because in this age of remixes and Hip-Hop, to hear such genius, may be only God is worthy.