Passion for Fusion

while listening to the album "Impressions" , i could not avoid pondering over the recent explosion of fusion albums ventured by carnatic musicians. the hindustani instrumentalists had taken the shastreeya sangeet abroad to the Western listerners long back and also performed jugalbandhis with Western performers. though carnatic music had been known to the Western world through individual performances by vocalists and instrumentalists, a joint performance or collaboration by carnatic musicians with western performers was not much in the game apart from one or two like L.Subramaniam.

then came 'Sangamam' of maharajapuram santhanam and m.s.viswanathan. the songs rendered were untainted carnatic krithis on an apt background of MSV's orchestral talents. needless to say, we have not heard anything like this before. when the fusion comes from two rich musical minds, the outcome is nothing but a masterpiece.

slowly and unconsiously, a craze for fusion music has taken root widely among carnatic musicians. this is rather a mania for trying hands on different things. but, there are subtle observations to be made regarding the so called fusion ventures of these carnatic performers:

1. while the albums are categorized under shastreeya sangeet, there is only a tinge of it. the orchestra or instrumental portion of the music does not mix well with the song. the composers need to remember that we have already heard illayaraja and have moved onto rehman's age.

2. there are either plenty of ideas conveyed in a single album, making it digressive,or none at all

3. most of the themes and the songs are repetitive and does not bring out the creative aspect of the musician.

4. many musicians are taking up music as their full time profession and they are compelled to compete in a highly competitive field. hence, they have to comeup with something new or atleast match their repertoire with that of the fellow musicians. their state is much like a sofware programmer who needs to keep adding new languages to his belt everyday.

the big-shot names and catchy phrases means these albums will sell for sure. to illustrate what i mean, have a look at the song titles of one such fusion album:

desert winds, impressions (sounded very much like the anchor music of "Colgate Sapthaswarangal" of sunTV), inner layers, maiden flight, rhythm of joy, thunder bolt, turning point, waves, winning streaks!!!!

let us observe what is happening at the cini front. should we strike a comparison between the songs in the movie "Morning ragas" and the song "kanda naal mudalai kaadal peruguthadi"(ragam: madhuvanti composer: s.chidambaram) in the movie "kanda naal mudalai", there is a marked difference between the two. in "morning ragas", the krithis are completely torn and twisted while in the second, the carnatic song is rendered in a traditional way with only a base guitar and drums just like "alaipayuthe kanna" (ragam: kanada composer: uthakadu venkata subbaiyar) in the movie "alaipayuthe". it is established that carnatic music can reach the common folks when it is rendered as such (the movie "sindhu bairavi" gave lotsa insights on this topic) from the very fact that 'morning ragas' was not well received among the audience. lesson: the fusion artists need to come up with new trends to add beauty, if at all, to the carnatic krithis and should not twist them crookedly.

while on this fusion talk, lets see what shankar mahadevan and hariharan-louis duo are upto. 'Rhydhun', 'Breathless', 'Colonial Cousins' are all instant hits. these men are coming up with a variety in their renditions as well as different sorts of music like folk, carnatic, hindustani, western all blended soothingly together. they sell their albums as light music and are doing more than justice while the carnatic fusion experiments turn out to be blasphemous.

one interesting and noticable aspect of fusion passion: where are the female participants??

there are also albums produced in pure carnatic tradition which sounds like fusion with western instruments on the first listening. "navarasa" by v.k.raman is a brilliant and beautiful collage of ragas expressing themselves. i am all ears to such well researched and rehearsed ventures.

to put all these observations in one line: everyone cannot be a master of everything.