TM Krishna - Revision history

Jyoti: /* The man */

2025-07-28T19:06:05Z

‎The man

Jyoti: /* The mridangam makers/ dead cows’ skin controversy */

2022-08-28T07:54:41Z

‎The mridangam makers/ dead cows’ skin controversy

Jyoti: /* The man */

2022-08-28T07:54:20Z

‎The man

Jyoti: /* =A 2017 profile */

2018-11-19T04:07:07Z

‎=A 2017 profile

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Jyoti at 03:58, 19 November 2018

2018-11-19T03:58:51Z

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2018-11-19T03:49:30Z

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[[Category:India |K ]]
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=The man=
==2016: using music to heal India’s social divisions==
[https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/art-and-culture/tm-krishna-magsaysay-awardee-profile-2938049/ TM Krishna, the man who used music to heal India’s deep social divisions, July 27, 2016: ''The Indian Express'']

[[File: Carnatic vocalist, TM Krishna receives the Ramon Magsaysay award, the foundation in 2018. (Express Photo by Jhothy Karat).jpg|Carnatic vocalist, TM Krishna receives the Ramon Magsaysay award, the foundation in 2018. (Express Photo by Jhothy Karat) <br/> From: [https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/art-and-culture/tm-krishna-magsaysay-awardee-profile-2938049/ TM Krishna, the man who used music to heal India’s deep social divisions, July 27, 2016: ''The Indian Express'']|frame|500px]]

''Krishna, is most famously known for distancing himself from the Chennai Music Season.''

The efforts of Carnatic classical vocalist Thodur Madabusi Krishna to break down the hierarchies that exist among the art forms, the artistes and the people who listen to it will be recognized by the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation and will be awarded soon, the foundation announced Wednesday.

Krishna will receive the award for “his forceful commitment as artist and advocate to art’s power to heal India’s deep social divisions, breaking barriers of caste and class to unleash what music has to offer not just for some but for all,” a citation on the website stated.

A celebrated Carnatic vocalist, TM Krishna performing ever since he was six. Born in a family of musically influenced people, he went on to be a disciple of the late Padma awardee, Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer. Krishna has also received a bachelor’s in Economics from the Vivekanand College in Madras, but music remained to take the centerstage in hid life and he had launched a formal career as a vocalist by the time he was 20.

Krishna, is most famously known for distancing himself from the Chennai Music Season. He highlighted its non-inclusive nature that leaves out non-Brahmin musicians and certain art forms that do not fall under the purview of Carnatic classical and Bharatanatayam as the reason for his boycott. The December music season in Chennai is almost a century old celebration that draws people and musicians in droves from the world over.

His boycott was followed by him launching his own music festival, which lived up to his ideologies. He organized the Uroor-Olcott Kuppam Marghazi Vizha, a Carnatic classical music festival on the beach in the centuries-old fishing village in February 2016, as an attempt to “push out caste elitism from the existing Carnatic music system” and unite various art forms.

He has started and is involved in various organisations who work across the whole spectrum of Carnatik music, including research, archiving and documentation, popularising Carnatik music in remote areas and supporting underprivileged south Indian artistes. He has tried creating access to various art forms, many unheard and non popular, cutting across class and caste barriers through a festival called Svanubhava.

Krishna has also co-authored ‘Voices Within: Carnatic Music – Passing on an Inheritance’, a book dedicated to the greats of Karnatik music, along with Mythili Chandrasekar. His most recent book, A Southern Music, published by Harper Collins in December 2013, is a described as a “first-of-its-kind work on the Carnatic tradition” by his own website. Krishna also writes columns for reputed dailies occasionally, on various topics of the socio-political spectrum.

==A 2017 profile=

@@ Line 11: / Line 11: @@
 =The man=
 ==2016: using music to heal India’s social divisions==
 [https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/art-and-culture/tm-krishna-magsaysay-awardee-profile-2938049/  TM Krishna, the man who used music to heal India’s deep social divisions, July 27, 2016: ''The Indian Express'']
@@ Line 121: / Line 139: @@
 Here is one—the first time he heard parai attam. He can’t explain it, but listening to those drums, something happened, a blowing away—a heightened sensitivity. Call it what you will. It happens when he walks in the mountains. It happened a few weeks ago in the middle of the night, when he watched a kattai koothu (a musical theatre form focused on the Mahabharat) performance with Sangeetha. The experience is profound. It fills you. Sometimes we’re conscious, sometimes not. To him it’s a preciousness that begins with the terrestrial. As a reminder, there’s always a pair of hiking boots, unlaced and ready, waiting by the front door.
 =YEAR-WISE DEVELOPMENTS=

@@ Line 141: / Line 141: @@
 Krishna: It took four years meeting people in different places like Chennai, Thanjavur, Madurai, Palakkad, Mangaluru etc. I travelled to all these places and interviewed 42-43 makers and about 10-12 artists. It was a big effort and the book turned out to be completely different from anything I have written before.
- ''' Q: Does the current crop of Carnatic music artists and enthusiasts exhibit a caste pattern? Is there an upper caste dominance? '''
+''' Q: Does the current crop of Carnatic music artists and enthusiasts exhibit a caste pattern? Is there an upper caste dominance? '''
 Krishna: Caste pattern is a social norm, and we have it in our whole society. How can you not expect art to have caste patterns? What we consider as Indian culture, especially nowadays, seems to be upper caste culture. So, you will see the caste patterns which are there in our society in every art form. You can’t expect them not to have it. We as a society are casteists. The classical worlds across the globe are fundamentally discriminative — whether it’s Hindustani or Carnatic music or western classical music — in their own structures. In the West it could be white music, and here it’s upper caste music. There’s also an ingrained sense of whether a person belongs. You need to be in a certain way to belong here. There’s this whole environment of pushing out a person who doesn’t belong. The environment is emotional, psychological and aesthetic, and it’s done very unconsciously.
@@ Line 151: / Line 151: @@
 Krishna: People have to read the book. I have made no controversial remarks. Whatever I have said is real. For making mridangam, you need cow skin. That’s a reality, and people who are playing mridangam are mostly brahmins. So, this dichotomy exists —between your belief in the community and the need for cow skin. It’s an important thing for us to think about. Isn’t that what art should do or writers should do? To speak about facts and raise different ideas and perceptions for different scenarios. I just see this as an engagement with these ideas.
 Most importantly the book is not about beef-eating or cow slaughter. It’s about mridangam makers, who work really hard to get the right skin, cut and bind it together. This book is a celebration of their work. I wrote about them, those who do the killing and skinning every day. Does it make them evil people? Can I judge that they are insensitive to animals? If you ask Perumal Murugan, he will tell you how people love their goats and how they consume them. Human beings exist in that gap where you can’t reconcile. How do you negotiate that? What’s the emotion there? At the slaughterhouses, there was blood everywhere. But that was something very normal. I never felt disgusted and I did not feel bad.
@@ Line 161: / Line 162: @@
 January 2020: Kalakshetra Foundation, Chennai-based arts and culture academy, cancelled TM Krishna's book launch over an excerpt on cow, caste and music
-[[Category:India|K
+[[Category:India|K TM KRISHNA
 TM KRISHNA]]
-[[Category:Music|K
+[[Category:Pages with broken file links|TM KRISHNA
 TM KRISHNA]]

← Older revision		Revision as of 07:54, 28 August 2022
Line 120:		Line 120:

	Here is one—the first time he heard parai attam. He can’t explain it, but listening to those drums, something happened, a blowing away—a heightened sensitivity. Call it what you will. It happens when he walks in the mountains. It happened a few weeks ago in the middle of the night, when he watched a kattai koothu (a musical theatre form focused on the Mahabharat) performance with Sangeetha. The experience is profound. It fills you. Sometimes we’re conscious, sometimes not. To him it’s a preciousness that begins with the terrestrial. As a reminder, there’s always a pair of hiking boots, unlaced and ready, waiting by the front door.		Here is one—the first time he heard parai attam. He can’t explain it, but listening to those drums, something happened, a blowing away—a heightened sensitivity. Call it what you will. It happens when he walks in the mountains. It happened a few weeks ago in the middle of the night, when he watched a kattai koothu (a musical theatre form focused on the Mahabharat) performance with Sangeetha. The experience is profound. It fills you. Sometimes we’re conscious, sometimes not. To him it’s a preciousness that begins with the terrestrial. As a reminder, there’s always a pair of hiking boots, unlaced and ready, waiting by the front door.
		+
		+
		+	=YEAR-WISE DEVELOPMENTS=
		+	=2020=
		+	==The mridangam makers/ dead cows’ skin controversy==
		+	[https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/t-m-krishna-takes-aim-at-cows-and-their-unholy-hides/articleshow/73842066.cms Salim Joseph, "When we come to caste, it's real and we all practice it, February 3, 2020: ''The Times of India'']
		+
		+	To Carnatic vocalist and activist T M Krishna, music, culture and classicism are hardly the pure and rarefied realms they pretend to be. In his books and speeches, he exposes how discriminatory art can be, its seamy and exploitative underside and the way it excludes certain people, not just by denying them their creative due but, worse, taking away their basic human dignity — for instance, the woeful lives of mridangam makers, who skin dead cows to make these fine tuned musical instruments, and how the percussion maestros of south India wouldn’t miss a beat if enlightened about it.
		+
		+	After Chennai-based Kalakshetra Foundation decided to withdraw permission for the official book launch of Krishna’s latest book ‘Sebastian and Sons: A Brief History of Mridangam Makers’, saying it would “instigate political, cultural and social disharmony”, the book was released in Thiruvananthapuram on Friday. In an interview with TOI, Krishna clarified that all he sought was “an engagement with ideas” and spoke on the ‘gaps’, veritable contradictions that make us human. As he poignantly says, “If you ask Perumal Murugan, he will tell you how people love their goats and still consume them”.
		+
		+	'' Excerpts ''
		+
		+	''' Q: What prompted you to explore the lives of mridangam makers and the caste realities in Carnatic music? '''
		+
		+	Krishna: When I wrote my first book about south Indian music, I did not speak about instrument makers. I did not speak about how marginalised they are in this world of music. We don’t speak about people who make the instruments, they always remain hidden. I wanted to understand the lives and history of mridangam makers. When we come to caste, it’s real and we all practice it. We have it here just like gender discrimination.
		+
		+	''' Q: How challenging was your research and gathering of information from mridangam makers and artists? '''
		+
		+	Krishna: It took four years meeting people in different places like Chennai, Thanjavur, Madurai, Palakkad, Mangaluru etc. I travelled to all these places and interviewed 42-43 makers and about 10-12 artists. It was a big effort and the book turned out to be completely different from anything I have written before.
		+
		+	''' Q: Does the current crop of Carnatic music artists and enthusiasts exhibit a caste pattern? Is there an upper caste dominance? '''
		+
		+	Krishna: Caste pattern is a social norm, and we have it in our whole society. How can you not expect art to have caste patterns? What we consider as Indian culture, especially nowadays, seems to be upper caste culture. So, you will see the caste patterns which are there in our society in every art form. You can’t expect them not to have it. We as a society are casteists. The classical worlds across the globe are fundamentally discriminative — whether it’s Hindustani or Carnatic music or western classical music — in their own structures. In the West it could be white music, and here it’s upper caste music. There’s also an ingrained sense of whether a person belongs. You need to be in a certain way to belong here. There’s this whole environment of pushing out a person who doesn’t belong. The environment is emotional, psychological and aesthetic, and it’s done very unconsciously.
		+
		+	''' Q: Is there any reform movement in Carnatic music that aims at bridging the gap and making it more inclusive? '''
		+	Krishna: It will take time and a lot of efforts. I am trying to do my bit, and many others too are working in this sphere. I think changes can be brought into. I wish the way mridangam makers are looked at will change, that they will be respected, and their work would get the due respect.
		+
		+	''' Q: You talk about beef-eating in the Vedic period, including among brahmins, and on your visits to abattoirs, you watched killing and skinning of cows and other animals… '''
		+
		+	Krishna: People have to read the book. I have made no controversial remarks. Whatever I have said is real. For making mridangam, you need cow skin. That’s a reality, and people who are playing mridangam are mostly brahmins. So, this dichotomy exists —between your belief in the community and the need for cow skin. It’s an important thing for us to think about. Isn’t that what art should do or writers should do? To speak about facts and raise different ideas and perceptions for different scenarios. I just see this as an engagement with these ideas.
		+	Most importantly the book is not about beef-eating or cow slaughter. It’s about mridangam makers, who work really hard to get the right skin, cut and bind it together. This book is a celebration of their work. I wrote about them, those who do the killing and skinning every day. Does it make them evil people? Can I judge that they are insensitive to animals? If you ask Perumal Murugan, he will tell you how people love their goats and how they consume them. Human beings exist in that gap where you can’t reconcile. How do you negotiate that? What’s the emotion there? At the slaughterhouses, there was blood everywhere. But that was something very normal. I never felt disgusted and I did not feel bad.
		+
		+	''' Krishna's tryst with controversies '''
		+
		+	August 2018: Airport Authority of India, Spic Macay cancelled Krishna's concert after he was trolled for saying that he would perform Christian Carnatic hymns at the concert
		+
		+	August 2018: A prominent temple in the United States cancelled his concert, a week after he and other prominent musicians were targeted by Hindu groups for singing Christian hymns
		+
		+	January 2020: Kalakshetra Foundation, Chennai-based arts and culture academy, cancelled TM Krishna's book launch over an excerpt on cow, caste and music
		+
		+	[[Category:India\|K
		+	TM KRISHNA]]
		+	[[Category:Music\|K
		+	TM KRISHNA]]
		+	[[Category:Pages with broken file links\|TM KRISHNA]]

@@ Line 14: / Line 14: @@
 [https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/art-and-culture/tm-krishna-magsaysay-awardee-profile-2938049/  TM Krishna, the man who used music to heal India’s deep social divisions, July 27, 2016: ''The Indian Express'']
-[[File: Carnatic vocalist, TM Krishna receives the Ramon Magsaysay award, the foundation in 2018. (Express Photo by Jhothy Karat).jpg|Carnatic vocalist, TM Krishna receives the Ramon Magsaysay award, the foundation in 2018. (Express Photo by Jhothy Karat) <br/> From: [https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/art-and-culture/tm-krishna-magsaysay-awardee-profile-2938049/  TM Krishna, the man who used music to heal India’s deep social divisions, July 27, 2016: ''The Indian Express'']|frame|500px]]
+[[File: Carnatic vocalist, TM Krishna receives the Ramon Magsaysay award, the foundation in 2016. (Express Photo by Jhothy Karat).jpg|Carnatic vocalist, TM Krishna receives the Ramon Magsaysay award, the foundation in 2016. (Express Photo by Jhothy Karat) <br/> From: [https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/art-and-culture/tm-krishna-magsaysay-awardee-profile-2938049/  TM Krishna, the man who used music to heal India’s deep social divisions, July 27, 2016: ''The Indian Express'']|frame|500px]]
@@ Line 34: / Line 34: @@
 ==A 2017 profile=

TM Krishna - Revision history

Jyoti: /* The man */

Jyoti: /* The mridangam makers/ dead cows’ skin controversy */

Jyoti: /* The man */

Jyoti: /* =A 2017 profile */

Jyoti at 03:58, 19 November 2018

Jyoti: Created page with "{| class="wikitable" |- |colspan="0"| This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. Additional information ma..."

Jyoti: Created page with "{| class="wikitable" |- |colspan="0"|
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content.
Additional information ma..."