Some Home Truths

1.The majority of songs in Carnatic music are in Telugu or Sanskrit.The practice of composing songs in other languages different form ones mother-tongue seems to have been prevalent in the eighteen century itself.Thyagaraja,Muthuswamy
Dikshitar,Shayama Sastri and Swathi Thirunal should be considered as founding fathers of the present day Carnatic Music.All of them lived in the period between 1750 AD and 1850 AD.Thyagaraja was born in TamilNadu but composed most of his songs in Telugu.Dikshitar was born in TamilNadu but composed all his songs in Sanskrit which is the mother of all Indian Langusges but which very few people understand.Shayama Sastri composed songs in Telugu,Sanskrit and some songs in Tamil.Swathi Thirunal composed most of his songs in Sanskrit.

Subsequent composers also composedin Telugu or Sanskrit as the Great Composers had composed their songs in these langages.Only some composers like Papanasam Sivan ,Gopalakrishne Bharathi and Muthu Thandavar composed
songs exclusively in their mother-tongue, namely Tamil.

2.Madras is very famous for being the host city of a lot of Carnatic music concerts.There are comcerts everyday bywell-known and not-so-well-known musicians.On Saturdays and Sundays,there are several concerts.These are all
advertised in newspaper.However these do not attract sizeable crowds.The audience consists of mostly people above fifty.One rarely sees young people among the audience.One gets the impression that Carnatic music is got senior
citizens.

Young people throng film music and pop music concerts little realising that these forms of music are squarly based on the solid foundation of Carnatic Music Ragaas.