The Music Season arrives with metronomic regularity around mid-November, works up a nice head of steam as it moves inexorably into December and reaches its apogee towards the latter half of the month as the Kalyanis and Bhairavis pour in torrents over Chennai’s music halls. As we ring in the New Year in January, music lovers experience a sense of anti-climactic desolation as they head home feeling bereft. So, what else is new? To keep music lovers cheerfully engaged, columnists are invited to think out of the box. And there’s the rub, as Hamlet said.
Over the years, every possible subject under the Sun concerning the Chennai music season has been covered — Sabha canteens and their lip-smacking menus, the idiosyncratic quirks and biases of music lovers, the predictable NRI wave swarming the sabhas in their Chicago Bulls and Taylor Swift outfits, newbies on the music scene, crystal ball gazing on future stars, while social media goes berserk with an overdose of video clips and promos. The announcement of the Sangita Kalanidhi awardee by The Music Academy is reason enough to fill several columns with interviews, intimate profiles and reactions.
I am, therefore, left scratching my head groping for stray stream-of-consciousness thoughts as they float into my brain. I am also painfully reminded of French Nobel Laureate André Gide’s pithy observation, ‘Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.’ Not being of the same cynical bent of mind as Monsieur Gide, I write in the hope that some of what I have to say sounds fresh.
Take, for instance, the drone. I refer to the tambura, not the intrusive drones we have become accustomed to at wedding receptions. The tambura is a majestic instrument that only calls upon a person to ceaselessly run his or her fingers over its four strings. It is tuned to the scale or sruti with which the main artiste is aligned. The vocalist may sometimes go off-scale (apaswaram) as the audience screws up its eyes in pain, but that is not the fault of the instrument. Occasionally, during a performance, the artiste will peremptorily grab the tambura from its designated player and make an elaborate fuss over ‘re-tuning’ it — akin to shooting the messenger. This sometimes ruins the tempo of the concert. And so, now, artistes use electronic, fail-proof gizmos (iTanpura, anyone?). They come in different shapes and sizes. Some artistes employ two tamburas — adding aural and optical appeal. It is challenging enough to tune one tambura to the performer’s scale, two seems ostentatious. Next time you see a Carnatic musician at the airport, wandering around with a compact, faux leather-cased satchel slung over his shoulder, it is not a laptop he is carrying, but a mini tambura. A far cry from Tyagaraja’s devotional tribute to his inseparable companion, cEkoni tambura from his monumental Thodi composition ‘Koluvamare gadA’.
One issue that unfailingly gets my goat is the plethora of brand promotion stalls that the sabhas contract for display at their corridors, and the unsightly, advertising banners festooned on the stage backdrop and compound walls. Expensive digital messages are equally an eyesore. As a former advertising professional, I fully appreciate that, in these straitened times, the additional revenue these corporate houses generate is not to be sneezed at. However, every time one steps out of the hall to proceed to the canteen or to answer nature’s call, one is accosted by wandering sales representatives pressing a brochure to your face to interest you in an upcoming block of flats, a newly launched mutual fund or a swank automotive brand offering a free test drive. Your patience is tested, your bladder sends alarm signals and the tani avartanam could conclude any minute. Lest I offend the percussion brigade, I hasten to add that I enjoy the brilliant rhythmic exchanges but this forced break, especially for geriatrics, is almost a time-honoured tradition. It is what it is. From there to the canteen is but a quick hop, step and jump.
My random perambulations have come full circle. The Ragam Tanam Pallavi awaits as I wend my way back to my seat.
Published – November 29, 2025 11:52 am IST
