Maestro heals India’s deep social divisions through music

2016 Ramon Magsaysay Awards

MANILA, Philippines - Growing up in a country known for its caste system, artist Thodur Madabusi Krishna had always wanted to break divisions in society.

Born to a privileged Brahmin family in Chennai, India in 1976, Krishna was trained from age six on the aristocratic Karnatik music under masters of the form.

After earning a degree in economics, he chose to be an artist and quickly became widely popular as a concert performer of Karnatik classical music.

In the midst of fame, however, Krishna questioned the social basis of his art.

While he was grateful for how Karnatik music has shaped his artistry, he also saw that this was a caste-dominated art that fostered an unjust, hierarchic order by excluding the lower classes from sharing in a vital part of India’s cultural legacy.

“The more I experienced music, the more my views changed,” he said in media interviews.

He then widened his knowledge about the arts of the dalits or untouchables and non-Brahmin communities, and declared he would no longer sing in ticketed events at a famous, annual music festival in Chennai to protest the lack of inclusiveness.

He devoted himself to democraticizing the arts as an independent artist, writer and speaker, knowing that dismantling artistic hierarchies is one way of changing India’s divisive society.

He has taken Karnatik music to the youth and to public schools since the 1990s, and from 2011 to 2013, he brought his artistry to war-ravaged northern Sri Lanka where he launched two festivals to promote “culture retrieval and revival.”

This year, together with a prominent environmentalist, he conducted a free festival of “art healing” on the beach of Besant Nagar in Chennai that brought together a divided community of dalits, fisherfolk and upper class residents, to commune in performances that richly combined musical and dance forms formerly exclusive to the upper class and the dalits.

“Music and the arts are capable of bridging cultures and civilizations and liberating us from artificial divisions of caste and race,” Krishna said.

With his forceful commitment as an artist and his advocacy to heal India’s deep social divisions through his music, Krishna has been chosen as one of six recipients of this year’s Ramon Magsaysay Awards (RMA), Asia’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

In a media interview last year, Krisha said, “They call me a lot of things. I am not a genius or a maverick or a rebel without a cause. I am just serious about my music.”

“Everyone must be able to be touched by any art form irrespective of caste, class or gender, and as artists, it is our job to break barriers that may separate our worlds,” he added.