You won’t sing film songs, because they are impure,” is a scolding many a student of Carnatic music would have had to experience back in the ’80s and ’90s. Even the Yesudas masterpiece Pramadavanam, from His Highness Abdullah, set in the purest of pure Jog (almost the Carnatic raga Chala Nattai) was ‘tainted’ by the ‘impure’ art form of Cinema. As a kid, learning to play the violin when I was seven, the song that I enjoyed the most was SPB’s energetic rendition of Ilamai Idho Idho from Kamal Haasan’s Sakalakalaavallavan, and one has to learn an instrument to fully appreciate the pleasure of figuring out the notes to a popular song all by yourself.
But my guru did not approve of my stupendous feat. In fact, she threatened me with expulsion if I continued to ‘taint’ this ‘pure’ instrument called the violin with the notes of crass music like Ilayaraja’s. Back then, I did not have access to the Internet, otherwise I might have informed her that the violin itself underwent its own version of the agnipareeksha when it was introduced by Baluswamy Dikshitar in the late 19th century. Surely an instrument that had a history of playing crass 17th-century dance
music (Strauss’ waltzes, anyone?) would be
unsuitable for ‘pure’ Carnatic music?
Sarcasm aside, I am sure teachers of music have grown up and have a far greater tolerance for other genres of music as they teach kids today, kids, who listen to everything from Rahman to Rachmaninoff on their iPods. But I have always found this notion of ‘purity’ rather strange.
‘Pure’ rather too often tends to signify intolerance in our country. Separate cups for Dalits and elaborate rituals to keep the higher caste ‘pure’ and separate from the rest of the masses are not unheard of even today. So do people realise that when they express intolerance against something on the grounds that it is not pure enough, they are really channelling 3,000 years of casteism?
Perhaps I am taking this too far by accusing cranky old paattu maamis of being casteist when they subtly ask their students to not consider K J Yesudas to be a ‘pure Carnatic’ artiste. Back in the ’80s, many of the Academy elite preferred to use the musical equivalent of the word ‘outcaste’ — Light Music, to describe Yesudas.
But I am more interested really in why we never seem to learn the lesson that many of the the greatest works of artistry in the history of our world arose from ‘impurity’. From the time of Jazz, a genre that mixed impure African rhythms with pure Western music to the ethereal beauty of Raja Ravi Varma’s art, that blended the realism of Renaissance European painting styles with the grace and beauty of Indian myth, purity has always been on shaky ground. Like poorly contructed buildings in a seismic zone.
So the next time your Carnatic guru insists on ‘purity’, tell him or her to speak only in the pure, unadulterated Samyak Kritham (Sanskrit) because pretty much every other Indian language, including Thyagaraja’s own poetic Telugu, is technically ‘impure’.