Just back from my
daughter’s school dance performance and, it was wonderful. Like any daddy I’m thrilled to watch her and
feel proud at how compelling her particular performance was. And this is a show I’ve wanted to see for a
while, because it may be one of the only examples in China of young, middle
school kids studying South Indian, classical Bharata Natyam: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharata_Natyam
I am often concerned by how demanding the program is at my
daughters’ school. Regular readers may
have known me to kvetch. But this was a
flat-out Dustybrine winner and I really have to hand it to the vision of this
school for supporting this effort. I’m
an international oddball who thinks Carnatic music sounds extraordinary and I
would have pushed, indeed shoved for my kid to be part of such a class. But here was an auditorium full of middle
class Beijing, Chinese parents who not only supported the idea of their
daughters (no lads, I’m afraid) studying this art form, but cared enough to
come out and see it performed. Maybe I’m
a simpleton, but this gives me great
hope for the future of Asian international relations. I mean it.
I think the default for Chinese aspirational parents,
certainly the stereotype for them, let alone for the vast majority of everyone
else in the country would be for a bland, begrudging respect for India as a
“great civilization” (lower case) but
that India certainly had little to teach China and its children about preparing
for or competing within, the “modern” world of technology and finance. Look to Silicon Valley, or Japan if you must
and increasingly, don’t bother, just bend over and smell the wonder of Chinese a
flatulent for a sense of what the future has in store. India?
Certainly India is merely playing catch up and offers China nothing
worthy of serious consideration. (Stereotype. Perhaps I should bold it for emphasis)
And here is Ms. Jin, a Chinese teacher, who lived for five
years in Delhi studying with Bharata Natyam master for five years who brings
the tradition to my daughter’s school. I
asked her what brought her to India in the first place and she replied: “I simply loved the dance.” And indeed, it is, like the musical tradition
that accompanies the classical dance, a remarkable treasure unto the
world. Here was a room in Beijing with
thirty young ladies, all dancing to Indian rhythmic sophistication, stomping
their feet and moving their eyes in choreographed wonder. Sorry, but I’m pressed to consider how it
gets much cooler.
I’m a sap. When I
worked at my last company and had a chance to visit the Indian office I had a
piece of Chinese calligraphy prepared by a well-known calligrapher here in
Beijing. But the four character set I
had produced: “亚洲一体”[1] was penned, not by a Chinese but by a
Japanese scholar, Okakura Kakuzo in 1904. Normally I make you, tender reader, look down
to the one lonely footnote that this blog always has, to discern what it is
that I have written in Chinese. (This,
unless you are a Chinese reader and no doubt chuckle at my wanna-be
references.) But hey, today I’ll tell
you what亚洲一体, means, because I
believe it and it is pivotal for all of our futures. It means:
“Asia is one.”
Okakura was writing “The Awakening of Japan” in 1904 during
Japanese ascendancy for sure. Japan had
defeated China in the Sino-Japanese war nine years earlier, and this was just
as Japan was about to become the first East Asian power since the Mongols to
defeat a European power, Russia, the following year. But Okakura’s vision of Buddhism that spawns
in India and flows through China to transform Japan is one of humility and one
of unity. Chinese friends tell me the
four characters sound a bit stentorian, something like a militarist leader might
yell. Sigh. OK. To me, as long as no one is necessarily
imposing this on someone else, it sounds like all the profound civilizations in
the neighborhood must be humble and look for that which binds them so that all
the parties, the entire continent, is stronger for it.
I had the good fortune to attend undergraduate university at
Wesleyan University back in Middletown Connecticut. When I first got there, I didn’t know much
about what I was getting in to. I didn’t
know, but my roommate quickly hipped me to the fact that the place I was in
residence had arguably the country’s finest World Music program. This was a turning point for me and my
all-important views on music. There was,
suddenly, a world beyond hardcore punk, which had completely dominated my teens
until that time. Suddenly, all any music
that wasn’t overtly commercial was worthy of exploration. Anything.
And that first year, as I stared down the remarkable catalogue, I chose,
among other things, “South Indian Vocal”, probably because it just seemed so
extraordinarily out-there.
I learned, in time, that I was studying with a Carnatic
master of vocal and flute from Madras, Mr. T. Viswanathan, whom I’m learning
now passed, in 2002. I can still recall
learning the words to a song that went something like: “ Lam-bo-da-ra” which
translated into a peon to Ganesh “Oh rotund lord.” It was a hard class, it was very early in the
morning, and I probably didn’t inspire Professor Viswanathan to think he was
doing much of the Lord’s work there in Middletown, but certainly, sitting there
with the shruti box humming, I was touched, forever, by this music, which seemed
and was so remarkably other and deliberate. http://dpnelson.web.wesleyan.edu/viswanathan.html
Viswa’s brother was someone whom a few of my friends studied
with. Mr. T. Ranganathan was a world
famous mrdangam player who was a master musician, like his brother, long before
he played with John McLaughlin on the Shakti recordings. http://dpnelson.web.wesleyan.edu/ranganathan.html
Viswa and Ranga’s sister was T. Balasaraswati (1918-1984)
was considered the apogee of the Barat Natyam dance tradition, in her lifetime. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balasaraswati Later as an adult trying to learn as much
about India as I could, I read R. K. Narayan’s “The Guide” which profiles the hapless resident
of the fairy tale Malgudi city, who falls in love and marries a Barat Natyam
dancer. And I remembered the shadows
that I peered through and wondered what Viswa and his family thought of this
novel, and this author, that they surely must have known. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guide But it was too late to speak to them. That generation had passed.
When I was a suburban New York eighteen year old
encountering this august family, on a whim, I frankly had no idea the majesty I
was engaging with. I could only claim a naïve
but important sense of curiosity. And
this is the same tradition that my little girl somehow wound up encountering this
semester in suburban Beijing.
The teacher today, Ms. Jin, had her daughter, who is
thirteen, perform when the younger girls were done. Smashing!
She was dressed in costume and looked lovely. Her performance was
utterly convincing. I particularly noted
the stomping of feet. This in a culture
where women had their feet systematically broken for 1000 years or so. Stomping is beautiful. You don't’ get much more empowered than
that. And me from a western tradition of
ballet where lithe leaping and pirouette on toes is the apogee of feminine
grace tipped my hat to thousands of years of heel and ball stomping. I for one, was real glad to see my girl up
there stomping her feet into the ground, loudly, in unison with complex
Carnatic beats. I’m sure there is
probably some other feminist critique of Barat Natyam I should familiarize
myself with. But for me, sitting there in
Beijing seeing all these Chinese kids stomp and spin and drop flowers on the
gymnasium floor, it was just a perfect Friday afternoon.
May Asia find the power, slowly, gracefully, to be one. “Lambodara.”
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