PadaccEdam/Lyricicide/Pronunciation (Very Long!)
Srini Pichumani
<pra...@stein1.u.washington.edu> wrote:
>
> If the artist does not want to pronounce/cannot pronounce
> words correctly, why dont we consider him/her also as a
> mediocre musician... (Music is full of melody and lyrics)
Let us take this farther ! If we pronunciation freaks
have our way, such artistes would be mercilessly flogged, or
would be made to hold lighted camphor for every mistake a la
the movie... until then, we will just wait in the wings fuming
away and doing our piss/moan/groan routine (periodically that is,
as all nature calls tend to be)
---------------------------------
Phew ! Now that I have got the bile out of my system, let me
try to calmly disabuse people of, what I consider as highly
simplistic, notions they entertain about language, sangItam,
sAhityam, pronunciation, etc... - sorry for the patronizing
tone of this sentence.
Since, in such debates, it appears as if it is a given that
Tamilians, and Tamilians alone, can't pronounce Sanskrit/Telugu/
Kannada/Swahili right, I will point out a few general observations
restricting my examples to speakers/musicians from other regions.
1. In general, Sanskrit pronunciation of most speakers shows a
marked influence of their regional languages and mother-tongues.
This is a very well-established fact in scholarly circles. One
can read up on this in the varied writings of Sanskrit/Vedic
scholars like Prof.Frits Staal, Prof.Deshpande, etc...
In my own limited observation, I have found that most Telugu speakers
pronounce the syllable "tya" with a sound close to "ccya" (ergo, no
Telugu can sing a Tyagaraja kriti right by definition ;-) ) - I have
observed this in normal speech, and in C.music, of varied people such
as my classmate Kambhampati Subbarao, our local music teacher Bhanumati
auntie, Balamuralikrishna, Nedanuri, Hyderabad brothers, and so on...
Most Telugu speakers also mix up the fricative s (as in sAgaram)
and the sibilant sh (as in shAnti or peace), and use the retroflex
L unnecessarily (as in kalA vs kaLA) - this includes the great
infallible Balamurali, and lesser mortals like Hyd brothers...
Some Telugu speakers may wax eloquent about shAstra (or shAstramu)
but most of them cannot pronounce the open vowel ending of the
first syllable "shA" correctly... they tend to pronounce it
somewhat similar to the first syllable in the name Shannon.
The influence of Malayalam on the Sanskrit pronunciation of
Keralites has been very well remarked upon by Frits Staal in
his small monograph "Nambudiri Veda Recitation". This point
is all the more noteworthy since the Nambudiris have retained
quite possibly THE MOST archaic, "authentic", Vedic traditions
and have been held in great respect on that account. And, it
is well known that the emphasis on proper pronunciation and
enunciation cannot get any more anal than in the Vedic tradition.
Recently, there was a note on the Indology list, by a graduate
student at Harvard working on the Paippalada rescension of the
Atharva Veda, relating to the typical peculiarities of Kashmiri
Sanskrit pronunciation and the problems it creates in reconstructing
the text.
Bengali pronunciation is a classic of its own :-)
2. Sanskrit words when borrowed into regional languages undergo
various phonetic changes. This again is a thoroughly established
fact e.g. "rUpa" becomes "rUpamu" in Telugu, rUp in Hind (I find
this rear end chop feature of Hindi particularly unaesthetic; of
course, the standard Mehmood parody of S.Indians reflects precisely
the opposite opinion i.e. that S.Indians use a lot of "open-ended"
words), and "uruvam" in Tamil. There is no big deal or "objective"
wrong that arises on this count - at least there shouldn't be,
speaking from a humanist viewpoint.
Thus, while Shanmukhapriya may be pronounced as such in normal
Sanskritic discourse, when it occurs in a Tamil kriti like
"saravaNa bhava" the third syllable sounds closer to the voiced "g".
When "artha" gets borrowed into Telugu, it definitely sounds like
"arda", as in "ardamu"... in Malayalam "nt" always gets changed to
"nd" even in Vedic recitation ...such "corruptions" don't seem to
bring the house down however... it is always the the Tamil case that
gets pointed out...
3. When it comes to native language pronunciation, there is no
pervasive unanimity either, due to regional, dialectual, variations
and such. In the limited context of kritis, I have asked enough
native Telugu speakers about which is right "telusukoNTi" or
"delusukoNTi", "daramA" or "taramA", "cUDa" or "jUDa", etc...
The answers in most such cases have always seemed more HUMANISTIC
than the hawkish opinions presented on the net. For example, our
neighbor in Madras, Kandaswami Naidu gAru, originally from SulurpETA,
just shrugged his shoulder, and said both are correct.
4. Another important point to consider in this whole affair - specifically
when it comes to evaluating the pronunciation of Tyagaraja kritis -
- would be the particular dialect of Telugu found in and around the
Tanjavur/Trichy districts. Prof.Sambamoorthy and others have remarked
very briefly on this topic - about its relations to Rayalaseema language
etc... We need to know more about this, hence one cannot accept
corrections, emendations, and such, of the lyric and the pronunciation
based on some woolly notions of "pure telugu", or Krishna/West Godavari Dt
lingo.
5. The use of language in musical compositions, particularly
of the highly melismatic variety like varNams, pallavis, krtis,
padams, as opposed to the simpler gItams, kIrtanas, etc, is
essentially a "meta-linguistic" use, from various viewpoints...
This is no figment of my imagination or an ad-hoc rationalization;
apart from what I have gathered by my own observations, my own
very feeble and humble attempts at singing, I have heard/read
equivalent statements to this effect from serious musical scholars
like Sangita Kalanidhi T.V.Subba Rao, Sandhyavandanam Srinivasa Rao,
Prof.P.Sambamoorthy, Sripada Pinakapani, Prof.V.V.Sadagopan etc...
For example, when you look at compositions from a combined musical
and prosodical viewpoint, there are various rhetorical devices
employed that result in AUTOMATIC padaccEdam, different points of
stress in words than what one would encounter in regular speech or
pronunciation, different and conflicting elongation values regardless
of syllable length, and other such issues that tend to throw off the
pronunciation of even a careful musician or a native speaker.
Prof.Sambamurti writes under the title PadaccEda (South Indian Music,
pg.301, Book IV, 3rd edition):
"There are many instances of songs wherein words and even proper
names have been literally dissected in order to conform to the rules
of prosody. The word or name is so split up, that the second part
is sung at the commencement of one pAda or Avarta and the first part,
at the end of the prior pAda or Avarta. This is a license that has
been enjoyed by composers from ancient times. Such splitting up,
in order to suit the exigencies of music, is found in the sAma gAna
also, wherein words are permitted to be detached and grouped to suit
the music. This splitting up of words constitutes another link
between poetry and the sAhitya of musical compositions.
The padaccEda in musical compositions, is necessitated not only by
the requirements of prosody but also by the rule that there should
be an equitable distribution of words in the sections of an Avarta"
And the Professor gives numerous instances of kritis where these
occur.
Now, Prof.V.V.Sadagopan, in an interesting article in the Journal
of the Music Academy, draws attention to the fact that Tyagaraja
kritis seem to be the most difficult to sing in this context. He
says that of the 400 kritis he looked into, of which 280 were in
Adi tAla, either in 1 kaLai or 2 kaLai, with 1/2, 3/4, and 1.5
eDuppu - more than 50% have padaccEdam because of the aRuDi i.e.
the midpoint of the tALa, or because of the Avartana end. And
there are various kritis of his in other tALas too where this is
a common feature.
What is more fascinating is that the frequency of this increases
in his later kritis. And the kriti "giripai nelakonna", which is
famous as one the last kritis of the saint, is replete with this.
So, was Tyagaraja LOSING it ???
Hardly. The fusion of word and sound, brimming with the phonoaesthetic
qualities of yati and prAsa, that the Saint wrought in his kritis
is sublime. In some sense, he seems to have intentionally broken
the tyranny of unduly tight coupling between the musical "meter" i.e.
tALa and the word flow... giving a boost to the vast rhythmic
potentials in Carnatic music. (In fact, Rangaramanuja Iyengar
faults Dikshitar on this very count by saying that entire sections
of Dikshitar kritis fall on the tALa counts, giving rise to a
certain monotony. And in a converse sort of way, a very astute
friend of mine, K.N.Raghavan, used to assert that learning Dikshitar
kritis came much much easier to him because of the even flow of
word and rhythm - of course his observation flies directly in the
face of most others' who find the melodic details of Tyagaraja
kritis much easier to learn, speaking in a general sense.)
Leaving aside padaccEdam, we have "unnatural" stresses like
"va" in dEvaki
"gE" in rangEshuDu
"dra","la" in indra nIla maNi
"ga" in ninnu vinAga mari (of Syama Sastri)
and breaks in between words due to "distance" between svaras as in
om - kAra - panjaragI - ra
bhavakeshavA - dirUpavA - savaripu
paramabhA - gavata
In fact, the flow in "jagadAnanda kAraka" is so rocky and
turbulent that it can humble most people's attempts at
understanding the lyrics on the fly, even if they hear a
perfect rendition and have an adequate vocabulary of their
own. The phrase "a nurA garA garA jita kathA sA rahita" is
enough to cause an upset stomach :-)
So what does one make of this (tyAgarAjarukku konjam pOralayO -
SRJ muses thus, rhetorically, when discussing certain petty
suggestions regarding Tyagaraja kritis... literally, it means
"was Tyagaraja not upto it ?")
The only sense I can make out of this is that you can carry
notions of "literality" only so far, and can't keep harping
on it... or else you have to settle for the EXTRA-POETIC
renditions of people wherein they dislodge the makeup of
the kriti to enhance the literality - for instance, Prof.V.V.
Sadagopan points out how unaesthetic the rendition of
raghuvara nannu maravatagunA
sounds if you change it from its setting of
raghuvara nannu ma - ravatagunA
in order to join the two parts of the last word...
or from
enduku peddala va...
to
enduku peddalavala ...
for exigencies of literality. Similar instances have been
very clearly demonstrated by Sandhyavandanam Srinivasa Rao.
Balamurali, in particular does this blatantly on occasion in
the name of preserving sAhityam and it sounds abominable - maybe
the language freaks gloat over this ... Yet, on other occasions,
he enhances the literality in a lot more subtle and thoughtful manner
which makes it very appealing.
----------------------------------------------------------------
So where does all of this leave us ? First off, one has to approach
this issue humanistically, see what needs correction, what is possible
to correct and can be done, and what will always remain somewhat iffy.
Needless to say, without getting monomaniacal on any one aspect alone,
everyone should strive to sing with all the literal, prosodical, and
phonoaeshtetic beauties intact, with a good understanding of the meaning
and bhAvam, and good pronunciation. Breath control is absolutely important
and sometimes it seems to me that it is a lack of this that makes people
remark idly that musicians don't care for sAhityam - Prof.Sadagopan
too mentions this.
For example, the kriti "OrajUpu jUcedi nyAyamA" naturally has padaccEdam
as it is set like
OrajUpu jU - cedi la
If one takes a very slight and imperceptible amount of gap between the
syllable pu and the following jU, maybe the gap that could occur in the
kArvai between jU and cedi can be avoided... while still keeping the
unduly long jU in jUcedi intact. These are however easier said than done,
naturally.
-Srini.
Vidyasankar Sundaresan
I think.
Sahitya does have its importance, but when it threatens to achieve higher
importance than other purely musical dimensions, it is time to deemphasize
its role. Sama gana does this by introducing meaningless syllables to fill
gaps, the older geetams, including Analekara in Suddha Saveri, have
"nonsense" syllables in them.
As for Jagadanandakaraka, it is impossible to split the words according to
grammatical rules if you want to maintain musical structure. Thyagaraja
seems to have composed the kriti deliberately that way - the swara
passages would make no sense otherwise. Clearly, the composer's intention
is to subordinate the sahitya to the dominant melodic structure.
A large part of why kritis by some modern composers don't cut it seems to
be because of an overdue importance being paid to sahitya. Music is made
subservient to the composer's lyrics, and the result is mediocre, at best.
Moreover, since the goal is ostensibly to create a musical composition,
these compositions are not even good poetry. A very sad state of affairs.
Vidya
Rajan P. Parrikar
Namashkar!
The pronunciation patrol is on the prowl again and what a fitting
response Srini Pichumani has given! The pronunciation purito-pundits
seem to thrive everywhere and their circle of influence circumscribes
other areas of Indian music (and life) as well. This is a more serious
problem than we think. I know of several good singers who are intimidated
by these verbal hurdles. More importantly by the fear of being laughed at
by the purito-pundits and the undermining of confidence that goes
with it. The following is an excerpt of my response some months ago
in RMIM when this issue surfaced. The context may be different but the
underlying themes are similar:-
Newsgroups: rec.music.indian.misc
Subject: On Pronunciations
Date: 23 Dec 1994 22:55:29 GMT
XYZ wrote:
>SPB has years of training and practice and experience under his belt. To
>compare his technical abilities to Kumar Sanu is a travesty. Having said
>that, I must add that his pronounciations are atrocious. The only thing worse
>than his accent and pronounciation in Hindi are when he decides to explore
>the English language. To me, THAT is like nails on a chalkboard. I heard
>him a couple of times on TV introducing a song in English and I had to really
>use a lot of willpower to not get up and leave the room to throw up.
I have some observations and questions:
1) This mleccha language which we Indians are so fond of, felicity in
which is automatically taken as an indicator of superior intelligence,
'well-readness` and what-have-you, is spoken in myriads of accents.
The Arabs, Japanese, Chinese, Iranians, Hispanics, Germans, Swedes,
Americans - all have their distinct styles. I have never felt the need
to retch on hearing any one of these varieties. Is there something
particularly assholy about the manner in which SPB speaks the mleccha
bhasha that churned your fragile stomach? (I can see you having a
partial point if he subscribed to the fake-NRI-Amrikan version (the
fakery being evident to everyone else except the speaker, but does
he?)) XYZ, when will you grow out of this pre-pubescent hang-up over
the mleccha bhasha?
2) If we can accept the diversity of the mleccha bhasha spoken by all
these peoples, why can't we demonstrate similar tolerance for a NATIVE
language spoken by different subsets of the NATIVE population in different
ways? What is so sacred about Hindi/Urdu that it must have only ONE
cast-in-iron mode of enunciation? I say, give it some space and let it
evolve among the different subgroups in desh.
I quite like SPB's peculiar Hindi pronunciation and find it to be very
charming. In Hum Aapke Hain Koun, the way he intones "Bhaiyya aur Bhabhi
ko" with the strong thrust on "Bh" makes it uniquely Balasubramanianian:-)
Rajan Parrikar
==============
email: parr...@mimicad.colorado.edu
Puduhai Sreeram
Bravo Srini. Well said.
Reg. proper-sahityam-at-any-cost-proponents : "All in All its JUSTA NOTHER brick in the wall" ;-)
-sreeram
Suresh Kolichala
Srini Pichumani made some very valid and some other not so valid
statements (IMHO) on pronunciation errors of non-tamil speakers.
Being a native telugu speaker, I would like to respond to some of
his arguments on the mispronunciation of telugu speakers.
Excerpts from Srini Pichumani's long article. (numbering is mine)
--------------------------------------------
I. In my own limited observation, I have found that most Telugu
speakers pronounce the syllable "tya" with a sound close to "ccya".
II. Most Telugu speakers also mix up the fricative s (as in sAgaram)
and the sibilant sh (as in shAnti or peace)
III. and use the retroflex L unnecessarily (as in kalA vs kaLA)
IV. Most of them cannot pronounce the open vowel ending of the
first syllable "shA" correctly...
V. When "artha" gets borrowed into Telugu, it definitely sounds
like "arda", as in "ardamu"...
VI. I have asked enough native Telugu speakers about which
is right "telusukoNTi" or "delusukoNTi", "daramA" or
"taramA", "cUDa" or "jUDa", etc... The answers in most
such cases have always seemed more HUMANISTIC than the
hawkish opinions presented on the net.
------------------------------------------
Of the above, I would consider that only II and V are valid objections.
I elaborate on the rest of his statements below.
> and use the retroflex L unnecessarily (as in kalA vs kaLA) - this
> includes the great infallible Balamurali, and lesser mortals like
> Hyd brothers...
Err... They pronounce it as kaLA, because it is written as kaLA in
telugu. Of course, kannaDigAs write this word as kala. Similarly, the
words like manjuLa, tuLasi etc. are written with retroflex in kannaDa,
whereas, telugus write it with as manjula, tulasi with dental la.
I don't know the original sanskrit pronunciations for these words, though.
> When it comes to native language pronunciation, there is no
> pervasive unanimity either, due to regional, dialectual, variations
> and such. In the limited context of kritis, I have asked enough
> native Telugu speakers about which is right "telusukoNTi" or
> "delusukoNTi", "daramA" or "taramA", "cUDa" or "jUDa", etc...
> The answers in most such cases have always seemed more HUMANISTIC
> than the hawkish opinions presented on the net. For example, our
> neighbor in Madras, Kandaswami Naidu gAru, originally from SulurpETA,
> just shrugged his shoulder, and said both are correct.
No. There is a simple set of grammar rules (associated with
ara-sunna) explaining the conversion of "ka-ca-Ta-ta-pa"s to
"ga-ja-Da-da-ba"s.
For example, the phrase "nagumOmu nu kanalEni" becomes
"nagumOmu ganalEni" by omitting the dwitIyA vibhakti pratyayam
viz., "nu". "nagumOmu nu ganalEni" is certainly wrong. Similarly,
"sogasu nu cUDa taramA" becomes "sogasu jUDa taramA".
> In my own limited observation, I have found that most Telugu
> speakers pronounce the syllable "tya" with a sound close to "ccya".
Actually, I thought that it is the other way round. Often times,
I hear the name "accyuta" being pronounced as "atyuta". But then,
there seems to be a close proximity between these two sounds, in
the acoustic sense, right ?
Also, as related to I and IV, the claim that such a lapse is
observed in _most speakers_, seems surprising.
> 4. Another important point to consider in this whole affair - specifically
> when it comes to evaluating the pronunciation of Tyagaraja kritis -
> - would be the particular dialect of Telugu found in and around the
> Tanjavur/Trichy districts. Prof.Sambamoorthy and others have remarked
> very briefly on this topic - about its relations to Rayalaseema language
> etc... We need to know more about this, hence one cannot accept
> corrections, emendations, and such, of the lyric and the pronunciation
> based on some woolly notions of "pure telugu", or Krishna/West Godavari Dt
> lingo.
I don't think this is a valid point. Once the lyrics are written
down on a paper, there is really very little ambiguity, as far as
the variations of the dialect are concerned.
With all the linguistic parlance and phontetic terminology, I think,
Srini Pichumani has been successful in imprinting the notion on the
readers that telugu pronunciation is very complex and esoteric. If it
is so difficult, why do telugu people not have any complaints about
the pronunciation of many non-telugu film singers, like Vaani Jayaraam,
Chitra, Jesudas, Lata Mangeswar etc. (Not that these singers are
impeccable in their pronunciation)...
Below I explain my personal stance on this issue:
When I listen to a song, I can't help but listen to the words. I do not
really care much about the minuatiae of pronunciations, but I feel that
regardless of singer's mother tongue, when the singer chooses to sing in
a particular language, it must be comprehensible to the native speaker
of that language. I think, that is very fair and reasonable to expect
from a professional singer.
I concur with Srini Pichumani's statements below :-
> Needless to say, without getting monomaniacal on any one aspect alone,
> everyone should strive to sing with all the literal, prosodical, and
> phonoaeshtetic beauties intact, with a good understanding of the meaning
> and bhAvam, and good pronunciation.
To add further, I do wish to see a confluence of literary and musical
intellectual streams to produce a classic blend of poetic excellence
and musical expression...
Regards,
Suresh.
sur...@bocaraton.ibm.com
PS: I will be away in India on a 3-week trip starting tomorrow. Hence,
I may not be able to respond to the any of the followups to this thread.
Any comments may be sent to my personal e-mail address also.
Srini Pichumani
>
>Err... They pronounce it as kaLA, because it is written as kaLA in
>telugu.
This reference to the written word is somewhat of a "putting the
cart before the horse"... the tendency to retroflex is far more
pervasive.
As as aside, this issue actually raises a whole can of worms,
really. People who study Sanskrit/Indo-Aryan/Indo-European in
depth have suggested that the retroflexed sounds in Sanskrit
are due to the influence of Dravidian languages - over the millenia
- while others have suggested that it is a shift in middle Indo-Aryan
itself...
But since we mostly entertain a notion of Sanskrit as a monolith,
or as a devabhAShA, etc., we tend to overlook a lot of socio-
cultural-regional linguistic issues. This would not be a problem
if the attendant corollary i.e. a certain sense of linguistic,
cultural, and other superiority, vis-a-vis other natural languages,
were thankfully absent.
>I don't think this is a valid point. Once the lyrics are written
>down on a paper, there is really very little ambiguity, as far as
>the variations of the dialect are concerned.
How about a facile counter argument like "it is all karNa parampara"
Seriously, your emphasis on the written word does not take you
too far here. If so, we should insist on the kritis having been
written by Tyagaraja himself or his immediate disciples, rather than
being "edited", and on occasion "corrected", by various folks as has
happened with the printing efforts of these kritis in this century.
In this context, I just cannot take "hyper-corrective" usages like
"prakkala nilabaDi" instead of "pakkala nilabaDi"... Various people
do this at times...if these are intended as just variations, I have
no problem.
>With all the linguistic parlance and phontetic terminology, I think,
>Srini Pichumani has been successful in imprinting the notion on the
>readers that telugu pronunciation is very complex and esoteric.
No, this was not my point at all. Variance in language pronunciation
is pervasive - that was my point, whether or not you quote grammatical
rules to that effect and "permit" it...
Also, would you insist that there is one "correct" pronunciation
for all of Telugu speech ? Certainly, one may postulate a standard
for polished/refined/educated speech, in any language, but how far
operative is it really ? Or how far would you press it ? And what
about the meta-linguistic (I insist :-)) case of speech+music ? These
are the points I want to raise for consideration...
And please, let me add that I take terminology rather seriously as
it helps to clarify one's thinking and be pointed in an argument.
For example, my use of the term "melismatic" while referring to varNams,
kritis, etc is very specific, since it best explains the melody underlying
these forms.
>>If it is so difficult, why do telugu people not have any complaints about
>the pronunciation of many non-telugu film singers, like Vaani Jayaraam,
>Chitra, Jesudas, Lata Mangeswar etc. (Not that these singers are
>impeccable in their pronunciation)...
As far as I am concerned, this is a non sequitur.
I am not going to get into a discussion of the different ends/goals/methods
of classical and film music, or comparisons/value judgements between the two
systems.
-Srini.