The Spirit of Enquiry: Notes of Dissent Selected Writings of T. M. Krishna

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As a vocalist in the Karnatik tradition, T.M. Krishna eludes standard analyses. Uncommon in his rendition of music and original in his interpretation of it. Krishna is at once strong and subtle, manifestly traditional and stunningly innovative. He is scaringly outspoken about issues affecting the human condition. His work is spread across the whole spectrum of music and culture, politics and the social sphere: he is at once philosophical, aesthetic and sociopolitical. and asks important questions about how art is made. performed and disseminated. Unabashedly given to rethinking classical paradigms, he addresses crucial issues of caste, class and gender with nuance and openness.

For the first time, Krishna's key writings have been put together in this extraordinary collection. The Spirit of Enquiry. Notes of Dissent draws from his rich body of work, thematically divided into five key sections: art and artistes: the nation state; the theatre of secularism; savage inequalities; and in memoriam. Revised and expanded, and with marvellous additional materials and powerful introductions, this is a collection that reflects the critical and cultural engagement of one of our finest thinkers, public intellectuals and practitioners of art.

THODUR MADABUSI KRISHNA is one of the pre-eminent vocalists in the rigorous Karnatik tradition of India's classical music. He has coauthored Voices Within Carnatic Music: Passing on an Inheritance. a book dedicated to the greats of Karnatik music. His path-breaking book A Southern Music: The Karnatik Story won the 2014 Tata Literature Award for Best First Book in the non-fiction category. His long- form essay 'MS Understood' for the Caravan was featured in The Caravan Book of Profiles (published by Penguin Random House India, 2016). He is also the author of Reshaping Art and Sebastian and Sons: A Brief History of Mrdangam Makers, which received the 2020 TATA Literature Live! Book of the Year Award in the non-fiction category. In 2016, he received the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award recognition of 'his forceful commitment as an artist and advocate to art's power to heal India's deep social divisions'. In 2017, he received the Indira Gandhi Award for National Integration for his services in and preserving national integration in the country. He also received the Professor V. Aravindakshan Memorial Award for connecting Karnatik music with the common man in 2017.

The subtitle of this important and powerful collection is Notes of Dissent. We think of dissent as the lifeblood of democracy. A society without dissent would be docile, without the means of renewal, without freedom, perhaps without politics altogether. We would be trapped in a stultifying conformity. There is a right to 'dissent'. There is, in the face of political evil, the obligation to dissent. But states often make exercising that right difficult. More insidiously, a pervasive climate of fear, a lack of courage and the pressures of social conformity can all but stifle dissent.

Writing came into my life by chance. The trigger was an article published in The Hindu in 1999, and I, then a twenty-three-year-old, decided to respond. The author of that column claimed that, unlike the music maestros of the past who demonstrated humility and lived a modest life, young musicians of the 1990s were inaccessible and snooty, living in luxury. This, he claimed, was also reflected in their less respectful approach to music. The rebuttal was my first published piece. I did not know then that it would be my first step into writing. I did not see myself as a writer, as a person for whom writing would become as central as singing.

My writing evolved when I began engaging with ideas. For a long time, I only dealt with techniques, technicalities, structural nuances, the inner workings of music and musicological histories. But when I began looking at everything, including music, as a body of ideas, as an interaction between sound and experience, of life within and around, my mind opened to every aspect of life that influences and controls these interactions. My writing came into its own. I am often asked why I write: 'Can't T.M. Krishna just remain a singer?' A musician should do what he trained to-sing, please and receive applause-I am told. But nobody should have to perform a function only because that has been designated as their place in society.