The Music of the Melakkar

Part 3 Melakkar and the breach of the Isai Vellalar borders. As I mentioned in the previous article, there were two distinct aspects to the Carnatic music tradition, the vocal and the non-vocal performers, i.e. the backing instrumentalists. While both were dependent on each other, the development of…

Caste conflicts – Carnatic Music

Part 2 - Brahmins and Carnatic music Things always look vastly different when viewed in a narrow context, with glaucomic eyes. Add to it a bit of political manipulation and the matter is blown out of proportion, people get riled up and hell breaks loose, like a perfectly serene blue sky taking on st…

Caste ingress into the Musical Realm

Case 1 – The story of Vedanayagam Sastri There is much talk involving religion and caste in the field of Carnatic music these days, we read about musicians boycotting festivals, of musicians getting castigated for collaborating with other religions, and of the sole book which airs some of these issu…

Rare Earths and Travancore

A New Assessment Some years ago, I had covered this subject, dwelling mainly on the connections between Travancore, Britain, Sir CP, and the new administration at Delhi, trying to complete the accession of all the princely states. It was not complete and lacked study of certain angles, and so, I am …

Mexico City – A metropolis full of surprises

Our recent visit, and of course, a little bit on India-Mexico relations. This trip had been in the making for quite some time, we had planned to go some years ago and had to abort after COVID restrictions forced us to cancel it. But we made it last month and it was no doubt, a fascinating week in a …

Russell, Menon & Kumar

Bertrand Russell and India It was a siege of sorts. We were tucked away in our hostel rooms due to a ruckus between the locals and the students and for a week or so, we were stuck in our hostel, with no classes. It all started with somebody assaulting somebody and many other bodies joining the fraca…