This music season, let's celebrate amateur singer

I don’t know what it is about us. Indians, I mean. South Indians in particular, and the condition is probably endemic. To narrow it down even further, I'll just confine it to my own family circle, plus a gaggle of assorted friends. Ever since I can recall, whenever there was a get-together at somebody’s place for lunch or dinner, the repast would without fail be followed by a chorus of ‘Let’s have some music.’ Not Antakshari. That came much later. Not organised group singing either. That would have been too easy, for those who are shy but are quite happy to go along with the herd. I am talking about singling out some poor sap, who was known to be an ‘A’ singer in school, or was being taught Carnatic music by a local bhagavathar. Unfortunately, I qualified on both counts.

Allow me to elaborate. Having studied in a Christian missionary school as a boarder, singing during chapel service along with the rest of the congregation was something we enjoyed. Many of the hymns were quite tuneful, though the rendering not always so. Even if we did not feel ‘wondrous and lit up inside’ (a la Van Morrison) in evangelical ecstasy, we just sang for the sheer fun of it. We could easily have been warbling Elvis Presley’s Jailhouse Rock or Cliff Richards’ Living Doll when in fact we were harmonizing Oh God Our Help in Ages Past, or Breathe on Me Breath of God. This kind of uninhibited show of our vocal skills had its consequences. Eagle-eyed, or more pertinently, sharp-eared masters were quick to pick out many of us to sing in the school choir. At which point, the fun went out of the equation and it all became a chore. Inter-house and inter-school choir competitions meant rigorous practice, rather like studying for our term exams. Nevertheless, the painful reputation never left you, ‘He can sing.’

Cut to the home scene. If you can sing, you can sing. Never mind if it's The Beatles or Tyagaraja. My home was redolent with the recorded music of all the great performers of yesteryear. You name it, and we had the records and tapes - from M.S. Subbulakshmi to G.N. Balasubramanian, and other greats from the pantheon. And since my prowess as an amateur singer was firmly established, I was packed off to the local Carnatic music teacher in Calcutta (my parents’ base), and there were quite a few in that city during the ‘60s and ‘70s. As if that was not enough, when I came home, I had to sing whatever I had been taught to my mother, who would then proceed to ‘tweak’ the sangathis I had just been taught. And I had to answer painful questions like ‘explain the scalar difference between Poorvikalyani and Pantuvarali, or Chakravaham and Saurashtram’. All in chaste, stentorian Tamil. I felt like throwing in the towel but kept at it gamely. Many a geometry box have I won for my efforts at the local South India Club’s weekly ‘Our Parlour.’

To get back to the main thrust of this piece, what all this meant was that I was among the first choice to sing at many of these family jamborees. It could be a post wedding sit in, or just a post dinner shooting the breeze. Suddenly, completely out of the blue, one of the aunts or cousins, it usually was someone from the distaff side, would enthusiastically exclaim, ‘Right we are going to have a sing-song now. Quiet everyone. Who will go first?’ I definitely wanted to ‘go first’ - out of the room, that is. No such luck. All eyes would bore into me, and someone would go, ‘Suresh, you have to set the ball rolling. Come on, don’t be such a fuss pot. Be a sport’.

That’s when I start with the excuses. After a bit of exaggerated throat clearing I'll go, ‘I think I have a sore throat coming on, let somebody else sing.’ No dice. ‘Rubbish, you have to show the way. Sing Samajavaragamana in Hindolam. You know, he just memorised it from that GNB record. And he won a prize, a book, Letters of Dr. Srinivasa Sastri. Otherwise sing Mayamma in Ahiri. He learnt it from MS when she stayed with us last year. Come on.’ This stentorian command, while dropping names with studied casualness, from my importunate mother. My weak riposte? ‘I can’t remember the words of the charanam. Tell you what, I’ll do Bachelor Boy instead.’

And so the long evening wore on. The funny thing was, once I started the session, others joined the fray, after which there was no holding them back. I vividly recall one particular visiting Mami. After an almighty to-do, she started singing (I am being charitable), and that was that. She went on unendurably for nearly an hour, expounding on a Todi (it might have been a Kalyani), full song with neraval and swarams. A regular mini kutcheri. It was unmitigated torture from beginning to end. The silent groans from all of us were conspicuously audible. Finally her husband, sensible man, came to our rescue and told his wife to pack up, as they faced a long drive home. She was crestfallen, just priming herself for the tukkudas.

I've have said this before and I’ll say it again. My family, like many others from our background, was big on Carnatic music. Some of us strayed into other genres, but always returned to our roots. For the most part, aunts, uncles, brothers, cousins, nephews, nieces, all sang after a fashion, and one of our number even turned professional, rising to the very top of the ladder. For now, I salute the amateur singer and the bathroom singer. Get him or her started, and there’s no finishing line in sight.

Wishing all our readers a wonderful Music Season!

(The author is a brand consultant with an interest in music, cricket, humour and satire)