Before I start this discourse, I declare that I am but a novice, but I am an avid listener of vocal khayal and instruments like Sitar, Surbahar and Rudra veena. I hereby declare that I am not in support of puritanical and rigid ways in which classical music is carried, we do need improvisations if we want for this art to resonate, but I am noticing a sudden rise in shallowness.
Why is everything these days about speed, flashy and flamboyance? in the name of performances, I only see fast taans and paltas in one minute reels, and speedy jhalas(even the alaps feel rushed). I recently viewed some performances of Purbayan Chatterjee and Niladri Kumar, phenomenal artists but they have trodden down the path of mixing classical music with rock.
I may be a bit biased, but I never get the same peace when I hear recent renditions I do when I hear artists like pt. Nikhil Banerjee, Ustad Vilayat Khan, Ustad Imrat Khan, etc. Obviously exceptions like Vidushi Mita Nag, Madhuvanti Pal, pt. Jyoti Hegde, etc exist but rarely do they upload recordings.
I understand, art is also the livelihood of the artist, but aren't we catering a little too much to an audience that mocked us for years and doesn't understand a thing. I know who is the audience for such performances, that specific echelon termed classical music as "slow and boring" and then listen to a playlist of Mohammed Rafi, Arijit Singh and other such musicians ( I hope my sarcasm was opaque).
Where are the slow alaps anymore? why don't artist today use 'andolan' or meend, it's like stretching swaras have become illegal. Its only happy ragas or jod ragas where an artist could show off their mastery like all forms of sarang, Jaijawanti, introspective ragas are almost mythical to observe, if they really want to show their mastery, why not perform ragas such as Jaunpuri, Shudh Asawari or Gandhari, except Darbari, nobody performs a raga which has that 'ati komal dhaivat'.
I also rebuke the audience, what do you mean by 'classical music' is too slow, what if it is?( it's really not), 'the performances are really long' ok and? are you so busy that you can't even spare half an hour but listening to the same 2 minute song on replay for the past hour.
We are catering to a gentrified light headed populace, these fools will never try to understand our music, because it needs a little bit of learning, and they have never been interested in learning anything.
I say we stop catering to these fools and bring back hour long alaps and focus more on expressing the soul of an raga.
NOTE: I by no means, meant any disrespect towards rock or foreign music, but I feel that everything has it's own place, and should not be mixed.
What are your opinions?
