When I started out as a musician many years ago, I had only one principle that I went by. Practice my music every day, commit myself to rigorous Riyaaz, and everything else is a given; I will go on to become a great musician and the world will remember me as that. Or so I thought.
It has been 15 years since and now I realize the shallowness and pompous nature of that goal. I know now that being a truly successful and fulfilled musician is far more than just honing just the craft of music.
Let me start off by saying that I will never risk undermining the depth of knowledge and the values that come with Riyaaz, practice and mastering the craft. But I don’t think this is quite enough to make a musician, or any artist, a truly successful and fulfilled human being. Over the years I have come to realize that creating a true musician out of oneself is like a bringing up a baby. Saying that Riyaaz alone will make a musician successful is like saying that if you feed a baby, he or she will turn out to be a lovely human being when they grow up. They certainly will be well fed and possibly physically healthy. But what about personality, values, the principles and spiritual moorings that they will develop? Those don’t come from eating well! Any parent will attest to the wide gamut of effort that goes into bringing up a child.
I would say the same for every musician who wants to be truly successful. And by successful, I mean not just being able to make a career out of it, but also to contribute meaningfully to society through their art. They have to treat their music and passion as babies that need to be nurtured and cared for.
The pursuit of Indian classical music does bring with it some very precious values of submission, patience and persistence along with an awareness of the divine force governing us. But along with this, there has to be tedious work towards self-development and spiritual awareness.
It is not rare to see accomplished musicians lacking basic empathy towards other human beings. I was once at a concert of a certain great classical music artist. During the performance, one of the audience members clapped enthusiastically to one of the artist’s songs. To my utter shock, that audience member was reprimanded by the artist from the stage, and sent out of the auditorium! In another incident, one of the main vocalists at a classical concert yelled at and sent away one of the accompanying musicians who had faltered a bit. The need for perfection sometimes blinds and removes the ability to offer a simple gesture of forgiveness, something that might even help people feel disarmed enough to then step up and play or sing their best.
There are certain attributes, which, I believe make for a genuinely well-rounded musician. Along with commitment to rigorous Riyaaz, a musician has to learn to work with people of different calibers; learn from those who are better than oneself and help the ones who are still growing. The true musician has to learn to be inclusive and non-judgmental towards his or her audiences and fellow musicians. A truly successful musician should be brutally honest with himself or herself, both as musician and as a person, and understand his or her failings, both as an artist and as a human being, and strive to be better. He or she has to constantly evolve and grow from experiences, musical and otherwise. A musician has to be able to sing as much to a child with absolutely no knowledge of music, as to a learned connoisseur or critic, and still connect equally to both. He or she should be able use music towards a cause much higher than the music itself, in some way to make the troubles and struggles of human existence a bit lighter. He or she has to enable music, touch and heal people in some way and allow them to access their inner selves better.
This is not an easy task. Because this means the musician has to learn extraordinary humility and patience, and should have an inner being that is craving to change and grow. He or she has to be committed to truth and willing to change.
When every musician uses these as barometers, I feel that as a community of artists, we can genuinely use music for what it was originally intended for by the divine force. To unite and bond all people, whether musically trained or not, and let them have an experience of the divine here on earth – through the magic of sound.
The writer is a vocalist of both Hindustani and Carnatic Classical music, with over three decades experience. She is also the founder of Music Vruksh, a venture to make classical accessible for its aesthetic and wellness benefits.