Interchange – The Raga Role: On Caste and Carnatic Music

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For today’s show we welcome two guests – returning to Interchange is Viren Murthy, associate professor of history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and also joining us is Annapurna Mamidipudi who is currently a Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at the The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany. They’ve co-authored a paper titled “Raga and the Problem of Ownership: Knowledge and Culture in Carnatic Music” which explores the evolution of what we might call the modernism of the classical in South Indian music and the ways the production of this form of music traces the lines of reformism within the Brahmin caste. By accepting some changes to a tradition, a hierarchy of social class can be maintained – but we’ll also discover that changes in the practice of that music from within can also challenge the exclusivity enforced by institutional structures.

One example comes from the performer of our opening song. R. Vedavalli’s practice has been to return to classical texts to reconstruct ragas through the compositions as they were sung before the twentieth century. By singing ragas in an older form and going against the grain of contemporary practice a sense of strangeness is elicited which might cause listeners to question what they understand as knowing Carnatic music.

Throughout the conversation that follows our guests focus on two primary difficulties – the constant confrontation between the so-called West and its intellectual influence on social practices and knowledge production; and the liberal progressive critique on all things ordered along caste lines. And perhaps one more problem – the pressure of technological change is ever-present.

And at the center of all this is the raga, and although there is a shared understanding of the basic framework of a raga, it changes by being constantly reproduced through practice.

Today, beyond opening with Vedavalli and the old sung so as to seem new, we’ll also hear performances from Jon Higgins, MS Subbulakshmi, GN Balasubramanyum, and TM Krishna – and while raga is a form centered on voice, we’ll also hear one performed on a saxophone, an instrument that goes against the grain of tradition.

GUESTS
Annapurna Mamidipudi, Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at the The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany.

Viren Murthy, associate professor of history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

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MUSIC
R. Vedavalli, “Seetamma Mayamma”
Jon B. Higgins, “Darini Telusukonti”
M.S. Subbulakshmi, “Giridhara Gopala”
Kadri Gopalnath, “Valachi Vachi”
G.N.Balasubramanyum, “Shree Subramanyaya Namasthe”
T M Krishna, “Poromboke”

CREDITS
Producer & Host: Doug Storm
Executive Producer: Kade Young