'I find Muthuswami Dikshitar's work very close to Bach's music'
Indian guitarist Prasanna talks Carnatic music, fusion and fugue-writing
Today’s post owes much to the Allemande of Bach’s D minor violin partita, whose expansively thoughtful tone always recalled that of the Indian classical music I grew up with. Bach’s music, more generally, I found to have many, scattered echoes of the latter genre (the Allemande of the G major French suite, the Aria of the Goldberg Variations, Contrapunctus 1….). I decided to go off and explore what had been done in the way of cross-pollinating Carnatic music (the South Indian classical tradition I’d grown up with) and Western Classical, and ask such experimental musicians about their experience with the two genres.
So here’s an interview I was lucky enough to do recently with one such pioneer of Carnatic music, Prasanna (known in the music world as Guitar Prasanna), a guitarist known for pushing the boundaries of the genre and integrating it with classical and popular Western music.
Me: Tell us a bit more about Carnatic music.
‘Carnatic music is song-based,’ he notes. ‘Much of the vocabulary is based on songs by various composers, like Thyagaraja, Shyama Shastri, Muthuswamy Dikshitar and several others … Carnatic music is also very popular as a form of instrumental music with several Indian instruments both melodic and rhythmic. While it’s song-based, there is also a very strong focus on improvisation. So, in a sense it’s a bit like classical Western music in terms of elaborate compositional structures and like jazz in terms of being a demanding improvisational art form.’
I note that for me, Carnatic has a regal, mature yet stirring aesthetic which reminds me of Baroque music. He agrees.
‘Yes, definitely. In fact, I find Muthuswami Dikshitar’s works very close to Bach’s music….. I think that has something to do with how both these types of music can sound detached… When you listen to Baroque music, especially the music of Bach, its emotion may look understated, unlike other simpler forms of accessible music. The level of complexity in the arrangement and the composition may be one reason for it.’ That is not, of course, to say it is an inaccessible genre. ‘Sometimes the immediacy of Carnatic music connects me with something like reggae… Sometimes the pure freedom of what I can do connects me with jazz.’ In fact, he later adds, a friend of his, Marc Rossi, wrote a piece for him called Jazz Impressions of a Kriti, for guitar and big band jazz ensemble.
I ask him about a still more impressive experiment of his- combining Carnatic music and fugue-writing. Given that Carnatic operates on a staggering number of raagas, or modes, and doesn’t use harmony in the conventional Western sense, how does he approach something like that? Did he follow standard fugue structures or bend fugue-writing rules? ‘Both,’ he says. ‘I take the idea of a subject and a countersubject… follow other fugue-writing structural principles but also express myself in newer ways harmonically and melodically by using Carnatic Ragas and rhythmic ideas. It's fine, it's the 21st century and all it takes is a willingness to experiment and explore. Interestingly, Illayaraja is prolific in connecting the worlds of Carnatic music and Classical Western music and has written some wonderful fugues which definitely inspired me to do compositions like that.’
What does he think of the recent changes in Carnatic music, which was historically (after about the 12th century) a relatively stable genre in contrast to Western classical? Only the modern age has ushered in fusions with genres including jazz and folk music, pioneered by film composers such as Ilayaraaja and AR Rahman. How does he see the future of Carnatic?
He points out that ‘the rigour that comes from learning Carnatic music or classical music, or jazz, all of these things… is still the foundation for, for creativity and exploration’. While he is a big proponent of fusing Carnatic music with various other forms of music, he equally sees the preservation of its traditions as likely and desirable. ‘Carnatic has its ‘own [traditional] language, which I play…. I still believe that the rigour that the classical traditions and all the traditions that we’ve talked about is a critical part of my work.’
Popularity-wise, he notes, Carnatic is gaining traction. ‘A lot of guitar players and other people from the jazz and rock world are more aware of this music now. I am happy to be doing my part in that. So yes, it is definitely growing. And my students have been doing an amazing job in terms of taking it further. It will be interesting to wait and see how Carnatic music will be received around the world in the next decade or so.’
To aid the cause, I’ve posted some links below for you to check out- one from Prasanna himself, one from veena virtuoso Jayanthi Kumaresh [the veena being a stringed instrument] and one from my grandfather’s favourite Carnatic singer, Maharajapuram Santhanam. Like any genre, of course, it might take a few listenings to get settled into it, but I urge you to persevere. As Prasanna said, it’s a majestic genre in its own right, but one you- potentially a musician- will find ripe for interplay with others.
