In Carnatic music you can\u2019t just make musical sounding sounds. There are rules, axioms, as definite and immutable as mathematical laws and equations. And just as mathematical laws are \u2018apriori extant\u2019, so are the rules of laya and sruti. They are not invented, they are discovered; just like mathematical truths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEverything is number,\u201d said Pythagoras.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He found that simple fractions of wavelengths are in harmony; thus the notes of an octave. (Probably not the first or last person to discover this.) Halving the wavelength sounds the same note, an octave higher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is a basic truth, and it was discovered, just like the fact that shifting the \u2018sa\u2019 by one note changes one raga (for some ragas) into another (grahabedham). Or that there are 35 basic talas which can serve as the scaffolding for the sahitya. Or that there are 72 melakarta ragas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or the fact that the raga has an exact shape, a form as constant as the shape of a printed letter, even though it is only auditory, abstract. And manodharma is always true to this raga swarupa, even as the musician creates new phrases extempore. No, not creates but perceives. In all the infinite potentiality of sound, it is already there, the musician merely expresses it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is why manodharma is a process of revelation. It can possibly be a route to epiphany. I remember watching T M Krishna sing in a YouTube video, in which his eyebrows shoot up in pleased surprise at one of his own phrases. He was the singer, but he reacted like a listener, because he was not performing, he was discovering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One meaning of the word \u2018raga\u2019 is attraction, or that which you find pleasing. There are some sounds out of the infinity possible that you find pleasing. Just as there are some equations out of the infinity possible that are logical, \u2018make sense\u2019. (The literal meaning of manodharma is mind (mano) + natural order or \u2018rightness\u2019 (dharma). That which feels right?) Why this should be so, is a mystery, at least to me*. This is part of the ultimate mystery, an aspect of it, or a manifestation of it. To experience it completely (even if you cannot explain it), with deep insight, as you potentially could with a sublime musical phrase, could unravel the whole mystery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Walt Whitman said \u201call music is what awakes in you when you are reminded of it by the instruments. It is not the violins and the cornets\u2026nor the score of the baritone singer
It is nearer and further than they.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What awakes in you? According to Indian aesthetic theory, it is, at its most ideal, pure awareness itself. The theory of \u2018rasa\u2019 says that it goes beyond the personal, transcends taste (or vasanas) and \u201cidentifies aesthetic emotion (rasa) with that felt when the self perceives the Self.\u201d (Ananda Coomaraswamy in \u2018The Hindu View of Art\u2019 from the collection of essays The Dance<\/em> of Siva<\/em>. He quotes Vishvanatha\u2019s Sahitya Darpana:<\/em> \u201cIt (Rasasvadana, or the experience of rasa) is the very twin brother of mystic experience (Brahmasvadana svarupa) and the very life of it is lokottara (beyond the physical world) wonder.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n This aesthetic experience is independent of the theme (whether it is painful or pleasurable) or the quality of the art; It is experienced by one who is \u2018sahridaya\u2019: one with a harmonised heart, or with fine-tuned sensibilities. This, I surmise, is sensibility beyond the senses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And music perhaps is the aesthetic experience that works best as this \u201cpoint of departure to the absolute\u201d (Ananda Coomaraswamy) for \u201cit has no signification apart from itself\u201d (Alan Watts in This Is It<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The purpose of art is to lead you to the experience of rasa. And the larger purpose is to show that all life is experience of rasa. There is no other signification to it. Why should there be, when this is it? All of it? It is that simple, like a gooseberry in the palm of your hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n *This \u2018one (or few) that works, out of an infinity (or nearly uncountable number) of possibilities\u2019 is a common theme for anything to do with life, beginning with DNA \u2013 this molecule is the only one out of uncountable possibilities that can duplicate and reproduce itself efficiently (with minimal errors) in the real world (experimentally demonstrated by molecular biologists Stephen Freeland and Laurence Hurst).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In Carnatic music you can\u2019t just make musical sounding sounds. There are rules, axioms, as definite and immutable as mathematical laws and equations. And just as mathematical laws are \u2018apriori extant\u2019, so are the rules of laya and sruti. They are not invented, they are discovered; just like mathematical truths. \u201cEverything is number,\u201d said Pythagoras. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-speculations","post-preview"],"yoast_head":"\n