The song “Freedom” was performed by the popular rock-star musician of yesteryears, Richie Havens, as part of his performance at the world famous music festival called “Woodstock” on Friday, August 15, 1969. The song was an instant hit amongst rock music fans worldwide . Even today the song is considered to be an immortal classic.
The lyrics of the song went something like this :
“Freedom Freedom Freedom Freedom
Freedom Freedom Freedom Freedom
Sometimes I feel
Like a motherless child
Sometimes I feel
Like a motherless child
Sometimes I feel
Like a motherless child
A long
Way
From my home
Yeah, yeah”
Richie Havens’s song in 1969 resonated so very deeply in America amongst the youthful generation then because it was experiencing the pain and trauma of the Vietnam War that America was waging. Young Americans were fearful of losing their Freedom if they couldn’t dodge compulsory military conscription then . The cry for Freedom! thus was a cry of despair and of moral outrage aroused by an immoral bloody war that seared America’s collective conscience.
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On Dec 25th 2024, another song of Freedom was belted out in another part of the world in the city called Chennai in India. It was sung by yet another Rock Star of sorts. His name is T M Krishna.
Like Richie Haven, TM Krishna too is idolised by a comparatively small number of his youthful fans mainly drawn from Tamil-origin communities spread right across the country , and also from amongst quite a few fans in the Tamil diasporic ghettos in some parts of the liberal Anglo-Saxon world .
The song of Freedom belted out by TM Krishna is titled in Tamil as “suthindharam”. The above video snippet is of his kutcheri yesterday at the Madras Music Academy auditorium which in a very odd sort of way is the Woodstock Music Festival held annually every December in the city of Chennai.
“suthindhram” is a very apt song for an artist such as TM Krishna who seized the occasion in December 2024 of his being crowned “Sangitha Kalanidhi” by the Madras Music Academy to also anoint himself as the Richie Havens of the Carnatic Music world. It is a world that he has been for a good part of his musician-career crusading against and denouncing it as a shackled cultural slave of Brahminical domination in Tamil Nadu. The Academy thus has won its Freedom today after nearly a 100 years … all thanks to T M Krishna.
TMK in the video-clip above does his Richie Haven act with great gusto indeed … In the song he expresses passionately his spiritual need for Freedom to “speak anything, write anything, sing anything, read anything, listen to anything …. In other words, TMK wants absolute “suthandhiram” to do anything as he pleases .
This is a song the lyrics for which were composed by TM Krishna’s ideological mentor, the Dravidian novelist Perumal Murugan … And so this song is a kind of his very own personal anthem as a Carnatic musician not to mention it represents the political Manifesto of the Dalit Movement in Tamil Nadu.
For the most part of the last 15 years of his musical career , the “suthindharam” or freedom that TM Krishna has enjoyed has enabled him to what he describes self-righteously as “de-Brahminizing” Carnatic music. So many are the diatribes and rantings on the subject that this musician has authored and orated about in the public media that it needs no summarising here. At heart of his messages however is a clarion call for the new generations of Carnatic music artistes to shed all ancestral values reeking of “Brahminhood” and free themselves of the old order and usher in the new — viz. : the Perumal Murugan and Periyar aesthetic ethos into the art.
To me an ordinary, unknown rasika of Carnatic music of the last 60 years in Chennai, the actual Sahithya … i.e. the lyrics of this song … are suggestive more of licence and not freedom.
“Freedom to speak, write, sing, read or to listen to any damn thing” in the world without responsibility is what in my dictionary is defined as Licence.
Human Freedom is a precious birthright indeed but then it cannot be claimed or enjoyed without any sense of responsibility. The freedom to enjoy Freedom without any worthy purpose is as evil as the Freedom that is denied without reasonable cause .
I have not read Perumal Murugan’s poems or novels … But I’ve read a little bit of the Tamil poetry of a far greater poet to whom “suthindharam” meant a great deal more than what it seems to TM Krishna:
நின்பொருட்டு நின்னருளால் நின்னுரிமை யாங்கேட்டால்
என்பொருட்டு நீதான் இரங்கா திருப்பதுவே?
இன்றுபுதி தாயிரக் கின்றோமோ? முன்னோர்
அன்றுகொடு வாழ்ந்த அருமையெலா மோராயோ?
நீயும் அறமு நிலைத்திருத்தல் மெய்யானால்
ஓயுமுன ரெங்களுக்கிவ் வோர்வர நீ நல்குதியே.
For your sake, with your blessing,
Your privilege of freedom - should we ask,
For our sake, won’t you show us compassion?
Are we newly seeking freedom today?
For eons our ancestors lived in precious freedom
That is all we seek, won’t you consider this?
If it is true –
That virtue and you are immutable,
Bless us, grant us - this singular boon of freedom.
For both Richie Havens and Bharathiyar the Spirit of Freedom was symbolised by the Mother. The song of Richie Havens is the song of a “motherless child… a long way from home …”.
For Bharathiyar, Freedom was nothing but what his ancestors of yore had enjoyed …. இன்றுபுதி தாயிரக் கின்றோமோ? முன்னோர் அன்றுகொடு வாழ்ந்த அருமையெலா மோராயோ? …
The Ancestral values were exactly what the poet was beseeching the Mother Goddess of Freedom for. He prayed for nothing more than that very same virtuous freedom which she had bestowed upon his ancestors. .. முன்னோர் அன்றுகொடு வாழ்ந்த அருமையெலா மோராயோ?
TM Krishna’s song of “suthindharam” however is a call for the desertion and desecration of the ancestral values of Carnatic music. In one of his old interviews given to a left-liberal leftist leaning journal T M Krishna when asked to explain the meaning of artistic freedom clearly explained his conception of Freedom in Carnatic music as follows :
QUOTE : “…. if the canvas of meaning is enlarged, people may start experiencing divinity in thoughts that are not divine, or even in ideas that disturb them. That’s when I started changing lyrical content on the concert stage. I have worked with Perumal (Murugan, the Tamil novelist) for nearly a year now and we Shriram Kumar (violinist), Sangeetha (musician wife) and Arun Prakash (mridangist) have tuned 11 of his compositions. His kirtanas cover a wide range of themes— from non-irrigated agricultural land, love, the five elements and the mind to the palm tree. My hope is to keep moving the discourse to a point where it really doesn’t matter what you are singing about. You may get to a point where Rama is equalised with a palm tree or a dog”.
UNQUOTE
As an ordinary unknown rasika, all I can now do is only sing songs of “sweet, saddest thought”… that of Bharathiyar :
நின்பொருட்டு நின்னருளால் நின்னுரிமை யாங்கேட்டால்
என்பொருட்டு நீதான் இரங்கா திருப்பதுவே?
இன்றுபுதி தாயிரக் கின்றோமோ?
Sudarshan Madabushi
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