The Many Colours of Music

I haven't often asked myself this question of whether there is a pecking order in the musical landscape. However, I have, for many years, listened to music and appreciated all kinds of music. In recent years, I have taught myself a little bit of music too. Where does classical music fit into our lives and into this landscape? How are musical forms that are centuries old relevant to us now?

Now more than ever, the fusion of cultures and our rapid technological progress have made music more accessible than ever, easier to make and easier produce than ever before. Technology, economics, politics and sundry influences have shaped the musical forms we know today, and this applies to classical forms as well as modern musical forms. It isn't often that we look at the use of certain instruments, certain tones and certain rhythms as belonging to a certain time.
I have heard both sides of the argument — that good music is good music regardless of when or where it was made, and this is true, when you look at how these definitions of what is good music emerge. Music, like anything else is a study in social consensus. There are absolutes — the notes, the basic rhythms and the interplay of time, rhythm and melody are universal things in our musical forms. It is perhaps impossible to say how and when humans started making music or recognizing what they were producing as music, but it is certain that in recent centuries, we have made more music than ever before. Perhaps musical ability is a sign of higher intelligence, and perhaps other species also have the ability to understand certain rhythms and melodies. If the sundry mating calls of the animal kingdom are anything to go by, this is certainly the case.
These absolutes that appear distinct to the human ear — the two main components of music — rhythm and melody, fuse, in many forms of music, to produce the harmonies which we associate with most music these days. There are few purely melodic forms of music, Indian classical musical forms being among them. In all forms, however, the basic tenets are continually reinterpreted through the ages, and this is a very fundamental feature of musical refinement and evolution. If an analogy from the software industry works for you, musical forms are like a huge network of "open source" programs that have been continually developed over the years.
While this necessitates that there be no real definition of classicism, there is a flavor certain contemporaries associate with the classical forms of music. Perhaps classicism is paradoxically an idea that is both common to all periods of history, while the interpretation of what is classical in each historical era is different. I have seen people sneer at both Vanessa Mae's wonderful violin pieces as well as the late and eminent Carnatic classical violinist Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan, for defying the boundaries of what they called classicism. The question I have here is, "Who decides?" If we approached ten different contemporary classical performers at the highest level, they'd probably all have varying interpretations of what is "classical music". I suppose that this experiment would yield similar results with Indian classical and Western classical musicians and composers. I'm no expert, but I believe that too many contemporary Indian classical and fusion artists have been pushed away from the mainstream because their music didn't suit some influential people or their specific musical tastes.
Where does the listener fit into all this? Like a zillion others, I have been found guilty of being able to listen to and appreciate classical music of the Indian and Western varieties as well as listen to, say, fusion pieces by John McLaughlin and Shakti, Bollywood or Kollywood songs composed by A R Rahman or some other composer, a core classical rendering of a Tyagaraja or Muthuswami Deekshithar composition, by, say, D K Pattamal, and perhaps a metal classic like Iron Man by Black Sabbath to finish it off. Being thus musically peripatetic isn't so much a strained exercise in maintaining a diversty of tastes, by any means — it all starts with a curiosity for a different aesthetic, which attracts you as a new mall in the locality, or a new gadget does, and the form eventually draws you in if you like it. Then comes the curiosity to explore, compare and wonder how the same basic tenets appear in these diverse musical genres. If you get far enough, you find yourself participating in the music. Skipping between a core classical piece, such as Narayana Ninna Namava (a composition by the saint-poet Purandara Dasa in Kannada, from the 16^th century, set in the raga Shuddha Dhanyasi), one can move to more contemporary blues rock, like Dire Straits' The Man's Too Strong, or the heavy Black Sabbath riff from Nativity In Black. They're all set in the same basic pentatonic scale, and their different appeals stem from the different ways in which the same set of notes are combined or presented.
To bring in a vernacular instance from 1980s Tamil cinema, the strained relationship between a classicist musician father and a contemporary, musically inclined son is explored in Unnaal Mudiyum Thambi. Through drama, vitriol and choking sentimentality, this one flowing rendering of the Carnatic raga Kharaharapriya emerges. Rendered adeptly by Yesudas for the mature Gemini Ganesan's role as well as for the young, rebellious character played by Kamal Hassan, that sequence and the notes from that rendering are both etched in my memory. The sequence itself is rife with Kamal's character spouting wisdom and anti-classicistic rhetoric. However, the raga rendered there comprises the same basic set of notes that form the Dorian mode. The Dorian mode is very popular and is used in many songs, from Scarborough Fair, made popular by Simon and Garfunkel, or the folk classic Love Is Blue, popularized by Paul Mauriat to Eleanor Rigby by The Beatles, many songs by Carlos Santana, many songs by A R Rahman, Ilayaraja and other music directors of note. These are popular music, they are folk music and they are classical music, and they're all the same in their underlying structure of notes. It is hard for many to reconcile classicism (or equally, modernity) when confronted with this. We can borrow happily from something said a thousand and five hundred years ago or more, by one of India's eminents, Kalidasa. To paraphrase him, "It isn't maturity alone that makes everything better, neither is it because something is new that it should be considered better. It is wise to examine something's worth before passing a judgment, and it is foolish to blindly accept the opinions of others always". If you're still reading, I'd say, "Congratulations! You've managed to come across the a gem on rationality in Indian thought, in a generic essay on something as decidedly irrational as music!"
If all that doesn't convince you, take a look at the many heavy metal covers of popular Western Classical compositions. (YouTube and similar sites have undoubtedly become a showcase for talents who are able to meld the old and the new this way). To say little of them and to not point out individual instances, they illustrate that music is something universal, and that at it's core, it the same principles apply everywhere. What goes beyond the basics and interprets the same notes and rhythms for different cultures and languages, are the aesthetics and the imagination of a blues artist who melds "questions" and "answers" into melodies or a classical composer who stamps complex and incorrigibly interesting combinations of notes into our minds. If there's an unspoken message here, it is that we should all listen to music in greater diversity, and be open to more forms of music, because the mixing of musical forms, rhythms and genres undoubtedly fosters creativity to a greater extent. If you want to develop a specific form of music, there is no better way than to borrow. It is not my wish to cry foul over classicists, but only over people who have narrow interpretations of what is good music.
Frank Zappa, one of the weirdest and most colourful musicians ever to have performed anywhere in the past few decades, once said, "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture". We don't listen to something new and just mock it. I'm not defending Justin Bieber's marketing or social media bandwagon here, but you can't deny that he has more talent than a lot of people who listen to him. What's best about people who participate in the music they listen to, is that they take the essence of it, the best possible lesson from the song (in any way you can imagine) and try to make something that makes that piece better, or makes something else they have in their minds better. So, participate in music, be open to new interpretations and learn different styles, and do not be afraid of experimentation or the new, or the old or genres. Borrow musical ideas freely and mix musical ideas widely and express yourself. The tools to do so are there, they're inexpensive and there are millions of music lovers out there waiting to see what your mind is capable of.

The author, @techrsr on Twitter, is a manically musical techie with a propensity for obscure humour, who keeps busy and sane due to his day job.