A woman percussionist’s memoir highlights the gendered politics of music-making

Ghatam subordinate Sumana Chandrashekar’s book, My Journey with the Ghatam: Song of the Clay Pot (Speaking Tiger) is much than a memoir — It is simply a captious exploration of the layered histories of Indian music, show and taste memory. The book, portion tracing the author’s travel with the ghatam pushes the boundaries of autobiographical writing. Apart from her experiences with the instrument, Sumana interrogates the broader structures — social, gendered and governmental — that person shaped ghatam’s spot wrong Indian classical euphony traditions. 

Traditionally played by men, ghatam is referred to arsenic the upa pakkavadyam (secondary accompanying instrument) successful the Carnatic euphony hierarchical structure. Sumana’s enquiry leads to voices that person been amplified and those that person been silenced. She besides questions philharmonic practices that person go entrenched implicit time, portion drafting attraction to others that person been erased oregon pushed to the margins. At the bosom of this enactment lies the hostility betwixt representation and history. The ghatam, a clay cookware percussion instrument, serves arsenic a almighty metaphor successful this exploration: an entity of some dependable and silence, beingness and marginality, patriarchy and power.

While the publication engages with akin themes that galore earlier works connected euphony person tackled, it highlights however antithetic truths look depending connected the vantage point. By revisiting past done divers perspectives, particularly those of women and marginalised voices, it not lone offers caller insights but besides the tools to recognize and navigate the contiguous with greater sensitivity.

Breaking stereotypes

The opening chapters illustration the author’s inward travel from Carnatic vocal to the ghatam, a modulation prompted by a recurring imagination successful the summertime of 2008. She writes with exhaustive item astir her guru, the textures of apprenticeship, the stalwarts of percussion and the legends of large masters. The reflections are sincere, and astatine times, illuminating, harking backmost to ideas of discipline, assemblage and spirit.

Under Sukanya Ramgopal’s tutelage, Sumana encounters not conscionable a maestro of bushed but a pistillate of quiescent spot and uncommon humanity. Sukanya’s prime of the ghatam came astatine a clip erstwhile a pistillate percussionist was an anomaly, often met with hostility. Guided by 2 visionaries — Harihara Sharma and his son, Vikku Vinayakram — she weathered repeated slights from elder musicians and organisers. None of this dimmed her devotion. The beingness of these 3 artistes and however they helped her navigate a satellite steeped successful prejudice, infuses the communicative with warmth and dignity, portion inviting reflection connected sex and creation — reminiscent of the nattuvanar–Devadasi dynamic. 

Juxtaposed with this is the communicative of Meenakshi of Manamadurai — a pistillate from a little rung of the societal hierarchy, whose labour rather virtually gives signifier and dependable to the instrument. It is her hands that bring the tonal perfection to the ghatam done days of physically demanding work, yet her publication remains invisible to the satellite that reveres its sound. She sits successful solitude, successful quiescent meditativeness, shaping the clay with instinctive precision. The media, she observes, erstwhile sought her husband’s words, and present her son’s; her ain voice, arsenic ever, remains unheard. Meenakshi’s communicative becomes a counter-image to Sukanya’s — 1 of instauration without recognition, devotion without visibility — reminding america however art’s hierarchies widen beyond show into the precise making of dependable itself. 

Intriguing questions

From wrong these layered portraits, Sumana’s ain persona gradually takes signifier — done anecdotes of misogyny, patriarchy and the scrutiny of appearance. Her knowing of occurrence and nonaccomplishment often seems refracted done the expectations of the satellite astir her. In the present, she appears little prepared to conscionable the challenges that arise, possibly because, arsenic products of our time, we presume the satellite should beryllium just and just, though it remains acold from it. Out of this realisation emerges 1 of the book’s astir thought-provoking questions: M.S. Subbulakshmi, Sumana recalls, was a competent mridangam subordinate earlier she chose to beryllium a vocalist. Had she continued arsenic a percussionist, would the communicative of women successful percussion person unfolded differently? It is simply a question that haunts her, torn arsenic she is betwixt remaining with the ghatam oregon leaving it down — until her guru reminds her that what genuinely sustains an artiste is not validation from the world, but the ‘inner fire’.

The last chapters of the publication are meticulously researched, with sections specified arsenic ‘Musical Censorship’, ‘The Phoenix Rises’ and ‘On Pot Bellies’ offering peculiarly engaging reading. Drawing from a assortment of sources, Sumana presents her findings thoughtfully. For instance, the semi-circular performance seating of the past is backmost successful signifier today, not lone addressing hierarchy connected signifier but besides allowing the upa pakkavadyam artiste to found oculus interaction with the main performer, correcting a subtle disadvantage. There are galore specified instances passim the book.

From wherever we stand, however, it is worthy approaching our observations with a definite tentativeness. Isn’t that wherefore we should revisit past from clip to time? The publication invites reflection not connected elemental binaries of close and wrong, oregon connected a wholly rigid and unfeeling societal order, but connected the complexities that prevarication beyond our contiguous understanding. There were spaces wherever sex and hierarchy were temporarily suspended, and moments of genuine concern emerged. Yet, these moments coexisted with absences, gaps, and unacknowledged tensions — patterns whose causes whitethorn beryllium obscured, reminding america not to gully casual conclusions. In this sense, the publication leaves america with a quiet, probing question: however bash we reckon with what is partially visible, partially intangible, and ever lived?

The memoir insists connected the value of continually revisiting taste narratives, not to destabilise tradition, but to illuminate its galore layers—and to marque abstraction for much inclusive philharmonic futures.