Desicritics Category: Culture: Music

Concert Review: Dischordian + Gillian Grassi - Cafe Goa

IdeaSmith — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 21:29:37 EST

I was at Café Goa this Wednesday (20th January) for the UTV World Movies & Music event organized by the Bombay Elektrik Projekt. As it was, the trek to Bandra is a formidable thought (and I stop short of saying ‘unrealistic’ since that’s what’s I call travelling to town). In typical Mumbaiker fashion, I aim for efficient usage of time so I clubbed this with another event – meeting a longtime friend/reader of my blog. We decided to skip the movie in favor of coffee & chat and come back for the music performance.

The opening act was by Gillian Grassie, a harpist from Philadelphia on a year-long tour of several countries including India to study the relationships between new technologies and independent music scenes around the globe. I managed to catch only the last few minutes of her act and what little I saw was quite mesmerizing. The harp carries associations of white-clad angels and an otherworldy, semi-religious feel of music. Gillian's music was none of those things but managed to bring a sweet freshness to instantly hummable tunes. Her fingers seemed to be feather-touching, almost dancing on the strings of the harp (which was almost as big as her..and here I thought the harp would be a much smaller instrument). The harp provided only a very soft background to the songs which primarily rode on her voice. It's quite impressive to create a song purely from one's voice, virtually unassisted by the grandeur of an orchestra and Gillian pulled it off, holding the audience spellbound. I do wish I had made it to the venue earlier to catch her entire performance.

The headlining act of the evening was Dischordian, a venture by Garreth D’mello (also of Split). Dischordian is described as 'an attempt to move away from the wall of sound and aggression and testosterone that makes up most rock music, an attempt to strip music down to its basics'.

Garreth was accompanied by Howard Pereira on his guitar and Agnnelo Picardo (Aggie), the percussionist/trumpeteer. The last began the evening, hugging a trumpet close to his chest while listening to Garreth and Howard spark up the show. I’ve never seen a trumpet that close. The advantage of a place like Café Goa is the proximity it provides between the performer and the audience. So I kept my eyes trained on the trumpet, an instrument I only have vague associations with, of loudness and some sort of stiff-necked wedding band. Thus it came as a pleasant surprise when the trumpet actually made its entry into the music at ‘The Old Whore’. Aggie led it in with the kind of regal dignity and grandeur that you would associate with a quiet, well-built black man who surprises you with jazz. Yes, jazz was unmistakably what I heard in Dischoridian’s sound everytime the trumpet was a part of it.

Garreth himself has tremendous presence on stage. His face is boyish and manner as laidback and easygoing as his Goan roots. But when he begins to sing, those notions melt away as you are carried off in the power and forceful magnetism of his rich voice. It’s a deep voice, the kind that sounds mature and all-knowing with wisdom that comes from having experienced excitement and grown past it. Possibly because of the selection of songs and the jazz feel that I described earlier, it also felt like a strong but gently caress, the sort that can crush but knows how not to.

I’ve heard ‘The Old Whore’ before, live as well as a recording. It has a classic country-western feel to it. Some artists sound much better in person than on the polished finish of a recording and Dischordian is certainly in this category.

'Scourge of Love' revved up the tempo and suddenly the audience was drawn into the performance, before we even knew it, thumping our feet and trying to sing along (or hum along at least). This is when Swati who had accompanied me clapped her hands and called Garreth, India's answer to Kurt Cobain (which elicited a weak smile from Garreth when I told him later, followed by a hasty retreat).

The piece de resistance of Dischordian's performance has to have been ‘Bucket of Blood’ (I actually thought that was ‘Bucket of Love’ when I tweeted about it);-). It’s a racy, foot-thumping number, all adrenalin and blood-rushes. I’ve not seen Garreth in his former avatar but several people I know have given me a pretty graphic account of his rockstar days as a tee-shirt ripping stage-stud, girls screaming et al. His shirt stayed firmly on and he remained seated but this song was a more than adequate hint to those days. And yes, there were a lot of people screaming, even in that tiny room in the café, men and women alike.

The trumpet was replaced by a sort of bongo (hand-drum?) for the same song and served to showcase Aggie's talent. All artists are trying to communicate something in their own ways and media. Musicians face that challenge by appealing to something whose response can’t often be quantified in words – melody, beat, the combination of the various sounds made by wind and strings and voice. Some instruments like the guitar and indeed, the human voice make that connection a lot more easily but it is a greater challenge to connect with the audience with the more distant (but grand) percussion. Aggie displays as much presence as Garreth does, in a different way. As the lead guitarist and vocalist, albeit with his own brand of showmanship, Garreth is the flash-and-dazzle of Dischordian but Aggie makes his presence felt subtly and yet, noticeably. It’s an impressive talent and makes for a great performance.

Garreth performed solo on 'One of these days' and 'How I wait'', which while melodious, didn’t quite send me into rapture like the earlier songs. They could just be the kind of songs you’d prefer to listen to within the intimacy of headphones and in solitude rather than with a big group of people. Fortunately Howard and Aggie returned to perform ‘She lied to me’ and a cover version of Jello Biafra's 'Are you drinking with me, Jesus?' which really had the crowd howling in appreciation. The other songs they performed were 'Same old conversations', 'Your Right Heel' and 'Baby, Maybe'.

The performance closed a few minutes after midnight.

The neighbors are complaining. You wouldn’t think an acoustic band could make much noise. But apparently we can.

was Garreth’s wry observation as the audience begged him for an encore.

In sum, the evening was well-spent and totally worth the trip to Bandra. The second half was good but I think the first few songs took away the show. Dischordian is great, live in action and I’ll gladly make the trek again to hear them. I would also like to hear their recorded songs to be able to compare it to their live performance. But my feeling is their real talent lies in the tangible connection they are able to make with their audience when they are right in front of them.

* Dischordian is on Facebook and Twitter. The Bombay Elektrik Projekt is on Facebook. My tweets of the event are hashtagged #bep.

Stupid Stupid Stupid - Album Launch Gig

IdeaSmith — Thu, 7 Jan 2010 11:25:19 EST

It feels like in this time-starved city, it's hard enough to fit in one interest (I have two) along with a career, family life, social life and love life. One prioritizes so I picked books & writing while a lot of other wonderful things got left behind. But every now and then you run into one of them and it's like meeting someone you believed you could be in love with if there had only been the time.

I have never really been a part of the music scene barring the occasional Roger Waters or Mark Knopfler concert (okay, okay Bryan Adams as well...sheesh..). But that's stuff that EVERYONE in this city does, it's practically a ritual. But to truly enjoy something, you need to be able to experience as many variations of its existence as possible and not just the well-marketed ones. So I jumped at the opportunity to check into the music scene.

I was at Zenzi Mills last night with Swati and Sumanth for a gig by three bands - The Mavyns, Sridhar/Thayil and Medusa. I was there courtesy my friend AmZ who plays bass with Sridhar/Thayil. The event was to launch Stupid Stupid Stupid, an album compilation of various young and upcoming Indian musicians including the three bands that played. I got there too late for The Mavyns and didn't catch much of Medusa so I'll focus on Sridhar/Thayil since I was there through their entire performance.

[caption id="attachment_2704" align="aligncenter" width="365" caption="Amit Ahuja (AmZ)"][/caption]

Last month I was at Airport's gig at Il Terrazo, Del Italia and throughly enjoyed myself. AmZ did say that this band's sound was a little different. Now comparisons may be odious but they form the framework of how we relate to experiences in our mind. I liked Airport's songs because they were sweet and easy to relate to. This may have been because they were in Hindi and had a pop-feel to them, with familiar melodies.

[caption id="attachment_2708" align="aligncenter" width="365" caption="Vinay Lobo"][/caption]

Sridhar/Thayil on the other hand, has a very different feel. Jeet Thayil was unavailable so Vinay Lobo (guitarist with Airport) filled in with Amit Ahuja (AmZ) was on the bass. Suman Sridhar, the vocalist makes an art of her performance, using her very expressive eyes and hands. Her girl-woman demeanor adds to her delicate, flute-like voice. The sound was new, the music took awhile to register and I had to concentrate hard to be able to follow the rhythm. When AmZ asked me later what I thought, all I could say was,

Interesting...

which I realised after I said it may not have sounded very complimentary. What I really meant was that I needed time to figure out how I felt about it. I think this is true of all art. There is what you are familiar with and that generally appeals immediately. In music specifically, the language, the accent, instruments, voice intonations are all things that we respond to first out of familiarity and only later from real appreciation. A difference in any of these needs some realignment.

Musicians say that there is music all around us. There certainly is, unless you live inside a vaccuum. There's cacophony which can become a sort of music once you figure out the rhythm and get used to it. But till that time, it is alien sound. So I guess I was listening to a lot of alien sound yesterday. I did listen to the song on the album again today and it sounds a lot better.

Among last night's repertoire, I particularly liked 'The Drowning Song' (which is incidentally their song on the Stupid Stupid Stupid album). Anushka from Noush Like Sploosh ('3 Act Circus' on the album) chipped in with her Jewish harp, a curious little instrument that's barely visible unless you look closely, else it just looks like the musician is strumming her own mouth. The resulting effect was like the sound of raindrops and water splashing. This is a sound I've heard before on Indian classical music albums and liked. It's intensely peaceful and yet powerful at the same time. 'The Drowning Song' does overcome you with its watery feel.

[caption id="attachment_2705" align="aligncenter" width="365" caption="Anushka"][/caption]

'Punk Bhajan' was another song that caught my attention. As the name suggests, it was a fusion of Indian classical music with a more western sound in the background. This was really the song that told me that Suman's voice could encompass a broad range of notes as she took the dips and highs of the bhajan smoothly. The only downside for me was that given her high-pitched voice, there were times it came off sounding shrill. Yet, I guess that is the style that she and the band are experimenting with and it was good to see her able to take the notes without slipping off tune.

[caption id="attachment_2706" align="aligncenter" width="417" caption="Suman Sridhar"][/caption]

An important aspect of the entire show was that the venue and sound set up were rather less than acceptable. The gig happened on the upper storey of Zenzi Mills, with a salsa meet in progress on the floor below. If one stood near the door, the strains of salsa were rather louder than the music in the room. Why would you stand near the door, do you wonder? Because up close to the musicians, the sound seemed to be ricocheting off the roof and walls in a funny way. I could hear each piece separately and by the time I put them together in my head, it was too late to enjoy the song. All the songs sounded much better at the back of the room...when you could hear them undiluted by salsa.

[caption id="attachment_2707" align="aligncenter" width="417" caption="Amit, Anushka and Suman preparing for 'The Drowning Song'"][/caption]

I also spotted Dischordion's Garreth D'mello. He wasn't performing but contributes 'The Old Whore' to the album. The song has a happy-go-lucky vibe, the title notwithstanding. Incidentally my friends who've seen Garreth perform in the past few years describe him as a real rockstar on stage with the whole ripping-teeshirt-off bit. So you can imagine my surprise when I watched him stick to his barstool all through his performance at Blue Frog last year. The sound is easygoing and smooth too, not the gritty screaming you'd expect from a teeshirt-ripper. He sounds good and finally I guess that's what makes a real rockstar. :-)

On a snide aside, I stepped out for a break and took a walk around the compound. And here's what I spotted. (For the non-Marathi-reading people, that spells 'Prog' not Frog. But it may be argued that Blue Frog is a quirky enough name so a Blue Prog is probably just an extension to that!) ;-)

[caption id="attachment_2712" align="aligncenter" width="456" caption="The Blue PROG"][/caption]

On the Stupid Stupid Stupid album that I've been listening to all morning, 21 tracks vie for my attention. The Mavyns bring 'Freedomslinger' while Medusa does 'March'. Constellation Project's 'Ring the bell' is playing right now and it reminds me vaguely of Dido though I know the music sounds entirely different as does the accent. I'm quite liking the whistling interludes in the song. 'Freedomslinger' similarly reminds me of The Eagles 'Get over it'. Khiladi's 'This is Sparta' starts with the ceremonial Maratha trumpets that sound at the start of any celebration...and transcends into a sort of passionate rap-conversation. It's fun.

Incidentally, Stupid Ditties 3 is available for download. It is a mixed bag, with different kinds of voices and sounds. I see nothing in common to all of them except that they're all young and newish. Which suits me fine considering that also describes my foray into music.

[caption id="attachment_2713" align="aligncenter" width="521" caption="These shoes are meant for rocking"][/caption]

Belonging

smallsquirrel — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:18:18 EST

I was dressed to go out dancing. It was me and the girls and it was a rare night out for me. Last minute plans, and my husband was having some batch mates over for beer and take away, so it all worked out well. Next thing I know I am on the back of a bike, silk scarf trailing out behind with heads turning in the traffic. A chestnut-haired firang with giant eyes and a small shirt out for a night of fun.

I arrived at the club, and we all went upstairs, ordered drinks and sat down. Where was everyone? It seemed dead to me, with the throbbing base bouncing off unobstructed walls. I knew nothing about clubs in Bangalore. Up until then, I usually went out to dinner or hung out at friends' homes, so I did not know what to expect.

Shilpa got up and hugged a girl who walked in through a side door. It was one of her friends that I had met a week or two earlier at a cozy weekend lunch. I had forgotten her name, but I remembered that she was Marwari. I was jealous of her long, black gold locks and fluid movements. They exchanged a few words and Shilpa told Aparna something I could not hear. They waved me on with them, and we all passed through the aide door and out onto an outdoor deck. We were on the roof of a very tall building, torches surrounding a swimming pool, with lights strung up all around. The reflection of the torch fire danced in the water, while people mingled and chatted in small groups. There was a warm, dry wind and sky was clear. I remember feeling like something big was happening.

Shilpa told me that we had luckily stumbled upon her friend's private birthday party, and that there would be a big surprise in a few minutes. We grabbed a drink and took seats at the other end of the pool on a wooden bench. I spotted a few other friends and waved shyly. They grinned at my daring outfit while showing off their own, but suddenly my eyes were drawn to a makeshift stage where a man walked out and everyone became absolutely silent.

The friend walked out with a microphone and thanked everyone for coming to her birthday party, and while nodding her head toward the man, said that they had been friends for a long time and he had graciously offered to come help her celebrate in style. Everyone burst into applause, and I was straining to pinpoint exactly who he was. The face was familiar, yet...

Then he began singing. It was like I could see the music.

preet ki lath mohe aaisi laagi
ho gayi main matwaali
bal bal jaaun apane piya ko
he main jaaun vaari vaari
mohe sudh budh naa rahi tan mann ki
yeh toh jaane duniya saari
bebas aur laachar phiru main
haari main dil haari

I literally felt transported. Everything else faded away except the music, the hot wind and the dancing fire in the water. I came back to the moment and looked around me, and everyone was similarly transfixed. I realized I was singing along, softly, and Shilpa reached over and grabbed my hand.

Toota toota ek parinda aise toota
Ke phir jud naa paaya
Loota loota kisne usko aise loota
Ke phir ud naa paaya
O o o o toota toota ek parinda aise toota
Ke phir jud naa paaya
Loota loota kisne usko aise loota
Ke phir ud naa paaya
Girta hua woh asma se
Aakar gira zameen par
Khwabon mein phir bhi badal hi the
Woh kehta raha magar
Ke allah ke bande hasde allah ke bande
Allah ke bande hasde jo bhi ho kal phir aayega
Allah ke bande hasde allah ke bande
Allah ke bande hasde jo bhi ho kal phir aayega

This is when I knew I knew it for sure. This is when I finally belonged in India. I was no longer a stranger in a strange land. I was not an awkward girl in a salwaar suit being stared at while eating her banana leaf lunch. I was simply one in a group, transformed, transfixed, transported by music.

Those Were The Days - The Immortal Song

Amitabh Mitra — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:27:55 EDT

I always wonder about Ranu Mukherjee. A prolific singer of the sixties and seventies, she sang in Hindi and Bangla but success eluded her

Ranu is the daughter of Music Director Hemanta Mukherjee and Bela Mukherjee. Bela Mukherjee herself a great singer left her singing career after marrying Hemanta. Hemant Mukherjee gave music to this little known film of the seventies, Bees Saal Pehley where he tried to launch his son Jayanta Mukherjee in an acting career. Jayanta Mukherjee is married to popular film actress Moushmi Chatterjee .

Bees Saal Pehley is known for its melodious song, 'Kyu Hain Diwane Tu Akela' sung by Ranu Mukherjee. The beautiful Padma Khanna does a scintillating dance number with this song. The actor playing the saxophone does justice to his role.

This song is based on the original song in English, 'Those were the days my friend'. Sung by Mary Hopkin, it was a regular number played repeatedly by Radio Ceylon during the sixties and seventies. I used to hear it on our GEC valve radio in Gwalior. A Sri Lankan group called 'The Gypsies' sang it in their own way.

Much later I sang this song at the popular night spot, Karko in Kolkata.

Meena Chopra a well known artist and poet based in Canada writes about this number on Facebook,

'Almost an everyday feature on Forces Request on All India Delhi B in seventies. Usha Utthup then Usha iyer did a very good job with this'

A few years back I was sitting with my Polish colleague at his home, drinking rum when I suddenly broke out into this song. I was amazed and delighted to hear him singing it in Russian.

This song originally was sung in Russian in the fifties and later sung by Mary Hopkin, a Welsh folk singer in 1968, the music was of Paul McCartney. It reached number one on the UK singles chart and number 2 on the US Billboard Hot Hundred.

Sung in nearly every international language of the world, this song remains immortal, a part of a slice of our life predominantly as exciting as its memory.
'In our hearts the dreams remain the same.

The Music of Bow Barracks Forever - A Film by Pritish Nandy

Amitabh Mitra — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 13:06:30 EDT

Listen to the music

Bow Barracks Forever

Cast: Lilette Dubey, Neha Dubey, Moon Moon Sen, Sabyasachi Chakravarthy, Usha Uthup, Renu Roy, Arindam Sil, Victor Banerjee, Roopa Ganguly, Clayton Rodgers
Director: Anjan Dutt
Producer: Pritish Nandy, Rangita Pritish Nandy
Music Director: Neel Dutt
Lyricist: Anjan Dutt, Neel Dutt
Singers: Anjan Dutt, Dibyendu, Dominique, Shaan, Usha Uthup, Neel Dutt

Kolkata is the hub of music, all sorts of music and that includes English music. I remember during the JS days, festivals organised by the Statesman Group had such groups as Frustrations Amalgamated, Forbidden Fruit and the Savages playing to packed audiences, those were obviously the seventies of Kolkata.

I also remember Braz Gonsalves and Pam Crain at the Park Hotel and Phonida playing his guitar at his restaurant in the New Market.

I do meet Phoni da whenever I am in Kolkata, to everybody else he is Phoni Babu

The 1990s brought with a big bang a popular singer who took the Kolkata music scene by storm. His name is Anjan Dutt. With simple lyrics, he gave the people of Kolkata and elsewhere a folk music which is enriched with visions of day to day life in Kolkata. A product of St. Paul's Darjeeling, he did his Masters in English Literature at the University of Calcutta.

I caught up with him through his memorable number, Bela Bose

Bow Barracks Forever is a film on the Anglo-Indian community of Kolkata and is directed by Anjan Dutt. The title song is a song written and sung by Anjan Dutt. It has the husky Bob Dylan feel.

Dance through the Night is sung by Dibyandu. Life and streets of Calcutta as I had experienced at one time comes back to me. It has a Spanish base. I just can't help dancing to the beat.

Home is sung by Dominique. He has always been a backup vocalist.

Teri Meri Merry Christmas is written by Usha Uthup and Neel Dutt. This has a jazz background and reminds me of Kolkata during Christmas days.

The last two themes, The Bright Young Love ( guitar) and the Lost Glory (saxophone) are composed by Anjan Dutt and Neel Dutt

Pritish Nandy is known the world over for his poetry; he had suggested once to Kishore Kumar that he should try singing in English to lyrics that he would compose.

Bow Barracks Forever is a film that has created a special place in the annals of Filmmaking in India. The ovation should go to Pritish Nandy.

Mohiner Ghodaguli - A Small World

Amitabh Mitra — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 20:15:47 EDT

Mohiner Ghodaguli ( Mohin's Horses) is a group that broke into the Kolkata's music scene in the eightees. They pioneered in bringing rock to the otherwise poetry conscious Bangla music which always had a classical orientation.
I have tried to transcreate one of its songs into English which has the abstraction in its original Bangla form.

This song was sung by Gautam Chattopadhyay.

Its tune has been used in Bheegi Bheegi in the popular Hindi movie Gangster.

have you ever thought
of those stars
many light years beyond as
you and me gradually
move apart.
this world is getting smaller
between satellite and cable television
imprisoned in the idiot box of our drawing room
there remain no boundaries
we sit at home and
ponder on this small world in our hands
faces keep moving on the television
while insects renew their pact with fire.
sitting next to each other
aren't we still so alone
or is it a ruse of our tenant.
eyes dazzle
we sell dreams
in the blackmarket
or is this just another ruse
instead
come
lets both watch through the window
we might yet find a lost road looking for us
again.

Translation and Drawing by Amitabh Mitra

Songs for Pakistan

Zia Ahmad — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 08:49:12 EDT

Some time ago I was watching a local TV show with a friend in which some utterly forgettable pop band was invited to play a patriotic song. Like the band itself, the ensuing song was utterly forgettable with the frequent done to death chants of "...choollaingay aasman" (something to do with touching the skies and breaking the sound barrier). The friend wondered aloud if there was any other country that produces patriotic songs so prolifically. We shared a chuckle and switched to some other channel.

It is a fair possibility that there might be some other nation on this planet who expresses musical nationalistic fervour in such prodigious amount. I can only recall the amount of airtime that was devoted for milli naghme while I was growing up watching the only TV station in Pakistan. Other than 14th August and 23rd March holidays, patriotic songs were generously sprinkled throughout the year on TV and music albums. And it wasn't such a bad thing for the songs actually used to be good.

As kids, it used to be comforting to know that we lived in a "Sohni Dartee" which was "Tera/Mera Sub ka Pakistan". The patriotism transmitted through these songs was infectious and appeared to help a great deal to retain our collective self dignity. The songs I was exposed to came through the thick and thin days of Zia's dictatorship. In retrospect, the wholesome unadulterated nature of the songs was in direct contrast to the government's two-faced ideology. Works of resounding beauty were hijacked for propagandist ends in which Sub Ka Pakistan was turning into a sick joke.

Vital Signs' ubiquitous Dil Dil Pakistan altered the patriotic song genre for the newer generation. Consequently, the proliferation of pop bands all around appeared to make patriotic songs more out of obligation than a sense of patriotic zeal. Virtually every album by a Pakistani band or singer had atleast one token flag waving song. One notable example is Junoon, which successfully avoided jingoistic gestures on their initial three albums but eventually gave in (and cashed in big) and delivered Jazba Junoon, a song that sounds more at home as an elaborate jingle.

More often than not, these songs did indeed sound like afterthoughts as if the artists wanted to provide a filler in their respective standard 12 song albums. Some of the lazy attempts were audaciously turned into equally banal videos. There was a music video by another utterly forgettable band in the early 90s that I don't remember much of, for good reason. Though what I distinctly remember of the video, other than the image of four adult men running by the beach carrying a flag, is another image of the same four band members in front of a map of the world pasted on a softboard. The next shot was a close up of our part of the world on the map with four index fingers clumsily moving about and converging at the cartographical position of Pakistan.

This manner of expressing fidelity to one's country is insulting and a gross dis-service to prescribed patriotism. Over the time countless other attempts have been made to churn out such mediocre fare in the name of patriotism. The reasons may vary from apologetically seeking imagined approval from a section of people who look down upon popular music as a western inflection, to articulating some sort of nation-wide insecurity. Harking back to the question posed at the start of this article, the constant generation of such songs might be a mechanism designed to give us some sort of validation - constantly reminding ourselves that indeed we are a nation of winners poised to reach the skies and hit a sixer to the moon. Cricket season also brings with it a deluge of jingoistic ditties.

Good patriotic songs have an innate quality to rouse its audiences and strike a genuine chord throughout the nation. Similar morale boosters are required today where the need to stand together against an identified black turbaned foe is paramount.

I'd like to share a song by Habib Wali Muhammad that communicates patriotism with dignity and good taste. The innocuous sensibility of the words and images in this video has achieved a bittersweet resonance over the time and proffers a suitable call for decisiveness in this time of strife.

Art & Technology: A Decade After I Took That Humanities Course

Vivek Sharma — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:19:30 EDT

To mention Art and Technology in the same breath requires a shift in perspective, for these two streams of human creativity, appear to be quite distinct. A decade ago, as an undergraduate in Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, I opted for a humanities course, titled Art and Technology, taught by Prof. V. Sanil. A decade after the course, I am still fascinated by the aspects of art and technology that we discussed and discovered during a semester of music, movies, paintings, and handouts.

Once we realize that the story and beauty of literature, painting, poetry, architecture and dance is coupled to the technological evolution, we begin to see how truth and beauty are manifested through both art and technology. When we look at a Mercedes Benz or I-phone or the image of splash of a drop of milk or a special effect in say a 007 or Superman movie, a Disney or Pixar cartoon, we are marveling at confluence of these two streams. As an engineer, I spent the last decade in universities, studying polymer dynamics, iridescent beetles, chaos and chaotic mixing, pattern formation, and dynamics of complex fluids. I have continued to evolve as a poet and a writer, and my first collection of poems in English will be appear this year. My growth as a human being, my personality, has sipped from the cup of both art and technology. In this piece, I recall how a single course introduced me to themes that I find impossible to ignore now. When I met Prof. Sanil on my recent India trip, I began to rave on this course, how we talk about it all the time. Like a good professor is wont to do, he smiled, and assigned me an essay on "Art and Technology: A decade after that Humanities course".

As a nineteen year old, I had watched many movies, read a few books, attended rock concerts in and around Delhi, and I had studied at least as much science as one needs to get into IIT. The courses in humanities were required courses, and most of us picked those based on recommendations by seniors, or because our friends (or real or imaginary boyfriends/girlfriends) preferred one. I guess I was in Art and Technology course for similar reasons, helped by presence of three of my closest friends, and by the fact that we had enjoyed Prof. Sanil's course on Moral Literacy and Moral Choices. The course on ethics had introduced us to work of Aristotle, to utilitarianism and Hume, existentialism and Sartre, to Kant, to Amartya Sen's theories, and through the inevitable discussions on moral choices, it introduced us to our own perceptions and preferences.

Through the course, we learned to examine our own points of view and choices. It was as if, we became philosophers through a semester of handouts. In the last decade, I have found this knowledge handy in discussions of all kinds: social, political, cultural and technological. So in the next semester, when the professor first talked about things to be covered in Art and Technology, we wondered why we wanted to take a course that involved two weeks of watching movies, and listening to lectures about paintings or music. Art, it seemed to us, was a realm of fantasy, of senses, where taste and talent determine the appreciation and presentation of sights and sounds. We were determined to leave laws of physics outside the room when we entered a movie hall: Bollywood movies expect that from us anyway.

We use our ears (and invisible mind) to discern noise from music. When I first came to IIT, I found Rock music to be unbearable. It was nonsense and noise to me. Hindi movies had introduced me to songs based on Indian classical music, but my appreciation of Western Classical music was limited to associating it with the background score of Tom and Jerry and other cartoon series. My hostel room was next door to a friend's room whose 1000 W system blasted Metallica, U2, Guns and Roses, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin at every imaginable odd hour of the day. Another friend, who smoked anything and everything, (and was sometimes seen carrying a 'hukka' around the campus) swore by the names of Mozart, Beethoven, Bach and Brahms. Due to valiant attempts by these two and other friends, I developed a respect and taste for both forms of Western music. Yet, I never sat down to think why the Eastern and Western music was so different. So when Prof. Sanil asked us this question in class, we started saying a lot of things, hoping to hit the right answer somehow: this is a talent every engineer learns, and every manager excels in.

I still remember the discussion about role of harmony in Western music and predominance of melody in Indian classical, about differences in frequencies of basic notes in Indian and Western classical music, about the meanings of words 'raaga', 'symphony' and so on. I recall a handout that talked about how an Indian flute maker is typically an illiterate man, who goes to the jungle during a ritualized season, dries selected bamboo shoots, and pokes holes into the reed to make small or large flutes, that work marvelously.

On the other hand, in United States, a specialized company uses the most sophisticated machinery to design flutes made out of special alloys, and maintains precision in frequency, size and surface finish of holes, and sells one flute at a price that will be more than the price of all flutes an Indian flute maker sells in a lifetime. I learned about how Western musicians require "engineers" to tune their pianos, whereas just before a performance a tabla player tunes his table by hitting hammer and tightening few ropes, while a sitar player strums each chord and decides on the right one. The beauty of music, it turns out, can be recorded in terms of beauties of the notes that can be expressed a frequencies. Many physical laws are best understood by thinking of them in terms of harmonic motion, in terms of frequencies, and no wonder, CV Raman was fascinated by the physics of tabla and other musical instrumnets, for his own knowledge of "frequencies of electromagnetic waves" was crucial in his discovery of Raman effect. Next time you think about noise as an electrical engineer, or of vibrations as civil or mechanical engineer, remember a heart beat, a tap on tabla, the earthquake, and a note of Sitar are all vibrations of some kind.

While discussing music, we started talking about Rock music, about the origin of this form, why drums and guitars played a central role in evolution of sound. In past decade, I have had occasion to revisit these discussions. I visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and a museum dedicated to Bob Dylan and Hendrix in Seattle. I have read more and more about how certain musicians adopted technological advances to expand their repertoire of sounds. Dylan was heavily criticized for using an electric guitar, Pink Floyd for using light and sound for making eerie concerts and records, and Madonna for thinking the most about videos that could play on MTV.

When we begin to think about instruments, we begin to see that instruments exist in a culture; the instruments are made by artisans or technicians; instruments use wood, metal, alloy or plastic, invented by a certain age. When we begin to see the hand that shaped the tabla, when we discern that the pitch and frequency of a note we find aesthetically pleasing can be analyzed mathematically, do we loose our appreciation of melody, of sound, or music? Or do we begin to hear more than what a mere monkey would hear? How do we hear things? Isn't the sensation of music itself produced first by the banal strumming of cords (aha! from notes of a vibrating string) or from blowing air (through windpipes, creating disturbances with certain frequency and amplitude) and later isn't the appreciation itself through the chemical and electrical signals that are transported and analyzed in human auditory response system?

What are senses, and why do we sense things as beautiful, aesthetically pleasing? We began from very simple questions, and in the course, we soon reached the seemingly abstract questions: what is truth, and what is beauty? Are these abstractions? Prof. Sanil gave us another handout, this one from Chandrasekhar, the Nobel prize winning scientist most famous for his work on black holes and other 'physicsy' things. I have read several scientific texts and papers by Chandrasekhar, all written with exception clarity of concepts and dealing with challenging mathematics. Curiously enough, was interested in this question of truth and beauty, and talked about how these show up in both art and technology. Chandrasekhar is not an exception in seeking answers to these questions: as we read works by great scientists, poets and writers, we find this quest is an eternal quest. The faithful have shaped their Gods as an answer to this quest or as the means of pursuing the answer; the rational have framed theories and explanations and the creative have forged works of art that seek and show 'truth' and 'beauty'.

The quest for beauty in painting has a better documented history. It begins with the sketches made by the ancients in their caves. It evolves through the art that existed in temples and places of worship, in palaces, in folk designs. The Renaissance began when the man began to explore the possibilities of perspective, of attention to detail, of form and function. Leonardo da Vinci was like the procrastinators who abound in our midst: his paintings were incomplete, and his science was incomplete: yet what he sought was important enough, his methods were scientific enough for his time and his unfinished work was masterful enough, to survive as an inspiration to artists and scientists alike.

While I believe a handout from Prof. Sanil would delve of such things later, it seems strange to me that before we actually began discussing paintings in this course, my appreciation of artistry was limited by my ignorance. When the cave man looked at the sky, he saw bright objects; when Ancient Greeks and Indians saw them they found divinities, Ptolemy saw earth at the center of universe, Aryabhatta though of earth revolving around the sun, and we all know that Galileo and thereafter, the scientists used telescopes and other devices to learn more. It is the same sky, same objects, but the story of what we ‘see’ is also the story of human progress. In this case, technology changed how we perceived them. Yet, in his own way, Van Gogh, though a single painting on Starry Night, provided us with an image that we cannot forget. "Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are" is quite a simple nursery rhyme but for a scientist and an artist, it carries connotations that require lifetimes worth of work. ‘Seeing is believing’, and yet what we really see is determined by the manifest forms of art and technology.

For example, a two dimensional image, a photo, gives us a map of human face. A video provides sound and mobility. Three-dimensional objectification comes next: both in art and science, the leap in imagination from two to three to four dimensions, represents a giant leap in our understanding of life, universe and everything. Coming back to paintings, if you look back at the history of art and science, the question of perspective, symmetry, curvature, patterns are questions that led us to new vistas of knowledge, both of scientific and aesthetic nature (both pleasures might co-exist, without our knowing so). Through the course, we discovered the impressionists, Van Gogh and Manet, the modernists, Picasso and Dali, the medieval giants: Rapheal, Leornardo da Vinci, Micheal Angelo. In years that followed, I have slaked my thirst for their work by visiting museums in Amsterdam and New York, by reading books like Moon and Sixpence by WS Maugham, through movies.

Of late, I have figured that we need more understanding of our own, i.e. Indian art and technology, for unless we do that, we cannot understand who we are. Argumentative Indian, a book of essays by Amartya Sen, provides contexts and examples for this understanding of Indian culture, language, technology, and music, and the role of this understanding in determining our identity. Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red retraces the history of Islamic art, where the artists in Istanbul make attempts to copy the old master of Herat, who were in turn influenced by Chinese miniature artists, and yet the Islamic artists establish a love-hate relationship with sixteenth century art of Europeans. As Salman Rushdie's Enchantress of Florence acknowledges, Eastern art was a work of a team, any sculpture, any painting, was attributed to a team: in the Western world, individuals got the honor.

In the course, we had explored questions about how our knowledge of the artist influences our perception of his work, and if should be so. The questions of what is art and what is not, what is communal and what is personal, of who is an artist, and ‘art for arts sake’, of what is taboo and what is revolutionary, resonated in the class. These questions were asked in the same vein as questions about what is a fact, what is truth as opposed to perceived truth, what is knowledge? Be it Pamuk's novel or Einstein's biography, we find these questions intact.

The seeming distance between art and technology disappears when you read great works of literature. The description of architecture, and its history in The Hunchback of Notradame by Victor Hugo, the details about whale hunt and whale industry in Moby Dick by Melville, the thesis on art and science of paper making in Lost Illusions by Balzac, or description of vogue scientific knowledge in War and Peace by Tolstoy, is apt as scientific and artistic writing. The great German poet, Goethe wrote a treatise on color science, while Vladimir Nabokov (of Lolita fame) collected and cataloged butterflies all his life. Even with nineteenth century equipment, maestro scientists like Rayleigh and Plateau perceived laws of physics hardly perceptible to the human eye. Robert Hooke's Micrographia shows the level of his skill as a sketcher: after several buildings in London burned down, he provided sketches for builders, based on his own memory. The mathematician Lewis Carol created a wonderland for Alice, a doctor Chekhov turned in on good story after another to feed himself, while treating poor patients for free.

The influence of art on technology and vice versa, is apparent in naming of things: to call an allotrope of carbon as buckminsterfullerene acknowledges contribution of Buckminster Fuller to the designing of geodesic dome. High speed photography, including splashing droplets or images of sportsmen in action, required innovations from Harold Edgerton in MIT: a professor ended up transforming how everything that happens in a fraction of second is captured, observed and understood. His images are hung in galleries and museums and are printed in journals and textbooks of science.

Cinema is a grand medium for simultaneously showcasing the latest innovations in art and technology: in the class, when we watched Battleship Potemkin or Citizen Kane or Pather Panchali or Pyscho, we discussed some aspects of cinema that have ever reverberated in my thinking. What is a long shot, a close-up, the interplay of color and shadows, of what is captured in a frame and what is left out: if my love for cinema is like that of a protagonist from Cinema Paradiso, this course introduced me to a different level of appreciation. The questions we asked while looking at a painting, or while hearing a song, or while discussing relation of "art" and "audience" are all uncorked simultaneously before us in cinema. Perhaps the mixing of several arts and technologies, limits our appreciation of each individual ingredient, but when we pay little more attention, the mind picks out sight, sound, poetry, story, and emotion separately; and then as one.

The curious aspect of thinking about art and technology in the same room or together is that soon the spectrum of colors that fill our world, seems to come from a single streak of light. It becomes increasingly obvious that it is a drop of human intellect or mind or sensibility, that acts as the prism, which creates an explosion of colors. Or maybe not, maybe the rainbow exists, even if we don't know why it does? Why do we need to know how the rainbow forms, and why are we attracted to it? Are we seeing the same rainbow that our forefathers saw? But each rainbow we see is different from any rainbow that anyone else sees. But rainbow represents something. Is the rose a rose a rose? Eco's Name of the Rose leads us through labyrinths of such questions. Meanwhile the Hindi or Sanskrit word for rainbow is Indradhanush: again a bow, but of Rain God (rather than the English rain bow, we have rain god's bow in Hindi), whereas the French call it arc-enciel, or the colored arc and the Slovene word is mavrica, meaning a multicolored arch of color. In Slovene, mavrica is a feminine word as opposed to masculine Indradhanush. Most poets write about the blue sky, but humanity waited till late nineteenth century to find out why the sky is blue! While Lord Rayleigh was quite right about role of scattering in making the sky blue, he got the explanation for the color of sea wrong, and while Raman found the answer to this question, we know now that sky is not blue for all organisms, for perception of color itself depends upon biological optics.

It is, as if, what we see is not enough; there is more to it then we first notice. The Upanishads proclaim that sensory perception is lowest form of perception, and a yogi transcends this sensory perception, and of course, Gods transcend all knowledge and need for perception. We go through levels of perception, using sense (indri), reason (vivek), mind (buddhi) and aatam. So be it, the questions of what constitute truth and beauty, lead us to science, arts and religion, and the seeking makes us human beings who exist in a particular space-time. How do we become aware of our "space time", how do we become better beings, design better machines, create better art, and what does ‘better’ mean anyway?

Tracing Michael: Over the Years

Aditya Kumar — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 18:45:25 EDT

Back in 1996, one day in the school, a friend told me he had a couple of stickers for the Dangerous tour. What was that, I asked. It was Michael Jackson touring India and I would be stupid not to know it, I was told. The tour was called "The Dangerous Tour". Oh, Michael Jackson. I thought his best song was "Black and White" or something but it was the grooviest thing I had ever heard and had fallen in love with the video, especially because it showed an Indian girl doing Bharatanatyam with Jackson in the middle of the road.

For a boy who didn't know the difference between "Black and white" and "Black or white", it must taken some convincing to do, that this friend eventually gave one sticker to me. It was a prized possession. After much thought, I pasted it on the back of an address book which I was sure I would use forever (The "Black and/or White" confusion was because Philips electronics had used the song jingle and conveniently called it, well, "Black and White", for promoting their colorless television set on radio).

Then in 1998, an uncle who had studied in the IIT while graduating to Jackson's music came to visit us. When he agreed to buy me a music cassette while checking out some music at the local store, my hands went to Michael Jackson's Dangerous. He told me not to go for it. If he were to buy me one, it would be Thriller. I resisted it (because I had never heard of Thriller and I did not want this chance to go waste by letting him buy me something I did not know about). Eventually he had me convinced that it'd be a sin to choose Dangerous over Thriller. That was my first MJ tape.

Then, three years later, one day I went to my best friend's house. He had an impressive music collection and we had evolved to mp3s. In his CD rack, I found the audio CD of Dangerous. Not willing to lose it this time, I told him that I was taking it home. It had songs I had long wanted to hear. It also had "In the Closet", which was and remains, till this day, the sexiest song I have ever listened to. The video with Naomi just adds another dimension to it.

Shortly thereafter, in Indore during my first few days of graduation, I met Devashish Bhatt. Quite simply, he was the greatest fan of MJ I have ever met. While discussing music one evening, I told him that "Stranger in Moscow" was a song I wish I could listen to more often. My Sony Walkman was playing UB40's "Can't help falling in love". Dev sang the first four lines of "Stranger in Moscow" for me and then offered a deal - we could swap what our "Walkmen" were holding. So this way, I ended up with the Blood on the Dance Floor tape that had "Stranger in Moscow" and Dev had his UB40 with a host of other cheesy love songs in the "Now that's what I call Love!" tape.

I was not very generous to Dev in our future dealings. I ended up taking the History Part 1 & 2 tapes and never giving them back.

Then in 2001, in Pune, I met Pushkar Krishna, my room mate's brother. Impressed by my knowledge on books and music, he took me one day to the infamous Fergusson College road. After a bulk of books and tapes that we carried home, he put a smile on my face by a simple gesture that I remember vividly till this day. He gifted to me Invincible - MJ's last album.

From my perspective, the best part was that MJ's music always found a way to get to me. Call it luck, but it just happened. I never tried hard. I never had to.

I graduated to Michael Jackson much later than I should have. But it happened. I traced his music back and forth. In this journey of music, I have met very few people of my generation who actually knew what Michael Jackson was all about -- for mine is a generation that has seen Michael Jackson as a fading star. What a pity would it be for those people who now are left wondering, having seen Michael Jackson for the first time on the front page of the newspapers yesterday, in his death. Would he be greater to them in death than when he was alive? Would they ever know what he was all made of? Would they realize the gravity of this loss?

Does someone see the irony in this?

Poetry: one eye on the road, one ear on the radio

temporal — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 12:08:03 EDT

photo courtesy spiegel online

the man who claimed
he lived on planet Michael
has moved there

one eye on the road, one ear on the radio
one eye on M and N, one ear on ms. G
do not ask me about the third eye!
cardiac arrest - rushed to hospital
and pronounced dead
somewhere between I-190 and QEW

between intermittent showers
and a thunderstorm
the visibility drops to ten feet
and at 70 MPH the faith is suddenly restored
as drivers slow down, pull over and hope
others on the crowded highway do the same

and i reminisce about the countless roads
and highways we traversed over past weeks
accompanied by ever helpful ms. Gerwin
Nawab and M

the road of life and the road to life
can be short or long

HuangPuTangJiaWan Lu
a small alley, not even a lane
down near the Lupu bridge
or long like the Yonge Street here
in Guinness at 1896 kms

fifty is neither young nor old
but just enough
to leave one's mark

the dead are free
living we assign regrets
- even to the dead

he lived and loved his way
disregarding norms
and left memories strewn
all over earth's moonscape