Chennai’s many musical notes

Historian Pradeep Chakravarthy said, “It is a great honour for Chennai as the Margazhi festival is the most successful music festival, which is completely citizen-run. While a lot of the festival is very classical, musicians are making it inclusive, bringing in different influences. I hope that as we get more accolades, we encourage different voices, truly bringing in the best of both worlds.” However, Carnatic music is not a representation of the city’s populace. 

“Madras is a city of migrants and doesn’t have an ethnic music of its own,” said historian R Venkatesh, pointing out that “99 per cent of the city has nothing to do with Carnatic music.” In fact, film music symbolised Madras and continues to do so even today, he added.  “In 1940s, during World War II, no movie could exceed 11,000ft of film. KB Sundarambal, MK Thyagaraja Bagavathar and Kittappa songs symbolised the Madras of the 1940s. 

Hand-cranked gramophone records played film songs, which were an advertisement for the movie itself. We should not forget that the film industry has been churning out 1,000 songs a year, for almost 80 years. Madras has been creative in many fields - science, art and literature,” he added. CULTURAL VIBES Music in Madras existed even before the city came into existence as a garrison town, roughly around 378 years ago. Before that, it was a cluster of fishing hamlets, dotting the coastline. “Music has existed in Madras since ancient times – point in case, the music of Alwars and Nyanmars. In fact, the most ancient form of music is the fishermen’s songs, which was documented in the 16th century by the Britishers.

 Chennai doesn’t need the UNESCO tag. But now that this has been bestowed upon the city, I hope that it dispels the wrong notion that the city is only about Carnatic music,” said historian, V Sriram. 

“Music here has always been created by the people, receiving tremendous public support,” he added. Pradeep added that two centuries ago, there were various genres of music. “There was classical instrumental music, local folk music tradition and devadasis performing. Not all the devadasis performed the same songs – each one specialised in a genre. In fact, there were many genres at that time. For example, there was an agamar gam singing, which we know nothing about. The listener had a choice. The city had an ethos of so many people singing and performing at that time,” he pointed out. Venkatesh added that people have always been challenging the dominance of Carnatic music saying it was not truly representative of the population.

“Eminent singer MSSubbulakshmi was once banned from singing in the Music Academy because she aligned with the emerging Tamil isai lobby. This was a group of music enthusiasts led by Raja Sir Annamalai Chettiar who wanted to introduce really representative and understandable music to the masses. In 1943, they were surprisingly supported by C Rajagopalachari, MS Subbulakshmi and author Kalki. 

That move  helped unearth many more Tamil songs and setting them to tunes,” pointed out the author. Folk music forms like gaana and therukoothu are integral to the city’s musical strain, representing a majority of the population, seeping into the pop-culture expression. Folk musician Anthony Daasan, who also belts out popular Kollywood hits, said, “Folk music is an expression of the people. It has been around for years – with communities using natural objects to make music. In fact, even today, folk music is very strong in Chennai. No matter who the person is – a man on the street or an IT professional – at the end of the day, they get home and play folk songs.” Daasan performs at the world’s popular music festivals with his band, Anthonyin party, playing a blend of folk-infused rock music. That, in a sense, could sum up Chennai’s music – a sum of its many parts.