American violinist Ariana Kim visits India to explore Carnatic music

Transcript

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Amna Nawaz: The violin has held a storied place in much of European classical music. But some time in the 17th century, it began to intrigue maestros from a very different and ancient musical tradition, who then adopted it.

This is the story of one American violinist who sought to explore what’s become known as the Carnatic violin.

Fred de Sam Lazaro that report from Southern India for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Fred de Sam Lazaro: The violinists come from musical traditions as distant as their respective hometowns.

Sumanth Manjunath home is right here in Mysuru, a rising star in Carnatic music who has performed across the world.

Ariana Kim from St. Paul, Minnesota, Grammy nominated, a violin professor at Cornell University, far more familiar with the musical scores of Bach or Handel than this raga in the Carnatic tradition improvised entirely.

Kim is spending a sabbatical in India learning a very different adaptation of her instrument, learning that’s taken some unlearning, like posture.

Ariana Kim, Cornell University: One of the hard things is to resist the temptation to do what my Western sort of muscles and ear want to do, like learning how to use these muscles differently, and using this muscle differently.

Fred de Sam Lazaro: The instrument sits like an inverted cello, resting on the foot, artist seated on the floor, the traditional tamboura strings here replicated via a phone app.

Ariana Kim: You just plug it in and it makes this beautiful drone to play against. And wherever they set that up is their sa.

Fred de Sam Lazaro: The sa, another adjustment for Kim, tuning her instrument to the Carnatic scale or raga.

Ariana Kim: So, do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, and si is (SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE).

So they all have a direct equivalent.

Fred de Sam Lazaro: Not quite that simple. The scales are, as she puts it, ornamented.

Ariana Kim: It might sound…

(Music)

Fred de Sam Lazaro: Carnatic music is played mostly in South India, the oldest form of Indian classical music, originally intended as devotional, not necessarily entertainment, and oriented toward the human voice.

That likely explains why Carnatic maestros from the 18th and 19th centuries saw the violin as a good fit. Kim’s three weekly sessions are with both Sumanth Manjunath and his father, Mysore Manjunath, one of India’s most renowned Carnatic violinists, who was away when we visited.

Sumanth Manjunath, Musician: Beautiful. Once again.

(Music)

Sumanth Manjunath: Yes, there, there is no tension. You can play it peacefully. We don’t need to make it a little bit faster. You can also take time when you play.

Fred de Sam Lazaro: The learning here is oral, though she takes copious notes. The ancient ragas, if written at all, were only loosely outlined by their composers. Individual artists improvise and build on them, just as jazz musicians do.

It’s a big change for a musician’s schooled to faithfully follow notes or scores as the composer wrote them.

Ariana Kim: I have always had sort of an interest in music from other parts of the world and how symbiotic they can be.

Fred de Sam Lazaro: A curiosity likely fed by her professional violinist parents, mom from Ohio, dad from Korea. Here, she’s tried to soak up the total experience of getting around in auto rickshaws, sampling the food and nature preserves like this bird sanctuary, a particular favorite of husband Jordan Boersma, an ornithologist also at Cornell.

Just as nature inspired thousands of ragas, she says, the experience here will profoundly inform all her work and future.

Ariana Kim: It inspires new creativity in the way I think about Bach. And when I play American bluegrass and old-time music, it makes me think differently about how I might improvise a cadenza in Mozart, and, likewise, the similarities between Korean music, which I studied in my last sabbatical, and Carnatic music, how the gamakas function, how you sort of unveil a raga, how you sort of welcome the audience into a raga.

And you have the responsibility of understanding sort of the tone and the feeling. Dr. Manjunath and his son, Sumanth, they’re just — they’re masters at feeling that internal pulse.

Sumanth Manjunath: Ariana has been grasping all the minute microtones.

Fred de Sam Lazaro: Sumanth Manjunath was himself complimentary at this recital in the home of a retired Indian diplomat.

Sumanth Manjunath: The amount of observation that she does about the fingering techniques that we play is amazing.

Fred de Sam Lazaro: She will return home soon and hopes to jam occasionally with Carnatic artists in America, helping preserve memories, including those in the muscles she awakened while learning Carnatic violin.

(Music)

Fred de Sam Lazaro: For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Fred de Sam Lazaro in Mysuru, India.

(Music)

(Applause)

Sumanth Manjunath: Wow.

Amna Nawaz: Just incredible.

And Fred’s reporting is a partnership with the Under-Told Stories Project at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.