This piece is in response to the comment from the eminent musician T.M.Krishna and the response form Mr.N.Ram in the Hindu dated 4th March, 2011 about the state of affairs prevailing in South India regarding music criticism and how seriously our news papers take them. Let me state at the outset, without mincing words, that the latter response is what one would call a 'knee jerk response' defending their practices.
Being a musician myself with a bit of experience in reviewing music for a major news paper, I can speak about both sides of the issue. It is true musicians, in particular, and artists in general, are a 'touchy' lot. I deliberately do not use the often misused word 'sensitive' as I believe that word implies 'being aware of other's needs/reactions' etc. Artists would like their art to be understood, appreciated and are hurt when even the critics do not understand their art. This is natural. If one looks at the history of Carnatic music criticism in South India, one finds that artists have been faulted for trivial or even non-artistic reasons like rendering compositions of certain kind, certain languages or even certain types of compositions during certain parts of their recital. I think this attitude stems form 'insensitivity' bordering on ignorance on that part of music reviewers. There can be no two opinions on that, I would like to submit. Does or does not the artist have the right to perform niraval at 'Vaarivaccina..' or 'Saamagaana ' in Sarojadalanetri, the Shyama Shatri masterpiece! In hindsight, we often laugh at many of these episodes but imagine what the artist must have gone through at that time!
Now turning to the nature of music review, let me begin by stating that I did write as a regular reviewer for a major news paper for over a period of one year when I was doing my Masters in the early seveties. At the outset I was told, in so many words, that I was not to 'criticize' the big names in Carnatic music as that would adversely affect the finances of the news paper via advertisements. May be the scenario has changes drastically since then and we have become a more open society. But what I discovered was that I could only be critical about up and coming artists and after a while that was very unfair as these artists deserve all the nurturing they can get. So I ended my career as a reviewer (also academic concerns took over).
What I have to say about prevailing practices is definitely true of the situation in Hyderabad (and I have a suspicion, it will turn out to be true for other southern cities as well) and one can easily muster documentary evidence for it. In major news papers (at least one which I subscribe to), one can find reviewers signing their music reviews (I dont want to call them that) for several recitals on the same day held at various places in the city with the lists of compositions rendered from the beginning to the end. The reviewer, in addition to being 'knoweldgeable', the person must have the magic of omnipresence! The fact that news papers repose so much confidence in these reviewers speaks volumes on the importance of music criticism in contemporary south India.