ABHIK MUKHERJEE

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A Musician's Observation

Contributor : Abhik Mukherjee, 28 January, 2008

Music, to me, is not just a collection of notes or the art of combining vocal or instrumental sounds in a harmonious or expressive way nor  is it ‘a universal language’.
 
Music, is a flow of streams of notes, like a river which empties herself into infinity-- it should also survive the ‘test of time’. By ‘test of time’, I mean only that music which is immortal.
 
Citing a few examples—in Western Classical Music, most of the compositions of Mozart, Beethoven or Vivaldi, only to name a few, of the romantic period, have definitely survived the ‘test of time’ as they are enjoyed even today by music lovers.
 
Now, for Indian Classical Music, a performance depends on the artist’s calibre. Primarily being a solo performance, an artiste needs to have at least 500 concerts to his/her credit (of which 200 have to be memorable ones) to declare him/her as a legend and his/her music immortal.
 
For instance, I often hear my father saying, “Oh! It was 70s February at Mahajati sadan (Kolkata), what a moving alaap Khansaheb(Vilayat Khan) played in Marwa!!....What a treatment of Komal Rishabh(Re) and Tivra madhyam(ma).I still vividly remember all the movements of alaap and gatkari of that evening.” Now this is what a memorable concert is! Collection of many such masterpieces makes the artiste a legend and his art, thus survives the ‘test of time’.
 
This is where I find music very close to Fine Arts (painting, sculptures, sketches etc) and literature. Out of many works of Michelangelo, the statue of David or the painting of the Chappell ceiling, along with many others have been masterpieces. Now, for any artist, all works can never be masterpieces. The masterpieces evolve, emerge out of previous blunders—they always did. It’s an evolution. So, the continuity should be there, creation should continue, or else we would become stagnant.
 
Continuity, itself comes from the dynamic nature of art. If we continue to hold the grammatical aspects and ‘shastras’ or what our gurus taught us, we would invariably dig our own graves. We will not be able to create an identity of our own in our art form. A grammarian can never become a poet. Poetry, art and music always break the barriers of grammar. We have to come out of the rigid and stagnant ‘shastras’ whenever needed, to create a ‘signature work’ with a self identity.
 
By self identity, I mean one stroke or strumming of the instrument or one phrase sung by a vocal artist which will differentiate that artist from several others. The philosophical depth of the artist will be reflected from that single stroke. Then, he will start weaving the notes in his own pattern or style, with his own imagination—not creating for the sake of creation, but creating for his own peace. Then music becomes the call of the inner-self.
 
Music is an abstract art. Abstraction in art is ‘simplification of form’. All great music is generally very simple in nature, if you go by the note patterns. Much is left to the imagination of the audience; very much like great short stories, where the writer often leaves the conclusion to the imagination of the reader. An example—
78rpm’s Gramophone Company of India’s old collection of Ustad Enayat Khan’s sitar—Raga Bhairavi. In those three minutes, Enayat Khan Sahib played only one taan—a sapat taan at tremendous speed and clarity. The duration of that taan is hardly two seconds!! These ‘two seconds’ have actually got a place in the history of Indian Music!! Today, we play taans with so much complication and do so much jugglery with our music, but honestly speaking, we can never match that sapat he played in the 1930s—an ultimate example of abstraction. That single taan, not only bore his signature with a force that broke the rigid barriers of the ‘shastras’, but at the same time the simplicity of the taan reminds us of the difference between art and exhibition. The success of art lies in the quality and the success of an exhibition is in the quantity.
 
“Those organs which guide an animal are under man’s guidance and control” said Goethe; and an artist is the ultimate controller. With his sense, he observes and hears so many things, but for creation he selects only a very few of them and the rest are stored in the storehouse of his mind, to be used only when needed. Now, who will decide what to choose and what not to choose? It is the inner call of the artist, either at a conscious or subconscious level.
 
Any sound within the audible range, can reach human ears within a few seconds, but from the ears to strike the brain, the same sound has to cover a distance of thousand miles and from the brain to the heart the distance is of some hundred light years! Only that music survives which is played from the heart. Here the artiste and his sitar (consider ‘sitar’ as a mere medium of his expression) become one. Then the artiste feels like a mere pebble amidst a stream of notes. He is doing nothing, creating nothing new, but just picking up phrases of notes and giving it to the audience. This is where ‘Karma Yoga’ and ‘Gyana Yoga’ merge into the ‘Bhakti Yoga’ in spiritual terminology.
 
‘Karma Yoga’ is the artist and the sitar, his training and experience constitute the ‘Gyana Yoga’ which finally merge into the ‘Bhakti Yoga’—a feeling like the pebble in a stream. This feeling of both oneness and separation is nothing but the first stepping stone to ’Vishishtadvaita’ or ‘Qualified Non-dualism’ theory as put forward by Ramanuja (11th century A.D.).
 
From this point of time, the artist starts becoming humble. His thinking process, way of living becomes simpler from within. He talks less about music, as he knows the depth of it, his knowledge and logic surrenders to the unlimited music that is going on in the universe. He listens to each and every tune with the eagerness of a child, praises of his art by admirers have little or no impact on him, because he is not playing to be praised—he is just giving away the unlimited music which is flowing in his heart.
 
Here my pen stops to think whether to continue or give up. Because, each day in the morning when I tune my sitar, I realize that I know nothing and the vast ocean of music lies ahead of me. I have remained the same child who took sitar 21 years ago. Each day my concept is changing; what I know today, believe today, will be proved wrong tomorrow by myself or some other people. Inside my inner self a continuous game of creation and destruction is going on and I am just a helpless observer. Above all, now I know, I have made a fool of myself by writing this article; if asked again “ what is music?” my answer would sound similar to that of the confused father in the famous Harry Belafonte number:
 
“Man–pee-aba, woman-pee-aba,
Lilly root, golyroot, belly root,
Uggh! And the famous Granny
Scratch! Scratch!”