Carnatic Confidential

CELEBRATED CARNATIC VOCALIST SANJAY SUBRAHMANYAN RECOUNTS HIS EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEY IN THIS CANDID MEMOIR

- Lakshmi Subramanian

As an art form with a limited constituency of listeners and practitioners, the celebrated December season in Chennai is much awaited by Carnatic music aficionados. Giving in to the pleasure of listening and of a shared identification as a community, the concerts have commanded respect for creativity and rigour but also invited criticism for their social exclusiveness. Practitioners have, from time to time,come forward to share their views on the social biases inherent to the way the art form evolved over the past 80 years, some making peace with it and others critiquing it for perpetuating ageold caste and gender prejudices. In putting forward this criticism, musicians have adopted different strategies. For