With crisis after crisis in the home front, I don't think I will be able to sing this week or the next. So, instead of the "Raga a week" project, I am reposting one of my older articles that I wrote for mycarnatic.org. I have made some minor changes towards the end. I hope to see your comments and suggestions for this relevant topic at this time of the year.
From the beginning of the last century, Chennai has been considered the seat of Carnatic music. Musicians had to move to Chennai in order to advance their career and establish their presence. This influx of many musicians of very high calibre led to the creation of numerous sabhas or organizations that promoted music concerts. This created many ardent rasikas, which in turn led to further growth in the number of artists and sabhas.
Today, Carnatic music is global. There is growth in quality and quantity all over the world. There is increased interest among the youth, which is a great sign for the future of Carnatic music. Many states outside Tamilnadu, Such as Kerala, Andhra and Karnataka have top class musicians living there. There are serious and dedicated musicians in every continent now. They teach, perform and help the music grow wherever they are. Technology has enabled very efficient communication, and hence teaching, research, discussion, and learning through modern media. This has revolutionized the field of Carnatic music in the last ten years.
With these changes, I can't help thinking why it is truly necessary for a Carnatic musician to establish his or her presence in Chennai in order to advance in their careers or to gain recognition? One might say that if you want to be a star in Hollywood, you've got to move to LA, and there are no two ways about it. But something tells me that there is an inherent flaw in the current system of climbing up the concert ladder. Is there something that we can do to help today's talented but unknown musicians to gain access to this formidable system?
Here is my perception of how things work today. To gain an entry level slot to perform in Chennai, one has to have one or more of the following qualifications:
1) Live in Chennai and have access to sabha secretaries
2) Know the sabha secretary in person
3) Be recommended by a famous musician
4) Come from an influential family
Irrespective of the talent level, if one does not have the initial push from one of the above factors, one cannot even think of entering the system. Gaining entry alone is not sufficient. In order to prove your worth, you have to prove your merit repeatedly, for which many other factors come into play. You need one or more of the following in order to climb up, in addition to merit:
1) Make sure that you get slots year after year, which is not an easy process, since the number of participants is very high.
2) Ensure that you have accompanying artists of matching or higher merit.
3) Try to get better time slots every year so that your level in the system gets better.
4) Keep in constant touch with the sabha organizers, which is one of the most painful processes in building up one’s career.
5) Make sure you get noticed by newspaper reviewers. I am not sure of the basis upon which the reviewers select certain sabhas/artists to review. Getting consistently positive reviews by the same reviewer has worked wonders for some.
6) Get someone to do all of the above for you.
I would love to hear stories of successful artists who have come up without any of the above, getting noticed just by their sheer merit. I am not implying that there aren't any.
The very high volume of concerts packed into a single month renders it impossible for someone to notice a newcomer who is very highly qualified. There are three thousand concerts during the season alone, and attendance for most concerts is poor. It takes several years (five to ten) of patience and diligence to work through the process and get somewhere. This is probably eased to a certain extent by relocating to Chennai, which is not possible for all artists. This should also explain the fact that for each successful musician in Chennai today, there are several such talented musicians outside Chennai.
The other factor is the screening of merit. There is a pressing need for quality control and merit screening by sabhas to select the artists, to match them up with appropriate accompanying artists, and to assign the time slots. Some suggestions are:
1) Each sabha can come up with its own method of talent selection. Create a formal application process. The selection process must be transparent.
2) Applicants must be required to submit a recording of their performance, which must be screened by a qualified musician. Repeatedly assigning the same known musicians is the current format, which leads to hundreds of applications to be thrown in trash, without being given any consideration.
3) The sabha organizer/s must attend concerts. There are horror stories of musicians sitting in empty halls, ready to perform, and getting up at the end of their time slots without having presented a single item!
4) Have a method of getting feedback from audience and/or qualified musicians at the end of each concert, so that a decision can be made whether or not the artists can be promoted to a better time slot in the future.
5) Continue the screening process from scratch every year so that artists who were not selected earlier can improve, come back and get considered again.
6) Why not create an electronic medium (a "sabha app" ?) where upcoming musicians can post their work and this can be the uniform source of information for sabha secretaries for the selection process for various slots. With some of the newer "concert apps" that I have noticed this year, this process should not be so difficult to put in place by next ear.
7) Some musicians who have performed consistently well over the last five years are still waiting to gain entry into the higher slots, and are denied this, but some of the less experienced ones are getting ahead. This could also be eliminated by careful consideration of some uniform benchmarks.
If some methods of quality control are in place, the system would at least be fair, transparent, and accessible to the deserving artists and lead to further positive growth. There is still need for hard work, dedication and persistence, as in any art form, for anyone to be successful.
All this may sound idealistic, but if even some of the above steps are taken, Carnatic music is bound to benefit.
