Arabic Music Performance in Boston

Boston College organized a free Arabic music concert on rainy Sunday night, April 15th, at Gasson Hall. Prof. Ann Lucas said the introductory remarks first in English and then in Arabic. She welcomed us with “أهلا و سهلا” and also wished that the program will continue in the future (في مستقبل) Many of the audiences also were Lebanese. I stood throughout the show because all the chairs were taken. It was my first time at such a formal Arabic music performance. Before my exposure to music of the same region was mostly dabke and zajal music.

The main show of the evening featured  Lebanese oud performer Charbel Rouhana. Before he went on stage, the ensemble and chorus performed Levantine folk songs featuring themes of love and scenes of nature in the first half. Children of the Center for Arabic Culture the opened the show with My Darlings Around me (حبايبنا حولي), conducted by Syrian lawyer and conductor Alma Riceh. This choir is the only children’s Arabic choir in Massachusetts. The remaining choruses were directed by Nizar Fares, a Beiruiti who holds a PhD in musicology. During certain intervals, the Qanun player also had his solo parts and the audience responded with loud applause.

from Wikipedia

Dr. Fares, who also plays the Oud and is a musician in his own right, praised Charbel Rouhana to have accomplished what he thought as excellence that required an average person at least four times the amount of effort. Rouhana took stage and played several more numbers of Levantine songs as well as Oud-centric musical arrangements for us. The later learned that the oud is an instrument 3500 years old and has heavily influenced the Spanish guitar. 

Gasson Hall April 15th; Picture found from website

I also attended an Oud performance in Beirut, where I sat very formally at first; but I soon realized that Oud could also be entertained for a dance party. The crowd in the bar rose to their feet and also made requests upon the performer. I later found out that Rouhana also performs Oud in jazz style.

In this case, at Boston College, it was modeled off of a European influenced understanding of a performance. I had read about Umm Kulthum’s rise in fame as well as her collaboration with old forms of performances. While she retained the formal Arabic language in her pronunciations, she also contended with the new arrival of film and dressed in European dresses. 

Umm Kulthum and her ensemble

The Lebanese dialect lyrics of this musical performance was transliterated and translated for us to follow. I could understand “moon” and “lover.” During the call and response sections, I also participated in the choruses. I noticed that the gender of the addressee is important in Arabic; God would be presented as a gender-specific figure in literature and poetry. In contrast, Indian Sufi music addresses God in gender-neutral terms.

After the last amusing song Qahwa (coffee), a nun from Lebanon presented an award to Boston College’s music department, commended this performance and also praised the ability for music to communicate through all cultures. She also looked forward to future performance exchanges in Boston. Rouhana also signed his book on Maqam for people who were interested in purchasing it. I would like to learn more about Arabic music theory in the future.

Methods and Religious Studies

More than two years ago, I presented a paper on the medicine Buddha in pre-Republican era China at my liberal arts college. Without the adequate tools, I could not present the significance of the combination of ritual and medicine beyond the realm of superstition. I read this following passage and had an a-ha moment about religious studies--

A second approach to the question of cultural difference starts from a different assumption, namely, that “real,” substantive, and “immiscible” cultural differences constitute an actually existing dimension of human experience that needs to be dealt with in our analyses. While some analysts have argued that rendering “untranslatable” cultural practices transparent within the hegemonic languages of Western academia amounts to an act of “epistemological violence,” others have argued for the ethical necessity of doing just that. While keenly sensitive to processes of historical transformation in the constitution of modern subjectivities, historian Dipesh Chakrabarty, for one, is unwilling to dismiss the existence of (and constitutive role played by) radically different life-worlds within modernity. Self-critically reflecting on his own previous research into the history of factory labor in Bengal, where laborers commonly invoked the agency of Hindu gods to facilitate a range of tasks at hand, Chakrabarty writes that “a secular subject like history faces certain problems in handling practices in which gods, spirits or the supernatural have agency in the world.” Chakrabarty’s solution to these problems is not to cease and desist from writing history, however; nor is it to abandon altogether the task of “rough translation” required to make differences intelligible in academic writing. The latter choice Chakrabarty refuses largely on ethical grounds: “It may be legitimately argued that the administration of justice by modern institutions requires us to imagine the world through the languages of the social sciences,” he reasons, since “one cannot argue with modern bureaucracies and other instruments of governmentality without recourse to the secular time and narratives of history and sociology” (72, 86). At the same time, Chakrabarty urges historians to acknowledge both the “finitude” of history’s secular outlook and the “scandalous” nature of “rough translations” required to render radical forms of cultural difference intelligible in social-scientific discourse (90).

This theoretical analysis by William Glover from Making Lahore Modern’s Introduction (p xvi-xvii) explains precisely the difficulty I faced when writing about Buddhism and medicinal practices in history. It is very difficult to comprehend the development of medicine (and technology) other than a road of teleological progress. Without a broader understanding of medicinal practices at large at the period I was looking at, one can only compare to then-Buddhist practices of medicine and now. This would undermine the credibility of Buddhist tradition of that particular time. If a doctoral and above level work in social science can only amount to “rough translation,” I had an even coarser translation at the time. Is writing religious studies academic papers from a historical viewpoint at the liberal arts level ever possible? (This question is a reflection of my frustration towards historical methods at present; I do not want to question the wonderful aptitudes that religious studies introduced to me two years ago.)

Another question, If one uses history and historicizes religion, how can religion occupy a distinct theoretical space than from culture? I had a conversation with a Buddhist monk recently at JNU. He has completed his MPhil and will start his doctorate soon. He has read extensively and is well-learned in Sanskrit; he plans to tackle Tibetan next. His English conversation skills were limited and we talked in Mandarin. He was easygoing but still assumed more authority in the conversation. We talked about Buddhism both as an academic subject as well as a subject that carries inherent truth that we accept while others may not accept (I am a Buddhist, but for length-sake I will not get into whether or not we should call it a “religion” in this post). I tread lightly when we started historicizing Buddhism, since it was my first time meeting him and he was senior to me--I had no idea if he would at one point abruptly object to the secular social science assumptions which I might impose on the discussion. He never did, but the testing-waters feeling of having social science discussions with people of a religious identity remained.

tomb of Jahangir in Lahore

Another similar challenge that faced Islamic historical writing in the 19th century, also presented by William Glover (p187-188)--

One of the earliest was Sayyid Ahmed Khan’s Asar-us-Sanadid (Manifestations of the Noblemen), an account of the city of Delhi composed in the Urdu language. Sayyid Khan first published his history in 1846, illustrating the book’s six hundred pages of text with more than a hundred lithograph prints. The book described Delhi’s historical palaces, shrines, and religious buildings and included a 250-page account of “cultural life” in the city that described the city’s fairs and festivals, bazaars, and places for community gathering. Shortly after the book’s initial publication, Sayyid Khan presented a copy to A. A. Roberts, Delhi’s district magistrate and collector. Roberts, in turn, presented the book to the Royal Asiatic Society in London. On the suggestion of a member of the society, Roberts undertook an English translation of the book that for unknown reasons was never completed. In the preface to a later edition, however, Sayyid Khan claimed that the process of translating the work into English brought out “defects” in the original.

...

Put another way, the broader significance of the details recorded by Sayyid Khan—a significance that his British readership found missing— needed little elaboration for an Indian readership, since the mode of description he used established the context automatically. That context drew on an earlier tradition of IndoIslamic historical writing, in particular a mode Christopher Bayly has described as “genealogical.” This historiographic tradition assumed that certain known families and individuals embodied innate moral and spiritual qualities and that these qualities could be invoked for a reader simply by reciting lines of descent. More importantly, perhaps, the qualities did not need to be specified: Listing the names was enough to invoke them.

Inequality in the Business of Surrogacy

Carvings of men and women on Jagdish Temple, Udaipur. Photo credits: Adrian

Last month, Dr. Sheela Saravanan gave an excellent colloquium talk based on her research of commercial surrogacy in Gujarat. She highlighted the economic and legal inequality in these transactions. For example, Indian surrogates are not even given the copy of the contract and have little knowledge of the legal guidelines, while US surrogates have a choice over closed or open contract and choose the closeness of the ongoing relationship between her and the intended parents. The participants of the colloquium asked great questions, such as the role of doctors. Doctors have a lot of power to conduct this business and there seemed to be minimal regulation; there is still no authoritative data on the number of surrogate births in India. A Mumbai doctor in the business once even replied to Saravanan’s persistent questioning, “We are doing a favor for the mothers.” Another question asked the caste background of the surrogate mothers. One of the clinics Saravanan researched had a book of surrogate profiles for the intended parents to browse. In that book, most of the intended parents ask about religion and usually wanted mothers to be of the same religion. Furthermore, if the surrogate mother was a Brahmin, then she could receive more money. If one is better looking then one would also have higher chances of being chosen from the book. Yet this process does not occur in the reverse: the surrogate would not choose the parents or sometimes not even the number of fetuses inserted in her body.

Inequality between the global north and south pervades medical tourism. Indian film Ship of Theseus poses bioethics questions in one of the segment where an illegal organ trader poached a poor Indian man one of his kidneys. The organ trader provided it to man who needed a new kidney in Europe who knew nothing about the source. Later two Indian good Samaritans traced down the European man and questioned him about this problem. The European man coughs up more money for the man who lost a kidney, yet one of the Indians saw this act as an easy way for the European man to buy out of his guilt. The segment ends with the good Samaritans bringing the Indian man the money but still feeling ambivalent regarding the nature of the trade. Surrogates who sign up for money in the global south also are susceptible to deceit. The 10-minute documentary Mothers Anonymous shows that surrogates who give birth to twins or triplets may not always receive the promised compensation and have few legal channels of dispute. Saravanan noted in her paper on surrogacy that “Asymmetries of individual capacity (knowledge, contacts and financial capability) lead to trust amongst actors. This trusting process results in experiences that can either be positive or potentially exploitative.”

But the starkest aspect related to surrogacy among the many forms of medical tourism is the gender aspect. Many kinds of medical tourism arguably can become more transparent and legally regulated for both parties, but the gender issue of surrogacy will still remain a stickler: the social contract has been conveniently neutralizing patriarchy in legalese, and the same may happen to surrogacy. Sarvanan writes,

In her book, The Social Contract, Carole Pateman critiques the social contract theory and asserts that patriarchal control prevails in the marriage contract, the prostitution contract, and the contract for surrogate motherhood. She claims surrogacy contracts are the means by which women’s reproductive capacities are dominated and patriarchy is upheld. In Feminist Morality, Virginia Held regards the social contract theory as inadequate in representing children and women and in capturing the meaningful moral relationship between people.

Surrogates may read, understand and sign a surrogacy contract, but the contract would not signify the same amount of shame and guilt as for a person to read, understand and sign a contract for trading in his or her kidney. Cultural baggage is attached to surrogacy in the South Asian context. While some think that being a surrogate mother is fine for money in an otherwise a conservative society, with patriarchy in mind, I still found it hard to believe that women can ever pursue this chance in the open: understandably many work in collaboration with their husbands and immediate family to keep this as a secret. Another gender question: how does surrogacy threaten the social understanding and definition of motherhood? The surrogate mothers in the documentary feel emotion attachment to the babies, even though they are not genetically related. (In contrast, the popular trope regarding men is that they expect their offspring to be genetically “theirs.”) Women around the world face critiques that they are selling their wombs, which should somehow be regarded as a sanctified zone. Motherhood seems to mean legal ownership of the child, but in the case of surrogacy without the same amount of effort, which is so often labeled as “sacrifice.” The intended parent also may not experience the typical birth defining motherhood but still expects to enjoy all the experiences with “her” child thereafter.

Many surrogates rationalize their decision by citing their economic needs and contribution to family income, as seen in the documentary. This attitude poses is a stark contrast with another group of women who also earn money for their family in Pakistan. Zehran Yasmin Zaidi’s Chaddors and Pink Collars in Pakistan: Gender, Work, and the Global Economy shows in one chapter that oftentimes women can

participate in non-traditional employment outside of home, but requires women to observe cultural norms in non-work related matters. The dynamics of this process can be understood by examining how class and gender operate in Pakistan. Many women workers who were interviewed by the author came from working-class backgrounds, yet made contradictory claims about working out of choice rather than economic necessity.

But in both cases, women earn approval through bringing financial gains to the family despite the acts are against previous convention.

Unfortunately there was not a lot of anthropological data on the gender questions: who makes the decision to become surrogates in the family and what are the different opinions of the informed participants (e.g. Fathers, mothers, in-laws)? How does gender relations impact the surrogates’ economic “rationality?” The intentions are very elusive, compounded with layers of ethics and gender politics. I speculate that it is possible that both sides who are participating in this transaction would not even approve of this kind of deal when asked in a polling exercise.

Carnatic Music and Religion

Karthik, who is from a family of classical Indian musicians, asked me today, "How did you get this interest in knowing about India and carnatic music?" Karthik said that he was so happy that someone not from India actually appreciates carnatic music. "Many people do not know about it. It requires such a dedication and lots of practice to be at least somewhat good at it." 

There was an article I read that really sparked my interest--Many discontents of the Season, which is about how the Margazhi Festival's organization has a lot of downsides and how newcomers have a tough time and face a lot of budgetary pressure. But the festival still serves as a good showcase for new artists and I am impressed by the number of serious patrons for art. This is an interesting excerpt from one of the participants:

“I find that in the North, artistes are a lot more united. They won’t take this kind of crap. If someone makes an unreasonable demand, and a performer takes the high road, all his or her colleagues will, so the organisers have to step back and be nice. Here, things are far more cut-throat. If you stick to your principles, there are a whole lot of people who will swoop in. And that’s given the sabhas all the power. I see it in the way Hindustani musicians are treated, during special concerts for Margazhi. They’re given lakhs as performer fees; they’re put up in five-star hotels. But how are Carnatic musicians from out of town treated? What does that tell you?”

Also, the star of the festival was--

Carnatic singer TM Krishna

The 36-year-old singer draws a mob at practically every kutcheri (a place where people gather to listen to classical music concerts of vidwans.). A vocalist who’s been famous for longer than he hasn’t been, his flair and creativity on stage have earned him a devoted following—and a reputation as an eccentric. He often questions the competence of music critics, the sanctity of the structure of a kutcheri, the politics of the season.

Over the last few years, he’s taken initiatives to set things right. Once he refused evening slots to make way for new talent. Another time, he said he was taking December off to attend other musicians’ kutcheris; and in 2012-13, he said he would only give free concerts. So rasikas dashed to his four-hour concert at an auditorium with 700 seats.

TM Krishna is not only renowned singer, but also a thinker and writer. He has a theory about practicing, his as well as a book on Carnatic music.

I have this theory that we should push our mental capacity to the extreme during practice. A lot of nonsense may be there inside your head. When you practise Natakurinji for six hours for instance, other raga-s could be there inside you. Every musician has to develop a sieve in the thought process that will help to bring out the juice of what your mind is thinking and deliver it. Not necessarily in a concert, but when you sing naturally. You first need to throw everything out. You need to expel all extraneous matter. When you sing for four hours – you will reach a point when you are brain dead. But you just have to get to that point, where you are so saturated that you will go mad! After that, the mind starts clearing up what you sing. Among 50 ideas that come up in your mind, one idea may survive. Many people told me I was overdoing it, singing too much. Being the kind of person I was, I rebelled and continued to do exactly what I wanted to do. This was very good in one way. I learnt it all my way. If someone asked me to sing Todi, I just poured out everything I knew of Todi, all the sangati-s.

If only I could work that hard for learning a language...

I have also been reading Janaki Bakhle's Two Men and Music before Hindi classes started and it's also very inspiring. I look forward to reading TM Krishna's new book on Carnatic music; the excerpt in The Hindu was also very reflective and honest.

Within the modern world, the Hindu religious content raises an important question. Can an atheist or a non-Hindu be a Karnatik musician?
The environment that pervades Karnatik music makes it very difficult for an atheist to function within its world. There may be a few, but they will find it very difficult to come out in the open and articulate an atheistic narrative for Karnatik music. They will silently pamper the religious responses to their music and encourage devotional and philosophical expressions. I am not finding fault, but highlighting the difficulty for them to be who they are within this world. The musical fraternity at large does not feel it necessary to give Karnatik music, especially its compositional forms, a purely aesthetic thought.
What about practitioners of other religions? Among the nagasvara community there were not a few Muslim families that mastered this art form. Most of them flourished in what is now Andhra Pradesh and a few still live alongside the most conservative Hindu communities of Srirangam in Tamil Nadu. My admiration for these people is immense, as they have been able to negotiate two very opposing ideas, but there is a nuance. They have had to, perhaps willingly, accept the Hindu pantheon within their world. You will find their homes adorned with pictures of Hindu deities and their immense respect for Hindu gods and goddesses even when their religious practices are Islamic. This is a credit to their ability to straddle two worlds. But they cannot display apathy for Hinduism and be accepted as musicians by the Karnatik world. 

TM Krishna raises very important questions. I find this issue common in many cultural activities in India. Among my fellow Hindi language students during the summer, two have studied music from Oberlin, and both have interests in Indian music. I also really like Qawwali music (such as Qari Wahid Chisti) and ghazal ballads. In fact, Agha Shahid Ali, who introduced ghazals in an English form, is my favorite poet. I have also watched Bengali Baul performers (Purna Das Baul) in Beijing, at 后山艺术空间. Bauls pride themselves for being Hindu-Muslim syncretic and without caste. They have rituals and beliefs in addition to musical performances. Carnatic musicians, for example, play at religious functions as well.

Karthik's reply:

As you correctly pointed out, a person who knows and practices carnatic music will find it very difficult to be an atheist. It is virtually impossible. I can assure that not a single carnatic musician will be a complete atheist. They may be agnostic but atheism isn't there. I will tell you something, I didn't know atheism was a thing until I was 19 yes old. That's the effect on the society. The word is not uttered and a person is not taught anything about it. Also, most of the carnatic compositions are based on god. Exaltation of the deities is an important tool in keeping up the tradition and teaching carnatic music.

The holy trinity in carnatic music, Muthuswamy Dikshitar, Thyagarajar, and Shyama Sastrigal all composed music based on deities. Mr. Koteeswara Iyer was the first person to compose tunes in all 72 mela karta raagas. Even he composed music by praising the gods.

See, there are very complex societies in India. Also, most of the carnatic musicians are Brahmins (including me). It is a subculture within the tamil culture itself. We are, from a very young age, drilled about the concept of god. So most of us don't know what atheism is. To us, god and music aren't different. Yes.

I said that this is also the one aspect I find troubling in Buddhism, which proposes no god. I like music so much, and the existence of such wonderful music makes it hard to believe that there is no god. I think Christians feel similar in regards to some classical music.
He pointed that "there are quite a bit of christians who actually sing carnatic music, praising both the hindu gods as well as jesus christ. Weird but true. This happens in Kerala a lot. It is just that carnatic music is taught not only with notes but also with devotional lyrics. Because many devotional songs are taken as examples for classic raagas.
He goes on, "The carnatic music is actually seen by many muslims as a hindu thing. So Muslims don't do it often. However, there are many successful musicians who are Muslims and have a carnatic background. Most of them however, prefer western classical music."

Here is I made a mixtape of the five tracks I like best under the theme of "Joy"

1. Ganesh & Kumaresh - Yaare Ranganaa

2. Venkataswamy Naidu - Ragam Thanam Pallavi

3. Ganesh & Kumaresh - Yaro Iver Yaro

4. Anil Srinivasan, Supratik Das & Sikkil Gurucharan "Raag Megh" Live @ The Peninsula Studios

5. Ganesh & Kumaresh - Seethapathe

6. https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10204715600635230
Composed by the amazing musician from Kerala called Sharreth.



I asked Karthik about track 1, in which Ganesh and Kumaresh said that Yaare Ranganaa was written by someone 500 years ago. What was used in place of violin in Carnatic before violin?

Yaare Ranganaa composed by Purandaradasar is a vocal composition. It wasn't made for instrumental. In fact, instrumental carnatic music didn't exist until 1980s. The man who created a revolution in instrumental carnatic music was Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan. Muthuswamy Dikshitar introduced violin to carnatic music. Before that, the accompaniment depended upon Veena or Sitar. I added, TM Krishna also said in his column that Carnatic music can be understood as very young as well.In a usual carnatic music setup, you have the singer, now you have the violinist who accompanies the singer, then you have mridangam as percussion. This is the basic setup. The extra instruments are Ghatam (which looks like a clay pot), Kanjira, Morsing etc. So violins performing independently was non existent a couple of decades ago. Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan changed the entire scene. He brought out something called the "Solo Violin" revolution. Many violinists then started playing independently. Only then the respect for that instrument vastly increased. This music director called Illayaraaja again introduced violin solo pieces in movies. V.S. Narasimhan took centre stage then. Most of the carnatic musicians try to complicate and twist the music as much as possible in order to provide complexity. So, over a period, complexity started to get associated with beauty and skill. 

"Many people, in the name of complexity, started to make it sound boring. That's why many people don't find it appealing. M.S. Viswanathan and Illayaraaja made this observation and created music in such a manner that the essence and beauty of carnatic music reached far beyond the educated audiences."

Karthik also has an interesting opinion regarding Bollywood music: Many people think A.R. Rahman is the best musician in India. He is a brilliant technician. However, he is no match to Illayaraaja and MSV. The factor which made Rahman famous is media and technology. He rose to prominence when India opened up to the world. That was the time when the state controlled media became privatized. With that came more money, a different genre of music, and a young composer with it. This had a brilliant effect and now Rahman is pretty damn famous. Actually speaking, Illayaraaja never broke into Bollywood. He did most of his films in Kollywood, Telugu, Malayalam, and Bengali film industries.