At one time, a talented youngster with a grounding in Classical music could find remunerative employment quite quickly as a member of a theatrical troupe. Some priestly, or courtly, lineages could also gain the patronage of Maharajas. Courtesans too employed musicians. At a later point, middle-class 'Sabhas' in the Cities created a concert circuit. Then the recording industry and the 'talkies' offered yet better prospects. Classical training meant that playback singers like Lata Mangeshkar or Yesudas could be extraordinarily prolific in many languages. They shared a musical grammar and vocabulary with accompanists which greatly enhanced the productivity of the industry. Some, like Lata's sister Asha Bhonsle were willing to experiment and collaborated on 'cross- over' projects.
However, Indian Classical Music- more particularly its Carnatic offshoot- has its limitations. It is often boring when it is not soporific. In the hands of the inept, it is ugly and stupid. Ilaiyaraaja and then A.R. Rahman liberated South Indians from a cacophonous cage. Both embraced and made original contributions to World Music. The Computer altered the way Music could be composed and taught. Meanwhile, Carnatic Music- which had produced some gems- became a stagnant pond with an ageing client base.
T.M Krishna, being from an affluent, super-elite, family, rose quickly in this increasingly irrelevant milieu. He is aware that his art form is dying. A.R Rahman can create good livelihoods for his working class proteges. The days are long gone when a Carnatic Musician can help a poor boy rise up.
T.M Krishna writes in 'Reshaping Art'-
When debating art and its role in society, we have to probe its presence in our schools.
TM went to an elite Krishnamurti School. It produces pseudo-intellectual gobshites.
Today, all educators expound the need for the arts in school education, and scientists are convinced that exposure and hands-on art work dramatically transforms learning.
Madam Montessori convinced Madrasis of this eighty years ago when she lived in India. But Indians already knew that it is better to have a short school day devoted to academic subjects with music and other such instruction being undertaken in the evenings. This has a lot to do with the Indian climate.
I am glad that after so many decades of compelled rote learning, schools (public and private) are finally changing tack.
India is very poor. Its public education system is a shambles. Still, using the computer for music and painting and so forth will take increasing hold because, if nothing else, it imparts useful skills. There is nothing 'educators' can do to prevent this.
As always, I am going to interject a ‘but’ into the equation.
Better his but then his butt crack.
Schools use the presence of art in their curriculum to benchmark themselves as places of unrestricted learning.
No they don't. A few schools which charge an arm and a leg cater to wealthy cretins. Naturally, 'Art' will feature strongly in their curriculum. Cretins grow restive if required to learn STEM subjects.
Many demand that music be included in the curriculum.
Most demand that their kids gain skills which make them job-ready.
But we never discuss what kind of art or music we want our children to learn.
Yes we do. We don't want them to paint pictures with their own feces. Nor do we want them to graduate in Death Metal with a gold star for biting the heads off bats.
We need to question the kind of art that schools propose to teach.
No we don't. The fact is what Schools can teach depends on the Supply of credentialized teachers.
It is understood that when we refer to music which helps children, it is the classical and its first cousins that matter.
No it isn't. We want out kids to be like A.R Rahman not this cretin. Teach them how to use Musical software. Let them master the keyboard and the sort of Music Software which will enable them to start earning money.
The rest are mere entertainers, though there are gradations even there.
What an elitist little prig it is to be sure!
Undoubtedly the irrelevant belongs to—and is created by— people we consider irrelevant.
TM is irrelevant. That is what the world has been trying to tell him for the last twenty years.
All those who remain hidden to society (such as manual scavengers) and have had no exposure to the classical or semi-classical are lesser human beings.
Manual scavengers may well be marvelous Carnatic singers. Sadly, they are more usefully employed.
Do we ever consider the possibility that music from a social address that is far removed from the classical can be as helpful to learning?
If my kid had musical talent, I'd want him to learnt the guitar and the keyboard and so on. He could be the next A.R Rahman. I would not want him to bother with Carnatic music- save as a joke. Hariharan is just fine for 'Iyengara Veetu Azhage'.
Even if the so-called folk music is brought into school, it is an out-of-classroom activity, whereas the classical is always a sit-down disciplined training.
Why? Because the thing has been credentialized. In other words, there is a supply side constraint.
This step-motherly treatment is a constant.
It arises from the Supply Side, it is not Demand driven.
Not too long ago, we wanted to conduct Paraiattam (in which the performers dance as they perform on the parai, a large, single-sided tambourine) classes at a liberal private school.
That sounds real noisy. How would you like it if your precious little one took up this instrument? The wonderful thing about Computer based Music is that the little shits can practice in silence.
We were told that no student chose this form and hence they would not be able to accommodate our suggestion. The premise that children from upper-class or caste backgrounds would voluntarily choose Paraiattam is laughable.
Small kids would be delighted to create a ruckus with this or any other very loud instrument. Indeed, they enjoy running around screaming their heads off without any musical instrument whatsoever.
They might not even be aware of its existence and, even if they are, it is unlikely that they would consider it worth their time. Like with all the mediations I have proposed, at times we have to just drop people into uncomfortable situations. They will struggle but emerge with altered self-knowledge…
I suggest we drop TM down a manhole into the sewer. He will emerge with altered self knowledge.
But I wish to ask one question.
Just one? Are you sure?
Does a child really carry with her the spirit of art into the learning of quadratic equations, human anatomy or the Indian Constitution?
No. What a silly question!
More importantly, does the art teacher?
Why the fuck would an art teacher want to 'carry the spirit of art' into the learning of maths or biology?
I have in my question qualified art with the word spirit.
No you haven't. You have babbled nonsense about 'the spirit of art'.
What does this mean and how does it change our perception of art itself?
Nothing. This is the word-salad of a cretin.
By using the word ‘spirit’ in this context I am trying to move past art making, and explore what art means in its more abstract, non-empirical sense.
Nothing. Either the work of art has a sensible expression or it isn't art. It may be philosophy, it may be some type of Yoga or Meditation. But it isn't Art.
What is it that art nourishes within our essence that we can hold and treasure?
An essence is something which exists in all possible worlds. If humans have an essence which art nourishes, it must be the case that all currently living human beings must find the same art form equally nourishing. Yet, such is not the case. Indeed, as we age, Music we enjoyed as adolescents hurts our ears. Thus, precisely because Art appeals to the the senses and the senses depend on accidents not essences, it follows that Art can't nourish an essence. Whether it is pleasing and commands a market is a wholly contingent matter.
Can we carry this idea into the classroom?
This isn't an idea. It is nonsense.
As teachers, can we enter the classroom with the intensity of immersing ourselves within the core of ‘x’ in math or Keynes’s economic theory or Macbeth?
What the fuck is this supposed to mean? In math, x is a variable. It has no 'core'. Keynes's economic theory has no canonical representation. There are hundreds of different 'Keynesian' Models of the Economy. Macbeth is a play. It is the function of every literary theory which claims to be comprehensive to discover a different 'core' in that work of art.
Does the teacher ‘lose herself’ within a word, idea or problem? Does the atmosphere in the classroom become charged by this emotional intensity? I am not asking for this to happen every time and it will not. In fact, it may happen only for a few minutes in a class. But this is impossible unless the teacher looks within herself and sees an artist.
This fucker is describing 'the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' or Stepan Verkhovensky in Doestoevsky's Demons. A teacher with histrionic personality disorder is bound to fuck up his students. What is required is what Vygotsky described- viz. the creation and expansion of a 'zone of proximal development'. Only the student matters. Expanding what she can achieve in the teacher's presence is the best predictor of the level she will eventually achieve.
We need the seeker within the teacher.
No. We need the teacher within the teacher not the fucking Drama Queen.
This will transform both the teacher and the student. Imagine a classroom where every student imbibes this spirit from the teacher without consciously realising it.
You will have a bunch of useless windbags who know nothing but pretend they are great sages. That is what Jeddu Krishnamurti's School did to TM.
Minds will be alive with learning.
They will be full of shit.
The child will then allow herself to be one with a word, a problem, the mountains or a political thought, at least for a passing moment.
in other words- a fucking Drama Queen.
The artistic attitude of the teacher will transform the method of learning.
Into shit.
This will happen not because the teacher seeks to make learning more fun, interesting or engaging. This will come from the teacher’s own discovery of beauty within learning that she shares.
But teachers are badly paid and, speaking generally, have shit for brains. The good ones help kids discover their potential. They foster a 'zone of proximal development'. They don't engage in Drama. Instead, they are a calm and reassuring presence. It is only many years later that successful people realize how much they owed to their Class Teacher. At the time, they took them for granted. That's as it should be. Kids are not meant to be an audience for grown ups with a histrionic personality disorder. They are meant to be kids. They will follow different vocations. It is pointless trying to brainwash them into thinking TM's shite isn't shite.
What about artistic abstraction?
In teaching an art, abstraction involves a specialist vocabulary and heuristic or algorithmic processes- a 'grammar' so to speak. There can be no further abstraction on top of that though some silly philosophers tried and failed miserably to shit higher than their arsehole in this context.
How can that happen in a classroom?
Classroom instruction has a 'theory' component. That is 'abstraction'.
We may not be creating art, but we can in the learning of anything create a link with life experience.
Why bother? Either the link arises of itself or it does not because life experience is not achievable by those who have been bored to death.
Can the teacher create an atmosphere where the Pythagoras theorem evokes within every individual the real feeling of life?
No. Don't be silly. The thing would be highly undesirable.
Does the sheer elegance of the Pythagoras theorem evoke a deep feeling from within, almost as if we touched a moist leaf in a forest?
This is cringe-worthy. 'A moist leaf in the forest' forsooth! Moist quim maybe. Moist leaf- not so much. A squirrel probably pissed on it.
Art experience does something else—it brings a pause to our lives.
Like sleeping.
Though art is about something happening, all the moving parts of art are grounded in a pause.
Like dreaming.
The moment the pause disappears, reflection disintegrates.
We wake up. The dream fades.
This pause is not a vacuity but a ripe void.
It is sleep.
In music, this manifests as aural silence;
and rushing out of the auditorium to relieve yourself or to get a jump on the traffic.
in dance, it is silence of movement;
No. It is stillness of the limbs followed by some bowing.
and in visual art, it is spatial silence.
No. An art gallery is spatial and generally silent. Perhaps this cretin means 'it is the blank canvass' or something of that sort.
This is the reason why time stands still in art.
In the visual arts, maybe. But Time is the ineluctable modality of Music and Poetry. It is a different matter that there may be a cathartic element to the performance. It may be that one is left with 'Shanti Rasa'. But then again we may be left with a feeling of empowerment and invigoration. Or we may just feel happy.
If we are to reflect upon this idea within the classroom context, can we see the possibility of creating this pause in learning?
Let the kiddies have a nap by all means.
This is not to be interpreted as creating an actual pause between concepts.
There is hiatus between concepts. That's why we don't have a grand unified theory of anything at all.
Can this nothingness, silence, stillness be created by the way teachers engage with an idea?
No. But bullshit can always be talked by bullshitters.
Can an idea simmer in the class, even hang in balance, allowing for its viewing and imbibing by everyone present?
No. Ideas are quickly grasped and used- if they are useful. What TM is describing is a pile of shit stinking up the place.
Can there be a pause from rushing for solutions, answers or resolution?
Of course. Everybody sleeps.
Today there are two kinds of issues in classrooms.
There are always two kinds of issues- those that matter and those which are bullshit.
In the mainstream schools, the examination is a single-point agenda and hence a pause is a liability.
Nonsense! Kids need to sleep and to play games and so forth.
In the alternative schools, making learning engaging, fun and interesting is so much at the top of their minds that multiple tools and techniques are constantly used.
Because you are teaching entitled little cretins.
Here too, the pause is the scapegoat.
No. It is bullshit.
Everything I have said can be extrapolated into any sphere of living
because it is bullshit
but, even as an artist, I struggle with living life while keeping intact this ‘spirit of art’.
You failed. The struggle was over long ago.
But as educators, if we can engage with ourselves as artists, we can perhaps transform the classroom.
Or you can just bullshit away for all you are worth- pretending to be 'woke' and antifa and not a boring twat rapidly approaching middle age.
Art skills have their space in a school and I am not undervaluing their necessity. But art experientially gifts us a window into something special that exists within us.
Sadly, this isn't true. Artists are tossers. They talk bollocks. Still, they may be usefully employed purveying 'special needs education' to special little flowers like themselves.
If we can draw into that ‘spirit’, education can become an artistic experience.
In other words, it will be useless. Still, that's cool if you have a Trust Fund.
When this happens, the art-social conversation that we have been engaging in becomes obvious to the students.
TM's 'art-social' conversation is about how his own type of music is upper class- though everybody else thinks it is shit. It may be that poor people are disadvantaged in acquiring training in that shit. But they don't want it. They want to be like Ilaiyaraaja or A.R. Rahman or Hariharan. So do the rest of us. True, if you have a horrible voice and zero charisma, you might be able to become a TM Krishna- but only if your family is loaded. Even then, what would be the point? If you try to get 'woke' and cause a stir, better educated people will laugh at you. If a kid gets into A.R Rahman's Conservatory and starts playing with his 'Sunshine Orchestra', his future is pretty much assured. Suppose he decides to settle in Shanghai or Lagos or Helsinki. He will be able to get sessions work and soon find a niche for himself. Nobody will discriminate against him just because his parents were very poor. But then, his family will no longer be poor. That's the only way to beat the class system or the caste system or whatever. Gain useful skills. Raise your productivity. Make the world your oyster. Don't channel the idiocy of Jeddu Krishnamurti whose brains were buggered out of his skull by Leadbeter. At least Jeddu decided he wasn't the Universal Messiah. TM, sadly, appears to be going in the other direction. He is a deeply silly man.
Murali Sivaramakrishnan- a guy with four Hindu Gods in his name- disagrees. He writes in the Hindu-
The upper-caste entitlement of certain classical art forms is directly derived from the unjustifiable division of human function along caste lines, he argues. While high art usually is equated with the generating of jnanam or knowledge, low-caste art forms, on the other hand, even if they acquire religious significance, are treated as mere forms of uzhaippu (labour).
The problem with this view is that TM, or Murali's people were not upper class. They were niggers ruled over by Whites for two hundred years. Whatever sense of 'entitlement' they may have felt- the vast majority of Tamils refused to concede any such thing to them. Indeed anti-Brahmin Parties have ruled the State for as long as TM has been alive. The fact is Brahmin priests earned very little money by performing rituals or imparting 'jnanam'. That is why their descendants grabbed any type of educational or vocational opportunity to get into a more remunerative line of work where they would be paid good wages for their 'uzhaippu'.
Why pretend, at this late hour, that Brahmins have power or hegemony? If some ruffian snatches off your 'poonal' or slaps the caste mark off your head, what will you do? Pronounce a Sanskrit curse upon him? No you will shuffle home with your tail between your legs.
As a practising musician, Krishna, who hails from a patriarchal Brahminical order,
He comes from a wealthy family. TTK was his great uncle.
appears to recognise the strangulations of his chosen vocation and almost in a state of frenzy proclaims: “Listening to a Karnatik concert is not mere exposure to the music; it is a complete Brahmin brainwashing package,” he says,
So what? Nobody save some senile cretins listen to that shite. But they have already been brainwashed. Anyway, they will die soon. So why worry about them?
adding, “the presentation of a Karnatik concert is a representation of Brahminical culture.
Then why did this cretin take it up as a profession? Why has he been brainwashing people all these years?
The modern structure of performance came into being in the early twentieth century and was propagated by vocalist Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar. Reasons attributed to this restructuring include reduced concert length, shift of concerts to urban proscenium stages and introduction of microphones. But, beyond these external needs, the structure was deeply influenced by the religious and moral values of the upper-caste Brahmin.”
So what? The DMK came to power. Anti-Brahminism has been all the rage for 50 years. Who gives a toss what 'brainwashing' this pathetic minority get up to?
A way of thinking that Jacques Derrida had drawn attention to in another context.
What context? Derrida was an Algerian Jew. He may have noticed that Jews have their own musical tradition. No doubt, this reflects their 'religious and moral values'. But Derrida did not write about this. God alone knows what Murali is getting at.
A lot of insightful observations permeate the slender book, comprising eight chapters, delightfully titled, ‘The Essence of Art’, ‘Art and Society’, ‘The Caging of Art’, ‘Caste in Music’, ‘Reshaping Art’, ‘Art and Identity’, ‘Art in the Classroom’, and ‘The Spirit of Art’.
The problem here is that TM is saying that the shite he practices isn't Art. It is brainwashing.
With a tremendous sense of honesty, the author writes at the end: “All through my life in art, I have drawn from recognizing my own inadequacies and struggled with culture, people, politics, identity, ownership, sharing, control, religion and space. I am certain that there is much in me and the outside that I do not know. But something within me impels me to continue trying, keep searching and trudging along this path without end.”
In other words, he knows he is on a path to nowhere but will keep trudging on like a donkey.
It is a sort of personal assay into the intricacies of art and its social responsibilities. In the light of what he has understood as an insider, Krishna observes that art is not an “accident,” neither is it a mistake. It is deliberate, conscious, and a willed human endeavour.
Brainwashing is deliberate and conscious- but it isn't Art.
Writing on art can usually take two broad directions: either zooming in on art objects or artistic creations per se or their process, or delving into the theory of artistic creations and their philosophical aesthetics.
Or it can consist of bullshit interspersed with stupid lies.
There is a large body of thought and analysis in each of these divisions by western as well as eastern thinkers. These need not be excluded as too demanding and academic stuff inaccessible to the common man and woman, and shelved in the dark corners of any library.
A way of thinking which Jacques Derrida has drawn attention to in another context- or if it wasn't Derrida then it must have been some other guy whom I pretend to have read.
There is indeed a general belief that writing on art is clouded in abstract and abstruse conceptualisations and too remote for the general public.
There is a universal belief that it is bullshit.
But aesthetics is intimately linked with our life, only that we may not be too aware of its presence.
Just as bullshit is intimately linked to your foot if you step in it.
When singers like Krishna analyse the social situation of their art, a process of amalgamation takes place: art is brought down from a pedestal.
and berated as 'brainwashing'.
We read in his book: “In Tamil, there is a word ‘poromboku’, which refers to the commons — that which is shared by every citizen. This includes lakes, rivers, grazing lands, marshlands, mangroves, shorelines and beaches. These are places that must be protected and preserved by the collective community and the arts can play a tremendous role in making this happen... We have to retrieve ‘poromboku’ culturally and reclaim the people’s rights to the commons.”
This is false. Tax was collectively levied on 'common' land. Waste land was untaxed. True, in ryotwari areas, 'poromboku' could be thought of as like the English 'Commons'- but, precisely for that reason, it could be Enclosed.
Title in land is all about enforcement- which is costly.
The earlier system had some collective taxes which correspond to enjoyment of a Commons. It was precisely this sort of Hohfeldian right which was undercut by British fiscal policy. It is only in this Century that Indian Courts and Legislature have started paying attention to the need for Community control over Common land- which previously vested in the Government, i.e. nobody at all. But, when it comes to land, forget about communities, even families get divided! It may be that Indian States will adopt State guaranteed titles- at least in urban areas. But by the time the thing is rolled out in the countryside rural depopulation will be in full swing. Already, about 83 per cent of farmers are net food purchasers. Only about 7 per cent are likely to remain commercially viable. Passing laws and setting up NGOs is merely a case of moving deck-chairs on the Titanic.
Anyway, this is complicated stuff which requires idiographic knowledge and an understanding of Law and Economics. TM can contribute nothing to the debate. He can merely virtue signal.
This is the insight that the singer has brought to bear on theoretical aesthetics, the clarion call to reintegrate the cultural spaces which have been segregated to the detriment of a unified aesthetic theory.
A theory of aesthetics can easily differentiate between something spontaneous and natural, which requires no special training, and something which is the product of long years of instruction. The 'Commons' is not something cultivated. It is wild. It is 'natural'. No human labor has been mingled with it- unless it has become a 'Club Good', in which case it is the people who provided that labor who have a Hohfeldian right to it. By contrast, land which has been extensively cultivated to bear a particular type of crop is not Common land. It belongs to somebody who has expended effort and resources on that land so as to have the right to dispose of its produce.
I suppose a shit theory of law could treat cultivated land the same as a wilderness. Similarly a shit type of theoretical aesthetics could treat a Musical Art which requires cultivation as being the same as Tinker's fart. This is a clarion call to reintegrate the sewer and the Concert Hall.
Krishna’s essay is an open invitation for the inquiring eye and ear,
and nose- after all a fart too is Art!
desiring to find a common ground for integrating cultural action in music and art. Probably this is extended into praxis by Krishna’s seeking those physical outer spaces as arenas for his performances.
Sewers have good acoustics- well, they might for all I know. I hope TM will give his next performance while swimming in shit.
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