Its wonderful to open a day with some beautiful music. The last month has been has been heated up on the debate of nepotism after the suicide of Sushant Singh Rajput - a young Indian actor with a short career in the Hindi film industry. Subsequently, the entire film industry has begun to reflect, reorient and rethink their relationship and terms of engagement with the industry as well as its production and consumption. One of the most interesting moves I observed was by a very young Delhi-based vocalist Maithili Thakur who runs a YouTube channel of her own, where she sings for her audiences rendering classical, folk and sometimes Bollywood song covers. In support of the debate, she announced on her channel her decision to not sing any Bollywood songs henceforth. Her action was soft, generous and compelling, giving way to so much folk, and classical music that often doesnot reach the audiences in the opacity of Bollywood. Moreso, Bollywood has begun to claim its territory in laying claim to their production and disallowing people to make it their own by any means of reproducing and making their own versions. Such acts infringe, today, copyright laws and are subject to legal action. Smaller, competent artists who often draw ideas from these large institutions (like music companies and production houses) for their everyday survival feel threatened today. Maithili - the young singer (who has earlier participated in a TV singing show) found her way out taking pleasure and solace in limiting her self to classical and folk songs from around. It is here that I began to think of the how a classic liberates itself from authorship and gets assimilated within the everyday.
There are clearly two attitudes to the "classical". The first always tries to fight the classical, which has consolidated itself into a tradition, and becomes the benchmark and yardstick for evaluating aesthetic taste within a culture. Newer productions are often judged in the background of these, and often such basis of comparisons are dismissed and denied in order to make place for the "new". The second attitude is to reach towards this classical, to become as perfect as the work of art that has been set in history. To be sure, the "classic" here is a certain state of pleasure that everyone ought to become sensitive to, or rather experience. It is a function of high taste, and connoisseurship to be able to even appreciate and enjoy these forms. Two problems arise here. First, the presumed intellectual inaccess to this "craft" and second, its association subsequently with "class" (hence classic) that becomes an easy critique of the classical. In any civilization, the "classical" work of art is assumed to have been produced through a an act of patronage by the upper class - one that also enjoys its own place in history because of its economic privilege and the one that sustains culture through economic support. The "classical" is assumed to be desirable for it could become a symbolic means for appropriation of class through adoption of taste. However, when seen as a pursuit of the individual who want to transcend the earlier boundaries of any craft, the dimension of class doesnot necessarily stand legitimate. What I mean to say is that a fine artist would still produce something far more sophisticated even if the patronage was not available. Ghalib, the poet, who for a very long time did not receive any audience because of the profound intellectual depth and craft of his work. (One could still say that the institutionalization of their histories do bring them cultural privilege through discourse, which works towards their validation). But in addition, since these works require a heightened engagement of the intellect - those which may be enjoyed in the luxury of absence of survival exigencies - they are often relegated from direct assimilation in everyday life, and distanced from the popular or folk. In other words, to understand these would require some effort to get into the knack of the artistic innovation in them. This is necessarily a disciplinary aspect. The everyday consumers, whom we often call the "laymen" find themselves drifting faraway from the classic because they often do not have the same luxuries to afford the investment in these arts. Often thus, they turn to create something of another order for pleasure in their cultural life.
The bigger point however regarding any "classic" is the fact that it now belongs to no one. Classical songs, for example do not necessarily claim any territory through copyright laws. Classics attain the status of a theorem in a society, available to all. Most classic songs emerge from folk traditions - which have been sustained through patronage. Would this not be important to recognize before labelling them to belong to a class. What I am essentially proposing is this: that classics do not necessarily belong to a class, but must also be considered i within the private domain of its creators, where they are building up a way of appreciation irrespective of class patronage. Such a personal engagement makes us realise the unique potential of art that takes shape through the medium of the artist. Much of these classics were produced in an environment of healthy exchange of cultural ideas, where the notion of authorship was submitted towards pushing the limits of craft itself. However, in the absence of the modern day legal framework, these never bounded themselves to be not reproduced. Today, as Maithili decided only to sing classical tunes from the past, there is no way she can reproduce the original, rather, render in her own way. The classical, thus reduced to certain principles, becomes a much sustainable framework. This dissolution of authorship in the formulation of the classical must be recognized. On the other hand, in order for something to become classic, its access must not be limited, rather widened. In our cultural practice, the generosity of exchange and reproduction must be valued. Modern modes of art making privilege the rejection of the past, and avoid reproduction. The act of copying is considered profane.
In eastern cultures, for example, copying and reproduction has remained the principal way of passing knowledge. We can not say these have not evolved, or have not been critical. Rather, the evolution of these crafts have been so subtle that it becomes extremely difficult to trace the moment of shift. Chinese paintings, for example are taught through the tenet of rigorous reproduction. Indian miniatures were a well oiled guild system where there were specialists to make each stage of painting. Similarly, Hindustani and Carnatic classical music depended on a tradition of riyaz, where repetition was a means for sustained meditation - a process through which one could forget, and even forego authorship to the discipline itself. These aspects of one's engagement with one's art are often completely overshadowed in their evaluation as feudal. The modern society dubs these practices of the past as those that are patriarchal, shaping under a clear hierarchy of the master. What was relevant however, in this hierarchy was the privileging of the craft rather than its consumption. To be sure, have hierarchies not existed even today, those which have merely translated into the economic order? To critique the past in this light of its feudal hierarchies seems shallow. Yet, this is not to say that access to the guru, and therefore the art was not an issue. (It certainly ways, seen in the fables of Eklavya or even the recent filmic adaptation of Katyar Kaljyat Ghusli.) However, what these tales tell us, essentially, is that perhaps that unacknowledged learning was a threat, for the guru may not be aware of the critical orientation of the silent learner. The criticality of passing of art was embedded in the practice of copying itself - one that needs to be recognized and unpacked. Copying, in the logic of capitalism has reduced itself merely to reproduce pleasure at first sight, whereas, perhaps, in the past, the mode of copying carried with it, its own critical component, enmeshed in the diversified instructions and observations of the teacher.
The pressure of the original and anxiety of reproduction in the cultural sphere has kept me disturbed for a very long time. The poet and literary critic Harold Bloom has a sharp analysis called 'The Anxiety of Influence' that articulates these ideas within the context of some renaissance works of literature. It opens up a discussion on the moral foundations of cultural production, and makes worthwhile arguments. It is only imperative that we do not outrightly reject "classics" as productions of class societies, rather acknowledge their cultural values. However, there may be several more dimension to the production of value towards the making of a classic that must be investigated with more time and patience. What I do appreciate is the ease with which classics are able to lend us the means for contemporary cultural production. And for now, I will leave it at that.
