Sorry No Music or Video

When I went to Chennai to learn dance I paid a lump sum of money to learn from a great guru. This lump sum was expressly to cover one margam - ie about 4 classical dance items including the varnam (which is the highlight of the margam and is about 40min) and the accompanying music. When it was time for me to leave Chennai and I asked for copies of the music. I got a rude shock. My guru failed to honor her word. She made me run around to many sources in the pretext that I am going to get the music. It was a nightmare. Without the music I cannot perform any of the items that I had learnt with so much dedication and devotion for a period of 3 months and 8hrs of class a day. Eventually one of the other students in the class was kind enough to give me copies of some of her own personal recordings.

So what is the real problem here? The real problem is lack of a sound intellectual property framework and the industry's desire to professionalize their work using technology. This problem is fueled by the rampant and blatant stealing of ideas within the dance and music scene. Chennai is not a litigious society. Artists do not resort to legal measures to protect their ideas here. Instead many view technology, internet and other forms of documentation as a threat to their craft. They feel that live concerts and sexy overseas tours are the most lucrative deals.

Musicians do not wish to organize themselves together with their dance gurus to put out CDs for the student base. As opposed to seeing how this could increase their popularity - they see it as a threat. They feel that if their music is on CD, no one would bother to hire them personally. Instead students will hire a cheaper and less experienced musician to duplicate the music in live performances. This may be true. But I think that is the huge difference in mindset. In the West CDs are used to build and entrench an audience base and to drive more traffic to live performances. In India this has not been the case. One par to the reason is because many gurus are deeply uncomfortable with technology. They feel that if they issue a CD or a DVD of their repertoire the art form will be finished. People will stop developing the guru-student relationship which used to be the essence of learning a classical spiritual artform and instead teach themselves the dance form via DVDs and CDs.