Classical music wants you!

Hindustani classical singer Tara Kini is remembered by many of her students as an outstanding physics teacher.

Twenty years after their last physics class, they can recall the differences between inertia and momentum, mass and weight, current and voltage — all kept alive by Kini’s metaphors and vibrant classroom manner.

Her singing students’ memories are no less keen. Kini is a beautiful singer as well as gifted teacher. In the last two years, her reach has extended past the classroom and includes audiences in several cities around India.

The teacher in her has met the performer half-way to create a lesson called Sunaad (which means beautiful musical sound in Sanskrit).

First born out of school performances at the Mallya Aditi International School, Bangalore, Sunaad has grown under Kini and musical director Aditi Upadhyaya into a music collective that has a loyal following in Bangalore, and happy audiences in Mumbai, Goa and Ahmadabad.

Kini explains that the unique selling point of Sunaad is that it caters to a crowd that is not necessarily trained, such as housewives and college students.

“This is a group that comes together for the love of singing,” she says.

Indian classical music to the layperson is clearly accomplished, but often so abstruse that a listener can be driven to tears as a singer takes half an hour just to explore how two notes relate to one another.

But appreciation comes after understanding, and Kini is adept at using Sunaad’s themed shows with movement and storytelling to make this subtle and exacting art form accessible.

For example, the early Sunaad show Raag Katha, traced the history of the raga (a basic musical mode) from its most ancient form, the dhrupad, through the Sufi form qawwali, right up to Bollywood.

“Ragas are still in use in Bollywood by A.R. Rahman, so we sang two of his songs. We had a sutradhar [a raconteur] who wove all this together.”

These ideas may sound simple, but are, in fact, daring. Few people meddle with an art so rooted and ancient.
It is this inadvertent avant-garde that has led Kini and other Sunaad singers to Linz, Austria, where at the time of writing, they were to perform at the September 1 opening of the new media festival, Ars Electronica.

“The show will be in the square — the Hauptplatz. It is very typical of European squares — it has tram lines going through, cafeterias all around and it has a statue.”

The show itself was created with new-media artists Ashok Sukumar and Shaina Anand, and will mix the traditional with the technical.

Called Freedom to Sing, it uses this mix to explore the issue of how intellectual rights may protect individuals, but can harm the oral tradition as a whole.

The singers at Hauptplatz will use microphones, but not connected to a traditional public-address system of amplifiers and speakers.

Instead, the devices will transmit the singers’ voices using FM radio waves to boom boxes that will be carried by students weaving through the crowd.

Lighting up with the enthusiasm

“The sound will be painted through the square,” says Kini, her eyes lighting up with the enthusiasm that her students never forget.

“Also, we’ve got videos of five great classical artistes and they are playing on TV screens next to us. We are getting an input of the video in our ear and we are lip synching — so we are embodying the music. You hear it through us.”

To balance the technology, the show’s traditional element uses the songs of the great 15th century poet Kabir.

The opening song’s lyrics translate to “Fearless, formless, I sing”. Kini explains how apt this choice is: “The oral tradition of which Kabir is a very great part allows anybody to plug into the music — you can take it and make versions for yourself. There’s nothing like authentic Kabir, it’s the work of thousands of people over 500 years — but the main philosophy and the rough rhetoric with which he hits out at hypocrisy of any kind, has remained very intact."

“But the versions of his songs are so different — the dialects differ, the metaphors differ. There is a Kabir verse which talks about trains — there were no trains in Kabir’s time.”

Kini explains how this rich evolving art just may come to a stop in this century. “With the intervention of electronic media, you make a CD and you put a copyright chaap [stamp] on it, so nobody can make copies of it or play or sing it without your permission.” To emphasise this freedom from the past, the Sunaad singers will perform five different versions of the same Kabir song, translated as Subtle Cloth.

“This song would have been on the top 10 chart of Kabir,” says Kini with a laugh. “We have found 14 versions of it — all completely different. They talk about the body of the human being as a woven cloth, and some songs refer to the master dyer, who dyed this cloth in the colour of love. Each song has all kinds of play on colour, love, weaving, dyeing.”

The show sounds impressive, but one wonders whether Kini feels distanced from her rigorous training by this link with sound bites, videography and FM transmission.

“Not at all,” she says. “Take Sunaad. In a way, we are offering sound bites, but people listen, get inspired and more come. Some start training. Young people become interested, and this is the biggest pleasure.”

Winning young people over to the joys of classical music has always been a huge challenge for Kini.

“They feel it’s boring and that people just sit and do ‘aaaa’ and that it goes on forever. They feel there’s nothing zippy about it. But there isn’t enough exposure for them to even begin exploring it. When we’ve done shows, students have really enjoyed them and come to us saying, ‘We didn’t know classical was like that’.”

If young people are potentially harsh critics, imagine classical music purists and musicians. But the sounds of Sunaad have survived even the most trained ears.

“They have just loved it,” says Kini. “They feel is has been packaged very well. In fact, I’ve not had any criticism from classical music purists, there has only been appreciation.”

Their recognition of Sunaad has gone from praise to outright flattery.

“Leading musicians in the city have started similar programmes but with professional musicians — giving a commentary, having a theme, putting it together,” says Kini, beaming.

In spite of the success, Sunaad isn’t improvising big plans.

“The beauty of the group, I think, is the fact that we didn’t set out to make it. We didn’t say, ‘We’re now going to start a group’. It just happened. Hindustani music is a solo art. But with Sunaad, the point is, it’s a joy singing together.”

Tara Kini and Sunaad can be contacted at tara.kini@ gmail.com.