Can atheists become carnatic music maestros?

Listening to the South Indian classical music--carnatic music--was a serious passion among most elders in the extended family.  Appreciation of the music came quite naturally to me and I was beginning to get really good in recognizing the ragas even from the first couple of notes.  It was wonderful until ... I started questioning religion.

Carnatic music is built around religion.  Rare is a composition that is not about any one of the Hindu gods.  For all purposes then this classical music is also devotional music. To borrow a word from Christianity, it was ecclesiastical. 

Into my teenage years, as I started questioning religion, the agnosticism spilled over into the appreciation of this music as well.  I suppose I was consistent in my approach in questioning whether one could be into the music without being in the religion.

I was provided with a wonderful real example of this puzzle--following some of controversies related to the musician KJ Yesudas.  Born into a Catholic family, Yesudas took up carnatic music and was a student of one of the most accomplished musicians.   Yesudas' involvement with this Hindu music drew ire from the Catholic religious leaders, who even threatened him with excommunication.  The Catholic logic was that by singing bhajans and carnatic music compositions in temples, Yesudas was straying far away from the monotheism of Christianity.  The excommunication never happened, but all those developments made me think that much more about religion and carnatic music even as I was questioning the concept of "god" itself.

In fact, one of the compositions by Thyagaraja clearly lays out the relationship between carnatic music and devotion:

Sangeetha gnanamu Bhakthi vinaa,  San margamu  kaladhe , Oh Manasa
(The knowledge of music, without devotion (bhakthi) is not the right path, oh mind)

The lyrics further note that this music is a mode of worship. 

The more I moved away from religion--not merely Hinduism, but any religion and god--the more I was naturally disconnecting from this classical music as well. 

Over the decades, I have pretty much lost any interest in carnatic music, and it is only the intellectual curiosities about the music that remain within me.  Every time I visit India, which is almost always in December, I am often presented with opportunities to think about this question of bhakthi in carnatic music--it is also in December that Chennai hosts the huge music festival, and there are programs on television as well.  One of the TV programs features Q/A sessions with musicians.  Without fail, there is always a question about the role of bhakthi in the music, and every musician who has taken that question emphasizes that without bhakthi there cannot be any music.  It is like listening to baseball players responding to questions when you know exactly what their response is going to be. 

A few months ago, I was talking with a cousin and her husband about religion and god, and I laid out this aspect of carnatic music--she is heavily into it.  I wondered if ever there would ever be a secularization of carnatic music. A reformation of sorts.  She seemed intrigued!

The bhakthi is so strong that a jazzy improvisation that Susheela Raman does in her sultry voice with a carnatic classic, nagumomu, might be considered blasphemy. (Maybe I ought to ask for that cousin's opinion here.)



Oh well ... as much as an atheist that I am, one of my favorite pieces from music in this part of the world drips with religion all the way: Handel's Messiah.



All across the world, literature and the arts grew within religious frameworks.  Camille Paglia has often made this point, and she has done that with her usual vast knowledge and clarity.  A confirmed atheist, Paglia points out, and I am in complete agreement with her, that the works that resulted from this framework have been phenomenal, both in quantity and quality.

To fully appreciate world art, one must learn how to respond to religious expression in all its forms. Art began as religion in prehistory. It does not require belief to be moved by a sacred shrine, icon, or scripture. Hence art lovers, even when as citizens they stoutly defend democratic institutions against religious intrusion, should always speak with respect of religion. Conservatives, on the other hand, need to expand their parched and narrow view of culture.

Like her, despite (or because of) my atheistic beliefs, I too worry that in education we don't emphasize enough a deep understanding of religions.  Paglia goes one more step and writes:

Great art can be made out of love for religion as well as rebellion against it. But a totally secularized society with contempt for religion sinks into materialism and self-absorption and gradually goes slack, without leaving an artistic legacy.

Maybe someday there will be a body of secular carnatic music that was borne out of the rebellion against Hinduism?  You think?  Nah!

Why write books? Another form of orgasm?

I remember reading a few years ago (age is catching up--can't recall where I read this!) the author noting that there is a book within every person and most of us need to know how to make sure the book stays there and never comes out.  Yet, people write books and most of them are awful.

The NY Times' Bill Keller writes (ht):

Writers write them for reasons that usually have a little to do with money and not as much to do with masochism as you might think. There is real satisfaction in a story deeply told, a case richly argued, a puzzle meticulously untangled. (Note the tense. When people say they love writing, they usually mean they love having written.) And it is still a credential, a trophy, a pathway to “Charlie Rose” and “Morning Joe,” to conferences and panels that Build Your Brand, to speaking fees and writing assignments.

Writing books for self-satisfaction seems more like a polite way of how I refer to most of the book writing that is done within the ivory towers: onanism of the intellectual and literary types!  May produce satisfaction and alter oxytocin levels in the person, but that is all.

Speaking of books written by academics, it would be lovely if professors who list books in their vitas also identified in their annual reports how many copies of the book were sold to buyers other than university libraries.  Most academic journal articles are rarely ever read, and I would hypothesize that most academic books are bought only by university libraries, and then the books gather dust on the shelves.

Full disclosure: I have never written a book, and have no plans to write one--at least for now :) 
I have pretty much stopped reading books by academics too.  Most books are nothing but fluff, and if there is a nugget of wisdom in them, well, it would have been published as a journal article a few years prior to the publication of the book itself.  A 15-page essay almost always contains everything that we would want to know from that 300-page book, and I way prefer the 15-pager.  But then most academic journal articles are also crap--nothing but intellectual onanism.

Now, a collection of Calvin and Hobbes cartoons is a book you ought to own :)

Mumbai terror yet again reveals the difference between India and the US

I was reminded of one of my posts from almost a couple of years ago where I had excerpted from the prolific Pankaj Mishra:

India may have been passive after the Mumbai attacks. But India has not launched wars against either abstract nouns or actual countries that it has no hope of winning or even disengaging from. Another major terrorist assault on our large and chaotic cities is very probable, but it is unlikely to have the sort of effect that 9/11 had on America.
This is largely because many Indians still live with a sense of permanent crisis, of a world out of joint, where violence can be contained but never fully prevented, and where human action quickly reveals its tragic limits. The fatalism I sense in my village may be the consolation of the weak, of those powerless to shape the world to their ends. But it also provides a built-in check against the arrogance of power — and the hubris that has made America’s response to 9/11 so disastrously counterproductive.

 How counterproductive?  Like so:

Afghanistan.
     Iraq.
          Pakistan.
               Yemen.
                    Libya.
                         Somalia.

And counting :(

Two simple words for "state sponsored terrorism"

Why did you ever retire, oh Bill Watterson? :(

What would George Orwell say about Facebook?

Exactly one word, and ever fewer and fewer words ... ending up with "like" .... (source)

You call it murder. But, that is the market regulating the brother supply.

Wyatt Cenac explains the "creationists" and "evolutionists" beliefs underlying the debate on debt and taxes.

The Daily Show - Dancing on the Ceiling - Tax Cut Religion
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

I received my first real hate mail. Not pleasant :(

I am by now used to put-me-downs, sarcastic comments, faculty and administrative colleagues behaving unprofessionally and unethically towards me .... but never have I been a target for hate mail.

Until now, that is.

An email I received tells me that someone was ticked off with one of the two newspaper columns that I wrote based on my Ecuador experiences.  I have reproduced verbatim the message in that email:

 Fuck you, nigger.  You are a vestige of my evolutionary past and deserve to be extinct.  Your race and the aboriginal savages of Ecuador have contributed nothing to the modern world.  You filth have no "heritage."  The Europeans did not believe the equator was in the Mediterranean.  You are a revisionist historian that has to resort to lies and trickery to mask the fact that everything that we hold dear, everything that we cherish, everything that separates us from the apes is the culture of the white race.  Universities and the Ph.D curriculum taught in them was devised by whites.  Electricity, pharmaceuticals, politics & democracy, synthetics, cars, computers & the internet, space travel & astronomy, etc. etc. is European cultural heritage.  Do a google search on "Norman Borlaug."  This one white saved your race from extinction.  If it wasn't for him, most of India and China's population would have starved off.  And how do you thank whites for saving billions?  Lies and slander.  Fuck you, filth.  You belong in a mud hut, starving to death, like most Indians.  For crying out loud, 65% of the population of Ecuador is MESTIZO-- mixed European and aborigine.  And now we se this regression in humanity, backwards, into an earlier mental and behavioral level.  Go practice your OWN heritage.  Starve to death.  Good riddance, nigger scum.

Life is a mixed bag, I suppose. Not rainbows all the time :(

What a terror act looks like?

Like this, as a result of what is suspected to be coordinated terrorist attacks in Mumbai

More coverage here

Given that the independence days of India and Pakistan are a month away, I worry that it will be one godawful few weeks ahead :(

The unemployed are not merely "a statistic"

Joseph Stalin notoriously commented that the death of an individual is a tragedy but when millions died, well, it is merely a statistic.  So, he didn't care a shit about killing by the millions, and inflicting suffering on millions more. A side effect of big numbers that Stalin, unfortunately, grasped well.

Here in the US, we are understanding what big numbers can do in terms of rendering them as mere statistics.  It is insane that we don't have big time political discussions, debates, and even protests over the continuing high unemployment levels and the stalled job creation in the private sector.  9.2 percent unemployed has become a statistic. You include the discouraged workers who have simply stopped looking for work, and those who are underemployed, this shoots into north of 20 percent! 

In a WSJ op-ed, Princeton's Alan Blinder calls this "a national jobs emergency.:"

sitting by passively is no longer acceptable. In fact, it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment of the American work force. Isn't that unconstitutional?

The unemployed are not mere statistics.  These are real people with real, and huge, challenges.  Catherine Rempell at Economix presents a letter from one such real person:

Dear Ms. Rampell,
I read with interest your recent column, ‘The Unemployed Somehow Became Invisible’ (July 9).
I am unemployed. I am not a statistic. I am not one of fourteen-plus million. I am me. I have a life. When authors use such big numbers, it’s easy for us unemployed to feel invisible.
I am a community relations professional with 20 years of combined experience in nonprofit, health care and higher education. I’ve had a lot of successes and am respected by colleagues and others with whom I’ve worked and/or collaborated. I’ve had several interviews and been one of two or three finalists. So why hasn’t anyone offered me a job yet?
I spend my day writing and rewriting my resume, customizing cover letters, calling friends and contacts, networking, taking classes, and editing my LinkedIn profile. Job hunting is more than a full-time job. I spend seven days a week several hours a day on my computer, far more time than the average person in a 9 to 5 job. But I have no union to protect me and I don’t earn a paycheck like people with real jobs.
I’ve heard that the longer one is unemployed, the harder it is to secure a new job. “Your skills get soft.” “You lose touch with your connections.” At least that’s what ‘they’ say.
I try to remain philosophical. You know, ‘the right job will come along at the right time.’ I keep my interview suits clean and pressed. I make regular visits to my hairdresser and get the occasional manicure. I am fortunate insofar as I am surrounded by people who care about me and continue to support me throughout this journey.
I remember back to a project that my daughter did. She was in sixth grade and had to ‘spend’ one million dollars. Boy was that hard! With that project I learned that one million is a really big number, too big to truly comprehend. Fourteen-plus million is even bigger.
I don’t want to be one of fourteen-plus million anymore. I want to be thought of by columnists and law makers as me. And I believe that there are fourteen-plus million more just like me. Because of that, we – you – need to think about unemployment one person at a time. Me, Mike, Bruce, Pam, Audrey, Arlene, Bob, and the others. And then I need a job and so do they.
Thank you.
–Tina Friedman

Fourteen million Tinas, and counting :(

Richard Feynman, I hardly knew ye :(

I could not have started my day any better, it feels like.

Freeman Dyson, whose essays in the NYRB are always ones I look forward to, has a wonderful piece on Richard Feynman, while reviewing two biographies of that phenomenal thinker as a person (ht).  Dyson, a gifted and  accomplished polymath himself, writes that perhaps "Richard Feynman is rising to the status of superstar" among the worldwide masses of non-physicists, similar to the standing that Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking have.

I loved Dyson's summary of Feynman's picture of the classical and quantum layers of nature.  It is amazing how these gifted folks are able to narrate complex scientific ideas to those of us whose intellectual abilities are way, way down the ladder.  Dyson writes:

Feynman’s picture of the world starts from the idea that the world has two layers, a classical layer and a quantum layer. Classical means that things are ordinary. Quantum means that things are weird. We live in the classical layer. All the things that we can see and touch and measure, such as bricks and people and energies, are classical. We see them with classical devices such as eyes and cameras, and we measure them with classical instruments such as thermometers and clocks. The pictures that Feynman invented to describe the world are classical pictures of objects moving in the classical layer. Each picture represents a possible history of the classical layer. But the real world of atoms and particles is not classical. Atoms and particles appear in Feynman’s pictures as classical objects, but they actually obey quite different laws. They obey the quantum laws that Feynman showed us how to describe by using his pictures. The world of atoms belongs to the quantum layer, which we cannot touch directly.
The primary difference between the classical layer and the quantum layer is that the classical layer deals with facts and the quantum layer deals with probabilities. In situations where classical laws are valid, we can predict the future by observing the past. In situations where quantum laws are valid, we can observe the past but we cannot predict the future. In the quantum layer, events are unpredictable. The Feynman pictures only allow us to calculate the probabilities that various alternative futures may happen.
The quantum layer is related to the classical layer in two ways. First, the state of the quantum layer is what is called “a sum-over-histories,” that is, a combination of every possible history of the classical layer leading up to that state. Each possible classical history is given a quantum amplitude. The quantum amplitude, otherwise known as a wave function, is a number defining the contribution of that classical history to that quantum state. Second, the quantum amplitude is obtained from the picture of that classical history by following a simple set of rules. The rules are pictorial, translating the picture directly into a number. The difficult part of the calculation is to add up the sum-over-histories correctly. The great achievement of Feynman was to show that this sum-over-histories view of the quantum world reproduces all the known results of quantum theory, and allows an exact description of quantum processes in situations where earlier versions of quantum theory had broken down.

It was neat to read this especially because a couple of weeks ago I read the interview with Leonard Susskind, whose string theory ideas attempted to provide a unified theory of physics and nature.  Too bad that Scientific American has this behind a subscriber wall!

Dyson's essay comes at a time when we are marking another important milestone in science and technology that also, in a way, introduced Feynman in a big way to the American public and the world--his work with the committee that inquired into the causes for the space shuttle Challenger to explode moments after liftoff.  Here we are having witnessed the final launch of the spaceshuttle, and after Atllantis returns, the space shuttle program will end.  Feynman's simple demonstration of the failure of the "O-ring" when exposed to icy conditions is legendary.  Dyson writes that Feynman was critical of the political culture at NASA that vastly overestimated the safety and success of the spaceshuttle.

The second opportunity to educate the public concerned the culture of NASA. Feynman wrote an account of the cultural situation as he saw it, with the fatal division of the NASA administration into two noncommunicating cultures, engineers and managers. The political dogma of the managers, declaring risks to be a thousand times smaller than the technical facts would indicate, was the cultural cause of the disaster. The political dogma arose from a long history of public statements by political leaders that the Shuttle was safe and reliable. Feynman ended his account with the famous declaration: “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”

A profound statement that "nature cannot be fooled."  It is not merely about physics, of course.

I was a first year graduate student at USC when Feynman died.  Shift the time-line a tad, I would have had enjoyed a talk of his at Caltech. But then time flows only in one direction and "nature cannot be fooled."

Cartoon of the day: Obama's wars

Why Somalia, you ask?  Because:

A U.S. drone aircraft fired on two leaders of a militant Somali organization tied to al-Qaeda, apparently wounding them, a senior U.S. military official familiar with the operation said Wednesday. ...
The airstrike makes Somalia at least the sixth country where the United States is using drone aircraft to conduct lethal attacks, joining Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq and Yemen.