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Monday, March 26, 2012

Divine Music Springs from the Soul

Divine Music Springs from the Soul

By Pandit Amarnath


The word riyaz has its origins in riyazi, which implies ibadat, bandagi, bhakti or devotion. If riyaz is performed with a spirit of devotion, the exercise becomes ibadat. But while riyaz is equated with practice or exercise, the all-important difference is one of spirit. Riyaz is to achieve that which has not been achieved so far. For that, the student has to struggle with faith.

In the initial one might be less than sure whether one is correct in what one is doing. But that is the struggle! In the absence of faith, one's riyaz will be filled with doubt. Faith is of great importance in riyaz. Practice with a doubt-riden mind will achieve little.
 
The first step in riyaz is to concentrate on the supremely soothing notes of the tanpura that connotes sruti. This is followed by kharaj sadhana or practice of Sa with a deep breath. Gradually, one moves to the exercises or scales suggested by the guru - sargam (each note named and sung), aakar, eekar and ookar (aa-wise, ee-wise, oo-wise). From here one moves to intricacies such as gamak, or swara applications producing the heavy effect. All this should be done with laya or tempo, in mind and, if possible, with tabla accompaniment.
 
Riyaz is an everyday activity, a daily prayer to the God of Music. When one arrives at the stage of raga and gayaki, one becomes aware of what is weak in one's music and attends to it. At times, a raga might not seem satisfactory, or the bandish may not lend itself to easy rendition in laya. At times, one's riyaz could focus on one aspect and neglect another. Nut a stage should arrive when one cam judge what should be practiced at a particular time.

The Guru, the beacon, provides direction. It is important to be able to feel a sense of improvement during practice. That means one's  riyaz and its method is basically correct. Or else, one should seek the help of the Guru, our music doctor!

I have often observed students 'performing' like strutting peacocks during riyaz. In his excitement, the student is prone not to listen to his Guru. Before his guru completes his sentence, the over-eager student interrupts with his own views, without giving his Guru a chance, Is this not a sign of restlessness or overambitiousness? Every second student exhibits such signs.

Another commonly experienced problem in the initial stage is that of feeling dull with one's music. Here one has to practice for mood. One should not sit down mechanically for riyaz. In such times, one should listen to good music to recharge oneself.

Mental Riyaz is extremely important. Music is deeply understood when one thinks about it and reflects about it. The music that then emerges is close to the soul. Once one immerses oneself in Sadhana for a very long time, one's swaras will begin to leave a deep impression.
 
One should always be regular in riyaz - whether vigorous or not. If one discontinues riyaz in old age, the muscles become dull, hard and inactive. The mood for riyaz should never go away. Even a wrinkled face can produce music of great emotion! In fact every action in one's music becomes more meaningful. The vigour of youth might be less in evidence, but to make up for its lack there is maturity and richness of texture. Whether a small or big phrase, each is charged with the power of the whole music, because the grammar of phrases and sentences is not its sole element anymore.
 
It is now all a matter of soul. One's music is now the true picture of one's soul.

(Excerpted from the book "Conversations with Pandit Amarnath" by Bindu Chawla ISBN:8185503079. This extract appeared in 'The Times of India' sometime in 1994, sometime before the book was published).

Monday, March 12, 2012

Opening external Links in Thunderbird (now Earlybird)

After deciding to switch to Mozilla Thunderbird (which, incidentally is called 'Earlybird') I ran into some rough weather. First off, the latest version, 10.0.2 is not available from the official Ubuntu repositories for Maverick (10.10). So I downloaded the source from the Mozilla FTP archive, which is a whopping 92MB. Fixing dependencies and compiling took extraordinarily long, or so it seemed.
Then began the trouble of migrating all my data from Evolution to Thunderbird.