Karnatic Meets Kattaikkuttu Notes on an Unusual Cultural Conversation Hanne M

Karnatic Meets Kattaikkuttu Notes on an Unusual Cultural Conversation Hanne M. de Bruin On 16 December 2017, Karnatic Meets Kattaikkuttu: A Cultural Conversation premiered at St. Andrews Auditorium in Mumbai’s cosmopolitan suburb of Bandra.1 The 800-seat auditorium is a typical proscenium theatre. Generally, it hosts popular music concerts, English- language theatre, dance performances, and comedy shows; occasionally, there are classical Western, jazz, and Indian music concerts. Programs are designed for the city’s middle-class audiences. A second performance of Karnatic Meets Kattaikkuttu took place at the small indoor 1. I was able to write this essay thanks to a 2018 fellowship of the International Research Center for the Interweaving of Performance Cultures in Berlin, Germany. Note on transliteration: Tamil words are transliterated according to the usage of the Tamil Lexicon (1924 –1936) and Sanskrit terms follow the transliteration found in most Sanskrit dictionaries. Such words include names of deities, epic characters, lesser known theatre forms (e.g., katt≥ aikkūttu),≥ and local caste names (e.g., Vann≥ ār).≥ To enhance readability these words will be reproduced with diacrictics on first use only. The spell- ing of names of villages (Perungattur, Punjarasantankal) are spelled as they appear on road signs, festival notices, etc. The names of larger towns (Kanchipuram, Chennai) are given in their anglicized forms. Finally, terms of TDR 63:3 (T243) 2019 https://doi.org/10.1162/dram_a_00856 50 ©2019 Hanne M. de Bruin Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram_a_00856 by guest on 03 October 2021 auditorium of the Kattaikkuttu Sangam (Kattaikkuttu Association) in Punjarasantankal Village in Tamil Nadu on the occasion of the Sangam’s annual Performing Arts Festival on 14 August 2018. This performance addressed an entirely different audience, primarily of rural specta- tors who are kattaikkuttu’s regular patrons, as well as a number of urban theatre enthusiasts.2 Karnatic Meets Kattaikkuttu brought together four collaborators: karnatic vocalist Thodur Madabusi Krishna; kattaikkuttu actor, director, and playwright Perungattur Ponnusami Rajagopal; karnatic vocalist Sangeetha Sivakumar; and myself as a scholar and dramaturg. The fact that karnatic concert music and kattaikkuttu theatre shared the same space was for us a political statement. The forms occupy opposite ends of a continuum that divides the Indian performing arts into “classical” and “folk” — labels that in terms of prestige are equivalent to “high” and “low.” My bracketing of “classical” and “folk” is deliberate. These labels are contested, political constructions that reflect the power dynamics within Indian arts. At a national level, the Indian government actively contributed to the classification of artistic expressions by conduct- ing a series of seminars between 1953 and 1959 in which regional and interregional dance, music, and theatre forms were classified as “classical,” “folk,” and “contemporary”/ “modern” (Cherian 2007; Cherian 2009). The policies set out in these seminars critically influenced the direction of the performing arts over the next decades. They also contributed to the construc- tion of pan-Indian exemplary models of dance, music, and theatre affirming the cultural identity of the young nation-state, constructions that underlie model institutions such as the Sangeet Natak Akademi and the National School of Drama.3 Thus karnatic concert music and kattaikkuttu theatre need to be understood within specific, social, cultural, and historical contexts. The Forms Karnatic concert music is one of India’s two classical music forms.4 A typical karnatic concert consists of a vocalist supported by a violin player to enhance the melodic flow and its Indian origin, which are listed in the online Oxford English Dictionary, are given in their anglicized forms without diacritics (e.g., Brahmin, Dhobi, bhakti, mridangam, dholak, ghatam, and nagasvaram). 2. The second performance ofKarnatic Meets Kattaikkuttu had a slightly different cast, with R. Devan substituting for B. Mageshwaran as Duhsasana. 3. The Sangeet Natak Akademi is India’s national academy for music, dance, and drama. It was set up by the Government of India in 1952. The academy functions as the apex body of the performing arts to preserve and promote the vast cultural heritage of India. It also works with governments and art academies in states and union territories of the country, including the National School of Drama in New Delhi, established in 1959. 4. The other form is hindustani music. Figure 1. (facing page) Draupadi (S. Tamilarasi) in the Disrobing of Draupadi excerpt of Karnatic Meets Kattaikkuttu, with the karnatic musicians behind her. Kattaikkuttu Sangam’s Performing Arts Festival, Punjarasantankal Village, 14 August 2018. (Photo by PeeVee) Hanne M. de Bruin has researched in depth the rural kattaikkuttu theatre of Tamil Nadu ( Katt≥ aikkūttu:≥ The Flexibility of a South Indian Theatre Tradition; Egbert Forsten, 1999), translated an all-night Karnatic Meets Kattaikkuttu kattaikkuttu play into English (Karn≥a’s Death: A Play by Pukalentippulavar; Institut Français de Pondichéry, 1998), and has published several essays on rural women performers and the stigma attached to the profession of women actors. She cofounded the Kattaikkuttu Sangam, where she has been the principal administrator and fundraiser since 1990. Together with her husband P. Rajagopal she has created new repertoire for the professional young people’s theatre ensemble of the Kattaikkuttu Gurukulam as a codramaturg and costume designer. [email protected]; www.kattaikkuttu.org 51 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram_a_00856 by guest on 03 October 2021 embellishments.5 The mridangam drum and sometimes additional percussion instruments, such as the ghatam or kanjira, provide rhythmic layers, while the tanpura provides the tonic and aural ambiance.6 Karnatic music’s compositions primarily use four languages: Sanskrit, Telugu, Tamil, and Kannada. These traditional compositions center on Hindu bhakti (devotion) and spirituality. There are a number of older compositions that are erotic and sensual.7 Karnatic music is an elite concert form that had a wider range of practitioners a century ago, but has been appropriated and is dominated by a small, cosmopolitan community of South Indian Brahmins. Chennai, Tamil Nadu’s capital, is now often considered the heart of karnatic concert music and dance. The metropole features an annual December music festival that offers a “record number of concerts, a vast array of brilliant musicians and intense self- absorption of the musical community” (Ganesh 2018a), but never includes a kattaikkuttu performance on its stages. The December festival is predominantly Brahmin, including mem- bers of the global Brahmin dias- pora, who constitute both the performers and a large percent- age of the audiences. As the highest caste, Brahmins tradi- tionally enjoy a level of ritual superiority and religious author- ity that expresses itself in a dis- tinct lifestyle emphasizing ritual purity.8 In spite of making up only five percent of the Indian population, Brahmins have prof- ited disproportionately from the opportunities offered first by the British colonial regime and then by independent India’s moder- nity. Brahmin overrepresenta- tion in governmental and other Figure 2. Typical kattai vesam makeup and wooden ornaments: Duhsasana white-collar jobs led to strong (R. Devan) in the Disrobing of Draupadi excerpt in Karnatic Kattaikkuttu, anti-Brahmin sentiments and Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi, Kerala, 13 January 2019. (Photo by Pepe Gomes) political and cultural opposition, 5. Alternatively, an instrumentalist may be the lead performer, while the configuration of the accompanying instruments may vary. 6. The mridangam is a two-headed drum made of jackfruit wood. The mouths of the drum are covered with a goat- skin and laced to each other with leather straps around the circumference of the drum. Karnatic and kattaikkuttu both use the mridangam, yet the soundscape the instrument creates for these two forms differs considerably. The ghatam is an earthenware pot with a narrow mouth. The pot is usually placed on the performer’s lap with the mouth facing the performer’s belly. The performer uses the fingers, thumbs, palms, and heels of the hands to strike its rounded surface to produce different sounds. Thekanjira is a kind of tambourine used in karnatic concerts to support the mridangam. The tanpura, is a long-necked plucked string instrument. It sustains the melody of the vocalist or another instrument by providing the drone, or śruti. Nowadays the drone may also be generated by an electronic sruti box or an iPad. 7. For an introduction to the intricacies of karnatic vocal and instrumental music, see Krishna (2013); Pesch (2009); and Weidman (2006). 8. The caste system or social stratification into groups that do not intermarry keeps intact an interdependent system of relative ritual purity, in which the Brahmins or priestly caste occupy the highest position. In order to keep their ritual pure status intact, Brahmins require the services of lower castes, such as the Barber, Dhobi (clothes washer), and Dalit (former untouchable), who can handle bodily substances such as blood, saliva, or hair, or tasks such as Hanne M. de Bruin Hanne M. the killing of a sacrificial animal, which are considered ritually polluting. 52 Downloaded

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