Regional differences in popularity of classical music

There have been lots of posts about this topic on SuCH, but none of the theories advanced here explain the observed facts to my full satisfaction. So I am starting a new thread for the very few people who are actually interested in this obscure topic.

The "observed facts" are that classical music is more popular in southern Indian states (Tamil Nadu in particular) than it is in northern Indian states (Uttar Pradesh in particular). There has been no dispute about this claim itself -- so let's take it as a given that there is such a difference in the popularity of classical music.

Two theories have been suggested to explain this difference: 1. UP is considerably poorer than TN. This means that the people of UP do not have the same level of spare time to devote to pursuits like classical music, as they are busy trying to procure the basic necessities of life for their families. 2. The people of UP conduct and attend grand kavi sammelans and mushairas (gatherings of poets), and prefer those over classical music.

Let's deal with theory 2 first. There are many problems with this theory. First poetry can be appreciated without attending a gathering of poets in person, just like classical music can be appreciated without attending concerts in person. So the comparison of "classical music appreciation" with "attending kavi sammelans" is flawed. Second, it is difficult to appreciate poetry without being literate, and UP has one of the country's worst literacy rates. So it is difficult to argue that a higher percentage of Uttar Pradeshis appreciate poetry than Tamils. Third, poetry is not really a substitute for music (or vice versa). Different people appreciate different forms of expression; music appeals more to some people while poetry appeals more to others. Without hard evidence, it is difficult to imagine that a whole population consumes poetry rather than music, while a different population prefers music over poetry.

Now, my problem with theory 1. There is no denying that UP is poorer than TN -- no matter which widely-accepted metric for poverty you use, UP fares substantially worse than TN. But does that in itself explain the difference in the status of classical music in those cultures? I am not convinced. Here is why: classical music in the south is patronized almost exclusively by the middle class and upper middle class people. There is also a historical caste affiliation involved; brahmins typically valued classical music more than people of other castes. Most of the famous names of the Carnatic tradition are / were either brahmin, or from the middle/upper class, or both. Brahmin families still have an automatic reverence for Carnatic music that is passed on from one generation to the next.

Carnatic classical music is not the entertainment of the masses, and never was; "folk music" is what the poor people listened to, patronized, and practiced. I therefore suspect the economic conditions of the peasantry had little to nothing to do with the flourishing of classical music in southern India. Classical music thrived in southern India first under the patronage of the various kings, and then after the brahmins became prosperous again by becoming the trusted collaborators and assistants of the British in southern India. The fact that the original patron-kings were Hindu meant that the compositions were devotional and became part of the religious tradition, not just art for art's sake. As keepers of the religious tradition, brahmins saw it as an integral part of their heritage and sought to preserve and transmit it. The fact that much of the Carnatic canon was composed in a relatively small area, concentrated around Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu, albeit by people speaking other southern Indian languages, helped create a deeper sense of association for that region's brahmins with that musical tradition.

Why does northern India then lack a similar base of patronage for classical music? Many of the factors that prevailed in the south did not exist in the north. The patrons of music in the north were Muslim kings. The gharanas were distributed across much of the region, and there was no real geographical center. The music did not become an explicit part of the religious tradition of the north, as it did in the south. The practitioners, from the very beginning, came from both Hindu and Muslim traditions, and it never really became associated with a particular caste or community that saw the music as part of its cultural identity. To put it another way, if UP brahmins had identified with Hindustani music the way TN brahmins do with Carnatic music, UP's relative poverty compared to TN would not have mattered much to the state of Hindustani music in UP today. To put it yet another way, if TN was just as poor today as UP is, Carnatic music would still have more patronage and prestige in TN than Hindustani music does in UP.

Finally, one last point on the popularity of music in general -- not just classical music. Northern India has many thriving folk music traditions, just like southern India does. In both cases, modern film music has appropriated the folk music tradition a lot more than it has classical music. This is because folk music is much more popular among the masses than classical music ever was or will be.

Right! In Andhra, there are "viplava kavulu", "Jaanapadaalu", etc. These days, on the TV they are reviving "Telangana folk music", etc. Now, people at large can listen to "traditional" themes like "esko baava sukkesko", "yEda nErchinAAvro ee suupu ee sOku", "raah raaaah raaaaaaaah naa maavaaaaaaah".......... If you ask the average guy on the street (brahmin or non)
who Purandara Das is, he will guess he is some dalit leader.

Didn't mean to take the discussion into a wrong direction (my previous post).

This is a serious topic and I hope Rashmun will make it into a 1000 post extravaganza (without knowing much about folk music in the south).

Bengal has a rich folk music tradition related to fishermen. Would be interesting to see info on folk music of Kerala.

I understand. But your instinctive disdain for folk music illustrates my point. Given the popularity of folk music and the limited reach and appeal of classical music, people who see classical music as their cultural inheritance generally have a well-developed disdain for popular music. There are always exceptions, but I think it is fair to say that most people who claim to like classical music have this unstated belief that it is superior in nature to folk music. This is more so with folks who don't know that much about music and haven't studied it, but their impression of the superior value is based on what they absorbed from their elders.

Thanks to the early lead brahmins took in western education and their consequent domination of modern institutions (media, higher education, literature, government) in the infancy of those institutions, that presumed superiority of classical music is also believed more or less by the general public, although they enjoy folk music more than classical music. I personally don't see "brochevarevarura" as intrinsically always superior music compared to "bandenaka bandi katti." Each of the forms has its own unique purpose, meaning and mood in which it can be enjoyed. One may have more documented history and a more complex formal structure, but that doesn't make it "better" music any more than Paradise Lost is a "better" work than the Harry Potter series.

Actually, I love jaanapadaalu. They are natural, straightforward and often address social issues.

In AP, the majority of people listen to movie music, lalitha sangeetham and jaanapadaalu (irrespective of caste). Only a tiny minority enjoy classical music. Incidentally, in the US, there was a similar debate when blacks started to generate new styles. Now, we recognize their great contribution to American music.

panini press wrote:There have been lots of posts about this topic on SuCH...

...but never one as boring as this.

good post PP. good morning JM. good morning VP -- HK.

Flimflam,
your mindless hatred blinds you from sensing an interesting discussion. May be too much time spent in bathroom with old playboy magazine jaded the few cells left in your head. Stop being such sour puss and live a little.

Pp,
In addition to the extremes of orthodox brahmin classical music and highly political viplava kavulu, there existed a middle path of hari katha, burra katha, and tolu bommalata. Music in these forms was related to classical music but by necessity of mass interaction modified to be easily understood and accepted. Many bhajans were simplified versions of classical music. UP may have similar middle paths.
maharastra and MP seem to have musical traditions like tanzavur iyers. Lata mangeshkar and such.

truthbetold wrote:Flimflam,
your mindless hatred blinds you from sensing an interesting discussion. May be too much time spent in bathroom with old playboy magazine jaded the few cells left in your head. Stop being such sour puss and live a little.

on being assaulted by a 1000-word treatise on the quantity of music heard in different regions of india, one word comes to mind: FAIL! moreover, behind that futile treatise must be a juvenile, iit-kgp boy with near-zero instinct for music.

PP -- your post completely ignores the contributions of dandapANi desikar a 20th century performer and also an important modern composer, madurai somu, sIrkAzhi govindarajan, the thevAram OthuvArs in saivite temples whose craft is properly considered by tamilians to be part of the carnatic music repository, and muslim nadaswaram vidwAns like sheikh chinna moulAnA. none of these people were or are brahmins. i am not denying the vanguard role played by brahmins in carnatic music, but carnatic music is hardly the estoeric brahminical craft that you portray it to be. this is largely a modern narrative in the bollywood and kollywood era. historically CM cut across class boundaries. in particular, in the mid twentieth century when there was distinct cleavage in carnatic music of musicians who wanted to perform exclusively in tamil versus folks who primarily wanted to sing thyagaraja and dikshitar's telugu and sanskrit compositions, the role of non-brahmin musicians became prominent. you seem blissfully unaware of this rich history. thankfully there are no prejudices at least amongst musicians on either side about language these days. malladi brothers seem equally at home singing annamayyA's krithis as they are singing papanAsam sivan or subramanya bharathi's krithis.

and to all this i might also add the central role played in the decades spanning 70-90 by ilayaraja, a dalit, who brought carnatic music to the masses in both TN and AP by weaving it skilfully into cinema music. i would put his understanding and internalization of carnatic music as equal to any frontline performer of any era.

truthbetold wrote:Flimflam,
your mindless hatred blinds you from sensing an interesting discussion. May be too much time spent in bathroom with old playboy magazine jaded the few cells left in your head. Stop being such sour puss and live a little.

It is not hatred. It is jealousy. The old dog is such a loser in real life that he needs to make himself feel better by putting down people online. I doubt anyone in real life would want his company.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:PP -- your post completely ignores the contributions of dandapANi desikar a 20th century performer and also an important modern composer, madurai somu, sIrkAzhi govindarajan, the thevAram OthuvArs in saivite temples whose craft is properly considered by tamilians to be part of the carnatic music repository, and muslim nadaswaram vidwAns like sheikh chinna moulAnA. none of these people were or are brahmins. i am not denying the vanguard role played by brahmins in carnatic music, but carnatic music is hardly the estoeric brahminical craft that you portray it to be. this is largely a modern narrative in the bollywood and kollywood era. historically CM cut across class boundaries. in particular, in the mid twentieth century when there was distinct cleavage in carnatic music of musicians who wanted to perform exclusively in tamil versus folks who primarily wanted to sing thyagaraja and dikshitar's telugu and sanskrit compositions, the role of non-brahmin musicians became prominent. you seem blissfully unaware of this rich history. thankfully there are no prejudices at least amongst musicians on either side about language these days. malladi brothers seem equally at home singing annamayyA's krithis as they are singing papanAsam sivan or subramanya bharathi's krithis.

and to all this i might also add the central role played in the decades spanning 70-90 by ilayaraja, a dalit, who brought carnatic music to the masses in both TN and AP by weaving it skilfully into cinema music. i would put his understanding and internalization of carnatic music as equal to any frontline performer of any era.

bassavana and mahadevi tried to make poetry, songs and music accessible to the casteless masses through their pourings, hitherto confined to the courts and brahmins (as did the bhakti movement proponent-counterparts in the north attempted but in the north everything got got subsumed by islam that followed soon after). so it is not correct to say that the carnatic music tradition was inclusive as you pathetically try to prove by your exceptions

Hellsangel wrote:

truthbetold wrote:Flimflam,
your mindless hatred blinds you from sensing an interesting discussion. May be too much time spent in bathroom with old playboy magazine jaded the few cells left in your head. Stop being such sour puss and live a little.

It is not hatred. It is jealousy. The old dog is such a loser in real life that he needs to make himself feel better by putting down people online. I doubt anyone in real life would want his company.

you are insensitive, apathetic, cruel and shallow. last, but not the least, you are irrelevant. die die links angel.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:i am not denying the vanguard role played by brahmins in carnatic music, but carnatic music is hardly the estoeric brahminical craft that you portray it to be.

I am not portraying Carnatic music as an esoteric brahminical craft at all. I am suggesting that the vanguard role played by brahmins in the development of this music means that its fortunes were not tied to the prosperity of the broader population. When and where the brahmins thrived, this music thrived.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:historically CM cut across class boundaries. in particular, in the mid twentieth century

Of course there were a number of contributions to CM from non-brahmin sources. But it would be a case of missing the forest for the trees to contest that Carnatic music, at least prior to the 20th century, was a mostly brahmin pursuit, with some exceptions as they always exist. And I suspect most of the non-brahmin exceptions who patronized this art and excelled at it were from middle class or upper middle class backgrounds. When an art form is patronized by the educated and prosperous classes (as most "classical" art is anywhere in the world), its fortunes do not tend to be dependent on how the masses are doing. That is why I am not convinced relative poverty explains the difference in the popularity of classical music between UP and TN.

Jeremiah Mburuburu wrote:

truthbetold wrote:Flimflam,
your mindless hatred blinds you from sensing an interesting discussion. May be too much time spent in bathroom with old playboy magazine jaded the few cells left in your head. Stop being such sour puss and live a little.

on being assaulted by a 1000-word treatise on the quantity of music heard in different regions of india, one word comes to mind: FAIL! moreover, behind that futile treatise must be a juvenile, iit-kgp boy with near-zero instinct for music.

I am sorry this topic bores you. When confronted with something that bores them on the internet, most people know how to deal with it.

panini press wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:i am not denying the vanguard role played by brahmins in carnatic music, but carnatic music is hardly the estoeric brahminical craft that you portray it to be.

I am not portraying Carnatic music as an esoteric brahminical craft at all. I am suggesting that the vanguard role played by brahmins in the development of this music means that its fortunes were not tied to the prosperity of the broader population. When and where the brahmins thrived, this music thrived.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:historically CM cut across class boundaries. in particular, in the mid twentieth century

Of course there were a number of contributions to CM from non-brahmin sources. But it would be a case of missing the forest for the trees to contest that Carnatic music, at least prior to the 20th century, was a mostly brahmin pursuit, with some exceptions as they always exist. And I suspect most of the non-brahmin exceptions who patronized this art and excelled at it were from middle class or upper middle class backgrounds. When an art form is patronized by the educated and prosperous classes (as most "classical" art is anywhere in the world), its fortunes do not tend to be dependent on how the masses are doing. That is why I am not convinced relative poverty explains the difference in the popularity of classical music between UP and TN.

to assert that brahmins did not exclusively dominate CM prior to the twentieth century is not missing the forest for the trees, but a case of stating the truth. i am not intimately aware of the history of CM in AP and karnataka besides my familiarity with thyagaraja, annamayya, and purandaradasa. however, my knowledge of the tamil history of carnatic music is deeper. would it surprise you to know that there is an entire caste known as isai veLLAlar (literally translated to music cultivators; known as isai veLLAla mudaliars today) who made their livelihood from carnatic music and dance? even as recently as the twentieth century, there is the family of brinda and muktha and their grandmother, vIna dhannammAl who came from this tradition. these were not just some odd one off performers but true giants who strode the CM scene like so many collosi. please google the names to find out more about them. in fact the isai veLLAlars had the market cornered on the entire nattuvanAr tradition in bharathanatyam. in fact the early history of bharathanatyam (a closely allied art form to CM) is entirely non-brahminical.

this is not just a case of stating exceptions, but an entire musical tradition that is distinctly non-brahminical. your portrayal of CM as primarily a brahminical art is flawed for two reasons -- it is only the recent history and more importantly it is incomplete. i am sure the temple OthuvArs and the isai veLLAlar folks would strongly disagree with your version of the history. i for one reject it. a parallel narrative consists of the fault lines that were only recently bridged (within the last 25 years) between the role of tamil on the one hand and telugu and sanskrit on the other in carnatic music. this gets more complicated when you weave in the dravidian movement and their antipathy towards tambrahms and the resultant rejection by tambrahm musicians of tamil compositions and composers for a brief period. there is much more to be said about this, but i don't have the time right now. maybe later tonight.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:this is not just a case of stating exceptions, but an entire musical tradition that is distinctly non-brahminical. your portrayal of CM as primarily a brahminical art is flawed for two reasons -- it is only the recent history and more importantly it is incomplete.

My purpose in this thread was not to recount the history of CM. My purpose was to understand the reasons for the differences in popularity that classical music enjoys in UP and TN. I don't mean to minimize the contributions of non-brahmins to the growth of CM. My point is not one about uniformity of origin or influence, but about where the majority of the audience and the majority of performers are drawn from.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:this gets more complicated when you weave in the dravidian movement and their antipathy towards tambrahms and the resultant rejection by tambrahm musicians of tamil compositions and composers for a brief period. there is much more to be said about this, but i don't have the time right now. maybe later tonight.

I was tempted to bring this up in my previous post but didn't because I didn't want to get this more muddled. But now that you did bring it up, here's what I think. The "cleavage" you spoke of earlier -- why did it occur? Uninformed as I am about the history of Tamil musical traditions, my hypothesis is that the portrayal of classical music as a superior form of art by brahmins may have played a small part in it. (I say small, because I think the language politics surrounding Tamil probably played a bigger part in some musicians eschewing non-Tamil compositions).

Max,
the explanation you provided about non brahmin groups playing a role in tn music traditions further lends credence to pp's theory. Even though you gave examples of non brahmin groups, those groups are small and similar in their thinking on music exclusivity. If we restate pp's hypothesis as a small groups of upper castes preserved CM you may run out of counter examples. In AP, traditional dance was kept alive by devadasi and high class prostitution along with a small sliver of brahmin families.
CM was to my limited knowledge never a widely understood or enjoyed form of art in tn. It is ok to recognize the contribution of tanjavur brahmins in preserving and enhancing CM. Take credit with pride.