Carnatic Music, Management and Life in General

Carnatic music is a wonderful subject/skill/art whatever you might call it.
It involves discipline and precision to a great extent, and at the same time
involves arbitrariness, imagination, voice control, feeling and emotion (bhaavam),
spirituality and other such intangible things. Thus, it is a combination of
tangible precision and intangible factors blending in together. And this is exactly
what makes it so beautiful..and difficult to comprehend for an new learner.

For a vocalist, it is well-nigh impossible to explain to a student how to get the
sruthis (frequencies) right. The seven swaras Sa, Ri, Ga, Ma, Pa, Da, Ni are just
aliases to represent different frequencies. These seven frequencies have a precise
relation between them. But the starting frequency(Sa) itself is completely arbitrary and
can vary from one vocalist to another. But no matter what the starting frequency,
the vocalist must preserve the exact relationship between the seven frequencies, if
he/she is to meaningfully produce a raaga vocally. Preserving the relationship between the freqencies is the key to generate pleasing music.

The difference between a trained/talented singer and a non-musical person is the ability to preserve the relationship between frequencies.

This is the "precision" part of carnatic music. However, there is more to Carnatic
music than just precision. Western music is all about precision. While sruti precision is undoubtedly the basis of carnatic music, there are factors that go beyond this. For example, gamakas (or overtones) are used to embellish the notes. Without gamakas, the music would be very bland, even if grammatically precise. It would be like reciting inspiring poetry in the style of a newsreader. In addition to gamakas, there are factors like voice quality, raaga knowledge (depth or raaga gnana - which allows a singer to generate sangathis of wider variety for the same raaga)

And on top of all this, there is the most intangible of all factors - bhaava (or feeling). This is exactly what makes the difference between MS Subbulakshmi and yours truly. Also, this is the difference in character between different raagas - why it is pleasing to listen to Bhoopalam in the morning and Sahana at night. So there are several aspects to bhaava - the nature of the raaga, the nature of the singer and the nature of the listener.

A lot of this applies to management, as every manager would testify. Even for a technical manager, the work involves precise and intangible factors. Precise things are the ones that can be documented and clearly quantified. Intangible factors are like motivation (or the lack of it), frustrations, likes, dislikes, etc. which are often the most important things. Even a project plan can be seriously influenced (for good or worse) by unexpected factors and intangibles. It is important to act quickly and decisively on the precise things which can be clearly controlled. It is also important to manage the intangible ones.

And in both Carnatic music and management, a positive and happy mind maximizes results. And as in life itself, it is all about maximizing sowkyam.