'In a tent?! ' exclaimed Bombay Jayashri….

 'Yes but a tent that looks like the Sydney Opera House' replied Eero Hammeeniemi the Finnish music composer… when he talked to her in Chennai about this concert.

It did.. Huvilla the tent at the Helsinki festival on August 28 looked like the Sydney Opera house with its impressive main tent having a conical roof by the big pond in a park, a tent large enough for more than a thousand people, solid wooden benches with elevations for seats, separate tents for café, green rooms, meeting rooms, restrooms all put up for the festival and an excellent sound system. Large blue and pink georgette fabric as backdrop interestingly arranged with tiny light bulbs in them flickering like so many stars in the sky…soft glow of lighting on the musicians …..sequins on the kurtas of mridangist pungkulam Subramaniam, Ghatam Karthick and Violin Embar S.Kannan catching the light as they played…

We were a few minutes late for the concert. My hosts TV journalist Tiina Maiija Lehtonen and her journalist trade unionist husband Erki Kupari wanted us to stop by at a painting show at their favorite mother and son hair dressers. The salon had been turned into a gallery for the opening of a painting show of oils of flowers by the mother and there was champagne and small talk..

Bombay Jayashri was already singing Mokshamu Galada as we were asked to enter from the back… the hall was almost full. The  mostly Finnish audience with a handful of Indian faces (not more than ten) was fully engrossed in the music of Bombay Jayashri, .. At the end of the piece she opened her eyes and spoke ' This music that I am singing is a conversation.. conversation with the creator.. the tools of the conversation are the groups of notes creating a path..' then she began her soft Ragamalika Raagam, Taanam and pallavi making the audience sit straight and watch her with intensity…swaying to her Guha Shanmugha that kept getting repeated … Lalgudi Jayaraman's Tillanna in Behag woke them up from the reverie and they tapped their legs to the rhythm…. when Embar Kannan played, Tiina Maiija  whispered in my ears that she can recognize some Bach!

Post interval was the main event.. the premiering of Eero Hammeeniemi's new composition ' Rain and Red Earth' five songs from the The Tamil classic poems Kuruntoghai with the Avanti Chamber orchestra of thirty musicians with the Conductor Maestro John Storgards and Minna Pensola and Heikki Nikula leading on Violin and bass clarinet.

' This composition is the result of two decades of careful preparation' says Hameenniemi.  
' with this I realize two dreams one, to write songs for my favorite Carnatic musician Bombay Jayashri and  the other to make a large and substantial work based on the poems from the  Kuruntoghai. '

To prepare himself for the task Hämeenniemi has actively listened  to Carnatic music for more than twenty  years and studied classical Tamil with Professor E. Sundaramurti, former vice chancellor of  the Tanjavur Tamil University.
 Hämeenniemi  chose five poems and made a small love story out of them moving through longing, disappointment and leading to  a final affirmation of love. The poems were sung in Tamil but Hämeenniemi's Finnish translations were available for the audience. These translations have  already been published in one of Hämeenniemi's books- His  five books have dealt with music theory, history  and philosophy, as well as with the culture of South India.

"Rain and Red Earth" is a large song cycle of more than half an hour duration. It includes substantial improvisation sections both for Bombay Jayashri and some of the western musicians. The work is the first time that a leading Carnatic singer sits and sings with a Western orchestra, and it had already created a  great deal of interest in Finland and elsewhere in Europe long before it was formally announced.

Jayashri had changed her black and gold sari to crimson and red for the second half and took her seat right in front the orchestra giving her classic Tamil profile to the audience. Sitting erect in her chair, she looked straight at the conductor and was all attention. As the orchestra played, Jayashri picked up the notes and sang Mazhai mazhai vilayadum mazhai (rain rain playful rain) as she sang rain beat on the roof of the tent and water drops fell off the gable by the side of performing stage catching  light in rhythm as they fell.  The swaras poured rain. The western instruments and the Carnatic  Mridangam and Ghatam seemed like they were meeting as long lost friends.their Tani avartanam got a burst of applause. In the end the audience not just stood up to applaud for long but also stomped on the boards below their feet to add sound effects to their clapping!

When Jayashri sang  yavum yavum..
What could my mother be to yours?
What kin is my father to yours anyway?
And how Did you and I meet ever?
But in love our hearts have mingled
as red earth and pouring rain.
The western instruments echoed the sentiments. Minna Pensola's violin followed Jayashri's voice like a shadow and brought out all the love and pathos of the poem and the music. 'I see music as interaction and dialogue. I write as a practical musician, and my ideas are ultimately based on three decades of experience as a practicing composer, performer and listener. They are, however, supported by an intensive study of music history and philosophy, as well as of the literature dealing with the meeting of cultures.' said Eero later.

' I can not believe such an opportunity has come my way' said Bombay Jayashri. ' It is a defining moment in my life as a musician. There were three days for rehearsal and the first two days were a challenge for me to understand the conductor's language. Minna Pensola is a great violinist. She really inspired me.'

' I had this thought for a long time. I compose western music and I like the human voice. I like 2 or 3 singers in the world and Bombay Jayashri is one of them' says Hameenniemi.

'I had read a few Sangham poems with Prof.Sundaramoorthy and then began to read the collection systematically. I decided to take poems that had some connection and wove a story around them. They are romantic poems but isolated and I wanted to give it a happy ending. To get a happy ending we all know there should be a troubled beginning. The longing and waiting of the girl transforms into anger and then the realisation of the love within. The mazhai poem already has a rhythm in it and I used it and then the yayum yayum about relationships which had to be slow with a touch of kalyani and then the girl realises that love is more important than transitory anger and that deep connections cannot be broken. so I chose the nilathinum peride

Bigger than earth, certainly, higher than the sky,
more unfathomable than the waters
is this love for this man                     
                                              of the mountain slopes
                                              where bees make rich honey
                                              from the flowers of the kuriqci
                                              that has such black stalks.               
                                                                                                                         
                                                             Te:vakulatta:r (Kuruntokai 3)

then came the last one kamam kamam which is joyful and humorous.  The end was a delirious shout for joy and I decided to do it in 17 beats dividing it into 10 and 7.'

Eero Hemeenniemi knew he had to go Avanti chamber orchestra to produce this. Avanti is a premier chamber orchestra of Helsinki founded by two world class conductors. The orchestra does not employ musicians on its rolls as is the practice with other orchestras but seeks out and gives short term contracts to musicians on its panel for a particular concert. 'Avanti is well known for its adventurous programmes in music and had a bold artistic vision in its current director Kari Kriikku. He trusted me when I took the project to him and took it on. In the four days of rehearsal, they were pushed to the limits and not one musician complained' says Hameenniemi. ' For this concert I specially asked for Minna pensola and three double bases one special with extra string and one special trumpet player. The director of Avanti took the gamble. This was a young orchestra.'

The special artist in the concert was the sound man. ' He can be called our mike artist' says Hameenniemi. He attended every rehearsal, took special pain to listen to the way Jayashri sings and the Pungkulam Subramaniam's Mridangam and S.Karthick's Ghatam work and brought out the best in each of them'. The concert was broadcast live by the Finnish Radio YLE.  

Eero Hameeniemi has been coming to India for more than three decades every year. How did India happen? I ask as Eero takes me round the old quarters of Finland relaxing the day after the concert. He speaks about his music in between pointing out that we are walking on the university library there is 15 kilometers of library in the underground.  He also tells me the political history of Finland and points out to the Lutheran church built by the Russians, the orthodox Church and the several old buildings in the harbor telling the story of each.  'In our school text book, we had an open letter to the world's youth by the great German music composer Karlheinz Stockhousen whom I greatly admired as I was deeply interested in music. I was 16 and I wrote to him saying I was impacted by the open letter.' Stockhousen was in Japan at that time and he wrote back asking the young man to read 'The Life Divine' by Sri Aurobindo. Young Hameenniemi searched everywhere for the book and found it was available in the Helsinki open distance library. He ordered it and had to read it in three weeks to return it back. He asked his mother if she would let him miss school to finish the book. She surprisingly agreed and he read the book from start to finish in three weeks time. ' I understood very little at the time but it made me want to go to India'. He was able to make it to India in his early thirties and has been visiting India every year. ' I first went to North India but found that I was attending more South Indian concerts there. So I decided to go to Madras in 1991 and was sent from our government as a guest of Indian Council for Cultural Relations. I met several musicians, scholars and cultural enthusiasts and Chennai is now a second home to me. I try not to miss any music season.'

Hameenniemi became so enomoured of Carnatic music that he began to write compositions for western orchestras with improvisation in them. 'Improvisation is an efficient way of internalizing different aspects of one's musicianship. At its best improvisation can also offer a very intensive experience to the listener. ' He has been derided by some conservative music lovers of Finland for bringing in this foreign element into western music.

To counter this he keeps a cd or two of Carnatic music in his bag always. He once met his most bitter critic in a lobby and gifted him an audio cd of Sudha Raghunathan. Two months later, the man called him and told Eero that he had listened to the cd out of curiosity and later out of interest and now it plays in his drawing room most times.

While the audience reaction to the concert was overwhelmingly positive, the two newspaper reviews were interesting. The culture critic of the Swedish Newspaper Hufcudstadsbladet thought the whole project was ingenious but the Helsingen Sanomat critic attacked it finding the space not ok for such a concert and deriding Eero Hameenniemi for his remarks on Western concerts. ' Well I have talked in print about the the nature of the concert as a social event that is seen very differently in India and in the West. This is one of the reasons for the differences in concert etiquette. In many respects an Indian concert resembles very much a concert in the West some two-three centuries ago. Performers can shape musical compositions in radical ways.  This was the practice in the West during the Baroque era,  and it is still an important aspect of music making in India.' 

by

V.R.Devika