MMM – Melancholy Musings from the Media
The December Music Season is on its way out. Or put another way on its last legs. Or in terminal decline. Or is moribund. The Man from Madras Musings is not saying all this. He is speaking of a certain section of our media world which seems to take ghoulish delight in saying that the world of Carnatic Music is finished for good. And it draws a ready nod of delight from a section of the reading public which no doubt opens the newspapers each morning only to read the obituary column. Thereafter it is merely a question of locating the online link to the article decrying the music season and forwarding it to everyone else. Very often the others are sending it back to the same people and so a lot of clogging happens on the Internet highway.
Come January, these articles will be forgotten, until the next December that is, when the same writers will retrieve the same stuff from the mothballs and get the same story re-published. And so it has been for 97 years.
Of jeremiads and jibes
Ask any of these people as to what solution they have for arresting the decline and they will be flummoxed. Their only idea is to keep re-iterating the problem in a manner that is described as ad nauseum. Their job is chiefly composing jeremiads. Now, why is MMM so irritated with this lot? Mainly because many of these negative tracts get forwarded to him. As some of you regulars are aware, come December, MMM becomes the Man of Musical Musings and he wanders around some of his favourite locations, listening to music here, exchanging gossip there and eating snacks at a canteen somewhere else. And he enjoys it all. Yes, he is aware that the art has a few serious challenges facing it and he does his bit to mitigate some of the issues, but he does not go around pulling long faces and crying doomsday.
The curious case of the Music world
Pondering over this, MMM has come to the conclusion that there must be something seriously wrong with the psyche of such people. In any other community receiving a Creative City tag from UNESCO would have been a matter of rejoicing or at worst a quiet acceptance of it. Chennai’s Carnatic Music world seems to be at its apologist best while talking of this.
Firstly there will be a group that will cry itself hoarse as to why the city does not deserve it. The next is a smaller lot that will be at pains to explain that music here is not only Carnatic music but lots of other forms as well (now who said that was not so?). A third lot will decry that this art is elitist without even bothering to go into the reasons why it is perceived to be so. And then you have this naysaying group that forever laments the decline and fall of the art form. If MMM were in UNESCO’s place he would withdraw the recognition at once. At least that way some these people will be happy.
Overcoming Cassandras in Carnatic Music
That said, the art form, like so many others, is faced with an onslaught of challenges. The chief among these is the question of how to get audiences to pay. At present most artistes and a large chunk of the audience seems to imagine that Carnatic Music is funded by some cloud solution to borrow a tech term. It is at present the freebie to end all freebies with everyone, performers and audiences included, live happily in a Lala land of YouTube links.
The sooner they get out of that world of hits (and no revenues) and begin focusing on real life problems of ticket sales, royalties and artiste remuneration the better. And it will help if the Cassandras can give ideas instead of just lamenting.
Our recent article on the subject in ‘Madras Musings’ can be read here
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