South Indian Music offers a different musical experience

Concert by high level trio from India entreats audience to play along

Sunday's afternoon of South Indian Music proved to its audience that Oberlin could use more exposure to non-Western music. Kulas Recital Hall was packed with culture-thirsty students and faculty, all holding their breath for every note of the performance as if they had never heard such sounds before. And probably, save for those who were required to attend as part of their Ethnomusicology courses, the bulk of the audience may have entered the concert without knowing what to expect.

While most guest recitals follow proper, formal fashion, Sunday's concert functioned more like a master class. The performers, T. Viswanathan, Ramnad V. Raghavan and Anantha Krishnan, invited audience members to take seats on stage with them, and broke between numbers to explain apsects of the musical style, two genres of which are known as raga and tala.

The audience was encouraged to count along and keep tala with the drum beat. Though this kind of open, informal behavior is sadly rare in Westernized performances, the audience took well to their guests, and several concert-goers - particularly those closer to the performers - took initiative to count and chant along with the songs.

The trio of performers comprised a sample of India's highest level of musical performers. Viswanathan, who played an Indian flute and sang, has not only won the title of Tamil Nadu's Instrumental Musician of the Year, but was also named Sangita Kalanidhi (the highest South Indian musician award) by the Madras Music Academy. Viswanathan's poise proved his credibility: he did most of the talking, making his audience feel comfortable with his culture as he went along, playing with ease and confidence with every note. He occasionally nodded to the audience when, it seemed, he wished that they would play along, and he smiled at his fellow performers when his accompaniment gave way for their solos.

Raghavan and Krishnan created a relaxed but well-studied essence of performance style with their instruments, the mrdangam drum and violin, respectively. The style of music performed shed a different light on the generally Western-associated violin. Krishnan held it in his lap and bowed out his melodies over smooth, slurred strings of typical Indian scales resembling Western major moded scales, save for ornamentation on certain notes. Raghavan also took his mrdangam in his lap, lightly steadying it with his left hand patting on the backside, saving his right hand for more complicated rhythmic patterns.

The concert ran typical length - about one and a half hours - but the program notes would have told you otherwise. Instead of playing exactly the scheduled repertoire - some 14 songs - the musicians selected about six pieces from the list and introduced them as they went along.

The first piece, "KRITI: vâtâpi ganapatîm," started off slowly, emphasizing the first note of the Indian scale, "sa," and became more melodic as it went along. Odd for typical South Indian music, the work seemed to have a very Westernized, structured folksy feel, complete with rounded out phrases and mimicry and imitation from the flute and violin.

Other pieces, however, incorporated much more of the typical gala style, building up from mathematically-based mrdangam beats into pulsing, spinning melodies and harmonies from the instruments and voice. Almost as if the entire concert was building up to a climax, this rise of excitement peaked with the last number. Though it initially started off like a warm-up for all the instruments with slow, unaccompanied violin with silent drum collaboration, the piece finally built upon itself and ended triumphantly, inducing an encore with a standing ovation.

Among the Conservatory's countless classical and contemporary concerts throughout the year, there are a select few cultural groups that come to perform. Sunday's Kulas audience was lucky to host Viswanathan, Krishnan and Raghavan's music first-hand. With such a positive reaction from a crowd that large, one could tell that the three men on-stage were pleased to perform, and the audience was delighted to have them.