The Indian ethosMy use of the term "mastery" thus far denotes an easily measurable technical capacity, as well as the somewhat less quantifiable manifestation of rasa. Though this is an area which is harder to define, I wish to discuss proficiency in terms of the "Indian ethos". I came across this term in Mukerjee's Indian Classical Music (1989), in the following quotation:
Several Western performers have shown considerable virtuosity and knowledge and hopefully after years of practice and remaining with Indian music they might share the Indian ethos to some degree (ibid. 137). What is this notion of "Indian ethos"? Gorn, Lutnes, Masud, Leake, and Chatterjee all had a similar and firm conception of this element. Gorn was most articulate, and intimated the following definition:
One of the distinctions about Indian music is this very elusive Indian ethos--Indian feeling: what it is that will make a native Indian listener respond intuitively to something...It's definitely a little more unusual than a Japanese playing Bach. It's a little different than that. I think it's a little more complex an issue because there's something about Indian music that's just drenched in the soil of India. Both Gorn and Menusan connect this "feeling" with the concept of "rasa". Whetstone connects this "feeling" with the term "bhakti", while my advisor, Pillay, uses the term "bhava". Perhaps it would be best, due to the multiplicities of meaning embedded in the term, if I didn't attempt to define it further than I already have. Instead, readers are encouraged to listen to the music and engage in their own dialogue with the culture, its intuitive aspects, and the term in question. Whatever semantic nuance one wishes to give the term "Indian ethos", the question remains: Are Americans in touch with it? Gorn cites the following experience:
I've played in certain situations, and people say to me,"Are you sure that you weren't born there? You must have been born there in a former life." They look for a justification--that you were connected to that soil. Lutnes recounts a similar experience:
The first time I played for Imrat Khan I was nervous as hell...Many things I played were wrong. He told me that. But one thing he said to me was: "At the same time, it's amazing. I can close my eyes and you sound more like you were born and raised in India than many of my students in India." So it's very possible that Westerners can develop [the "Indian ethos"] inside themselves. Not all of those I interviewed are so assured in their progress in this area. Masud speaks to this:
I'm not sure whether I will attain it. I think I have some of it, but I'm not certain to the degree to which I can go. Yes, I think it's possible. Leake takes this point further:
I would say, in all honesty, that there are times when I feel that I have that essence and there are times when I feel I couldn't be further from the truth. So it really depends on your practice and what level your practice is at and at what point you are in your life. We are dealing with a life, an organic thing. Even the great, great Indian musicians will all say that they have merely scratched the surface. So how can I say that I have the essence? I have a feeling that this is what I'll be doing all my life...but in terms of capturing this mysterious spark of Indianness, like I say, I have met people who have never been to India who are more Indian than some Indians. I find it interesting that both Leake and Imrat Khan have asserted that sometimes Americans seem "more Indian than some Indians". Imrat Khan might have been using the phrase as a compliment, to encourage the American student. What could it really mean for an American to be "more Indian than some Indians"? How can an Indian be less than perfectly Indian in expression? Perhaps the Americans becoming involved in the music have had less influence from film music and other Indian pop influences and thus learn from their guru, and subsequently articulate the "ethos" in a more classically pure mode than some of the Indian students are capable of. Is it even possible for a non-believing Hindu to express bhakti or, for example, the bhava of "mourning for Krishna", when such feelings might seem to lie outside the musician's cultural belief system or understanding? If such a depth of belief is "faked", what integrity does that performance have? These are two questions my advisor has asked me. No one seems to ask those questions of the many fine Muslim musicians who have expressed that bhava so beautifully over the many centuries that they have been a part of the Hindustani music culture in India. Perhaps a more academic answer comes to us from the Sanskritic aesthetic text of Abhinavagupta, the Locana, a source to which Burghardt referred me:
Again, it is a rash statement indeed to say that the extra-ordinary deeds of Rama do not win a sympathetic response from everybody. For minds are characterized by a great variety of latent impressions (vasana). As has been said: "Latent impressions are endless because desire is eternal." and "Though separated by birth, place and time, the latent impressions are uninterrupted because of the correspondence of impressions and memory" [i.e., though several lives intervene, impressions still give rise to the old reactions]...This perception in the form of aesthetic relishing is physically produced. (Ingalls 1990: 224) From this text of aesthetics I would conclude that the ability to both appreciate and create the bhavas are not only possible for the Westerner to attain, but is available from within the self, which is rooted in something deeper than culture--something eternal. Whether the articulation is of an Indian in India, a member of the Indian diaspora, or an American separated from India by many lives, the articulation has, by its metaphysical nature, aesthetic integrity which can not be denied. What if an American performer utilizes bhavas in performance in combinations that do not seem to add up to an Indian norm? This seems like a likely occurrence, especially if the American is not grounded in Hindustani culture, in its richness, and draws bhavas which reflect the American domain? Will the music still have aesthetic integrity? I believe that Anandavardhana spoke to this question in his Ninth Century treatise, Dhvanyaloka:
The varieties of the elements subordinate to this [rasa or the like] and the varieties within itself, when one imagines all their possible combinations with one another, are infinite. (Ingalls263) In this statement, I believe Anandavardhana has made clear that however one chooses to combine the many shades of rasa, one is still working within the confines of Hindustani aesthetics. But what of the specific cultural associations that accompany the bhavas for Indian musicians? Isn't that what makes the expression Indian? To such a question I would again answer from the Locana:
A poem's having efficacy (bhavakatva) to create rasas is nothing more than a poem's power of making the bhavas, etc., universal. Once a rasa has been thus realized, its enjoyment (bhoga) [is possible], an enjoyment which is different from the apprehensions derived from memory or direct experience and which takes the form of melting, expansion, and bliss that comes from realizing [one's identity] with the highest Brahman, for it consists in repose in the bliss which is the true nature of one's own self, a nature which is basically sattva but is intermingled with the diversity of rajas and tamas...Any instruction that poetry may furnish is incidental. (Ingalls 222) From this quote, especially the last sentence, it seems that the transmission and understanding of culturally specific events is incidental to the purpose of the realization ofrasa. Rather, primarily, rasa is a means of moving beyond instruction and towards realizing one's true self, with all its latent impressions, whatever they may be in their infinite variety. Thus, one need not become acculturated to appreciate rasa in the same way that one must, for instance, to appreciate most forms of humor--for rasa truly realized will touch something inside, if the listener is open enough to listen for it. An example of such unacculturated understanding can be seen in the case of Margolin's introduction to the music:
I remember one of the guys...[had] gotten a recording, an old album, on Angel...called "Three Ragas"...I'd never heard this before, and they were very apologetic...and could I forgive them, but they really wanted to listen and they knew that I would be bored stiff and not understanding of their music...They put on this record and I really don't know how to describe what happened...I went out to [the M.I.T. playing field] on this starry summer night and I just sat there all night--crying. I don't know why...The next day I took my entire paycheck that I had from my part-time job...and spent it all on Indian music. She had never heard Indian music before. All she knew about raga was from "perusing the back of a record jacket" (Margolin). Afterwards she had to spend many years learning to put such rasa into her voice, just as many Indians do. But she was affected right away, without any knowledge of the Indian culture. If the music didn't have an immediate cross-cultural effect, I believe that very few Westerners would wish to hear Indian music a second time, outside of academics. Whatever the nature and development of this area of mastery, the "Indian ethos" is not something that any ethnomusicologist can empirically derive from the music to examine separately. The development of deep grammar, however, can be so examined. One tool, as mentioned previously, in many Americans' learning experience and the search for the "deep grammar" of Hindustani classical music has been recording technology. Taping lessons allow for students and teachers to make the most of the short amount of time which they may spend in each others company. Recordings allow teachers to teach a large amount of material, knowing that the student will be able to refer to them at any time and not be subject to a faulty memory of a usually short lesson. Used correctly, recordings greatly benefit a process of transmission made difficult by the American lifestyle, in which a guru and a shishya can not usually sit for great amounts of time together over many years. Some musicians however, try to learn the music through the produced recordings of superstars. This can result in disaster for the deep grammar because the recording renders the raga the same every time, in a very Western classical sense of "note for note". Such musicians learn the "licks" or "riffs". This can result in direct copying of another musician's rendering. Burghardt noticed this phenomenon in a recording of another interviewee's playing. At first one should copy one's teacher note for note, but after a proper amount of time with a teacher, so many compositions will have been learned that the deep grammar will come out, an understanding that transcends the American practice of "note for note" copying towards the deeper understanding of raga structure and ethos. Diligent study to such an end is what allows musicians to render a raga in such a way that they can follow the strictest traditional rules yet produce wholly new music every time (Aashish Khan). Most Americans have simply not been training long enough to reach that level. Used improperly by musicians who lack that understanding, tapes work to the detriment of the music. Some other aspects of technology which affect the music culture here in America are: the systems of sound reinforcement available to the American performer, the quality and high prices of the instruments, and the physical effect of the climate on the instruments. Bhaskar Chandarvarkar, at a concert at Carleton in April 1985, also asserted that the climate had a very definite effect on him, specifically on his choice of ragas, some of which have traditionally been associated with seasons in India, for which there are no direct correspondences in America. At that time, Chandarvarkar also asserted that the current fixation on amplification is increasing interest in gayyaki playing, away from dhrupad. This assertion was independently also made by Chatterjee. An investigation of the detailed effects of these aspects of technology on the music culture is, however, beyond the scope of this study.
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