What is the 'nature' of these two forms of music? What do they cater to? What are their 'characteristics'? So have tried to capture my own understanding as best I could.
Western Classical Music
Yes, Western music is based on harmony. Many notes, patterns, frequencies woven together into an intricate, beautiful fabric. The strings setting the texture, the leads setting the colors, the beats deciding their distribution. And all the related instruments adding their own flavour to the mix. Its like riding a roller coaster ride on a wave created by the genius of someone's mind. The descents, the crescendos, the unexpected glides..The mind is thrilled - it throws up past memories, experiences. You revel in your past, and hence the possibilities the future can bring. Inspiration, anger, sorrow, infatuation, pain - the possible experiences are endless. It is like a grand dish made up of a 100 spices, each contributing its own flavor. At the least, you can identify and enjoy 10, some others 50, and the very nuanced ears 90 maybe. As with any art form, the more subtle your mind is, the more you can perceive from the same art-work, and the more you can appreciate and enjoy. It is an ode to the mind, what it can achieve. A grand celebration. After you have savored the dish, the testing criteria is how long your mind will remember it, hold on to it, be attached to it. Time is the benchmark. And if you want to relive that experience, the exact SAME dish needs to be served again. In the exact same proportion. No experimenting, no big deviations - else you risk spoiling the composition. So precision, accuracy, true reproduction, diligence are needed.
Indian classical Music - The boredom and the outcomes
Indian classical music is completely different. 'Opposite of Western classical' comes close but is not accurate - since they are on separate dimensions. It is of course about melody. Where a single sound(vocal or instrumental) goes on for hours. The mind tries to catch the music, grasp it, relate to it, make SENSE of whats going on!!! "Which pattern is this?", "What can I compare it with?", "What does it remind me of?". But no answers are forthcoming. The mind tries to comprehend the slow procession of notes that for the most part, they all sound the same anyway!
The mind genuinely tries its best to grasp the present, but it slips like sand through its fingers. Eventually - the mind is left with 2 choices: To give up in frustration, or surrender without expectations.
Giving up: The common choice
The mind does what it does commonly when frustrated with itself: It projects. It blames the art form itself. The mind then looks for validation and it finds a lot of support. People like them who have tried and failed. It cannot be them, it has to be the art-form itself. It is something meaningless, that makes no sense. Some are 'humble' enough to admit that it is only for those who are trained in Indian classical music. But in the end, it is about the mind looking for justifications to give up. It gets support, the theory becomes a fact - it is happy. Which is not bad at all!
Surrender: The interesting eventuality
But sometimes an interesting thing happens. The mind is tired, but faith does not give up. It consoles the mind to accept its limitation and surrender. The mind now does not project or look for an art-form or a generation or elitists to blame - becoming even more agitated in the process. It becomes silent. And in that silence, the real music is born.
Discovering Indian Classical Music
The music is not about the notes(the mind) at all. It is what happens in between them, in that silence. Where the mood, the feel entire song rests upon what will come next - will it be a shuddha Ma or a Teevra Ma? Will the dominant note be Dha or Ga? It permits some mischief as well. What if I decide to stress on some other note as long as it is not 'aesthetically' wrong? Its ok! These rules of aesthetics are a few, based on some concrete scientific principles, but the nuances are in millions. So many, that is impossible to capture all possible 'dishes'. At the most, we can provide some fixed spices(The jaati, the thaat of the raag, the notes) and then create something out of it. Every dish is then a new dish. It cannot be 'Bhimsen's Darbari' or a 'Rashid Khans Yaman'. If it is, it is bad music. It has to be singer's Yaman. But even the singer will sing Yaman differently every time. So the Yaman has to be of the moment! It depends on the mood of creation in the present. Time or recollection-ability cannot be the measuring stick. You surrender, create, allow the manifestations to happen, and leave. The moment you try to hold on or "by heart" to one particular manifestation, you will lose the ability to create more! Precision, accuracy of notes, and hence the needed hard-work is of course needed in this case. But it is more important to understand the Raag as a whole. Understand the underlying potential of the patterns that can be woven. Rather than 'recording' the pattern s themselves. You are at a much 'deeper' level.
Is theoretical knowledge needed to enjoy Indian classical music?
Does this mean the listeners have to know all all these intricacies of surs, thaats and jaatis? Absolutely not. Do you have to know the names of the spices to says that the soup at restaurant A is more interesting than the same soup at restaurant B? Of course, if you can, it becomes possible to articulate your responses, to share, to discuss. But that's secondary.
Comparing the two
If western classical is about the wave on which you ride, Indian classical is when the wave goes around you with you at the center. It is not about what you sense outside yourself, but the dissolving of the presence inside you - a meditative state. The mind's surrender being the entry fee. The dominant notes of the raag are like the water that you get inevitably sprayed with in the process. Not meant to define and constrain the experience, but just to tease your senses, to give your mind a little something to chew on. Like a pacifier for a baby - it allows it to relax and sleep. You don't get caught up in the pacifier and the technicalities. That's just a tool, to go beyond. You are not stuck in the past or the present - that's the mind's domain. You are entirely in the present, in a 'mood' determined by the pattern of the musical waves in which you are engulfed.
If Western classical are the waves, Indian classical is about the calm sea from which they are born. The sea seems silent - but yet it's mood, its tide determines whether what follows will be a wave or a Tsunami. One is about about playing with permutations of manifestations. The other is the process of creation itself.
A Raag presentation: From creation to manifestation, Soul to the mind
The progression of a Raaga presentation also seems more sensible now. The start of a raaga is with slow, extremely slow alaaps(called the Raag vistaar). This is where the mood is built, the silences are long - the accuracy of the notes, and the artists devotion determining how beautiful those silences will be. I think this is the main act - where the artist's 'mastery' comes into play. The rest is more of an opportunity for the artist to demonstrate his "skill". The silences slowly decrease, the frequency increasing, the creations moving from subtle to gross...entering from the soul to the mind's domain. A process of creation to manifestation. By the end, the mind rejoices not because of the final manifestation, but because of experience of the journey from the silent depths to the real world.
So how do we listen to a Raag?
Next time you hear a raaga, do not try to make sense of it, or read a lot about it, debate on it, compare it, define it, calibrate your musical knowledge - do not try to achieve anything. Surrender to it. Just listen to it with pure attention. You may lose thread and get distracted. That's ok. Try to minimize the distractions if possible. Do not CONCENTRATE and describe whats going on in the music or inside you - that is again your mind trying to gain control by getting into the sensing-perceiving-comparing-naming cycle. Just try to pay attention - to not get distracted. Let the music be, and do its job. Then change to some other raag. See if some different soul strings are plucked. If your mind-chatter has reduced, you will feel those plucks and the mood. But you cannot MAKE it happen. You can simply allow it.
Why take the trouble at all?
Why take the trouble to enjoy a sunset? No, you don't have to. Its simply another experience. Maybe for the day when all the commercial music sounds too repetitive. Maybe for a change. Maybe when you are stressed and your mind chatter makes it worse. Slowly, the mind layers start peeling off and the silences begin to resonate more than the notes. That is when we start appreciating Indian classical for what it really is. This is not a statement of its superiority, but of its difference. Comparing both forms would be like measuring length of a string with a measuring cup.
The article hopefully does justice to both forms of music: one being the celebration of the mind, and the other of the soul. The article does devote more space to Indian classical music - because the subtleties needed to appreciate this art-form are harder to bring out. More out of need than intention. Both are different, both are needed, both are us. In fact, both forms have to include both elements(when a piano solo plays in a western symphony, when the Raag moves on to speedy taans in an Indian classical concert) to provide completion to the creation process. The difference is in the focus, and hence their nature, and hence their effect.
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