What drives prosperity?

Innovation?

More on Yakshagana

I have blogged on what I thought about Yakshagana [observations]. There is a need to explain few more things such as its class. That will be done here. Unfortunately, much of the information on Yakshagana is in Kannada or available only offline. Not much information is available in English which the generation X,Y,Z mostly reads and thinks is the only acceptable source (I have had people (epistemologists!) tell me, "Oh! In a Kannada book; that is not reliable!". Those types will need something in English and they are getting it here).

I get totally pissed off looking at the Wikipedia article where Yakshagana is listed as one of the folk dances, along with Bangra and Kolata! Ignorance should have a limit and insulting, a bit shame. How can an art be called folk art if in it the artists have to create a character on the fly through mastery in dance, spontaneous speech and appropriate expressions, all of which, unlike in Bharatha Natya, are not pre-cooked meals? (Calling something folk is not bad or ldisrespectful because anything liked by people can not disregarded. However, when the term "folk" is used it carries an image of less refined not sophesticated or naive art, to which I have objections) . The expressions, music and almost everything in Yakshagana is contemporary and evolving. If classical art must have 15 century way of expressing emotions (unreasonable and way backwards in comparison to contemporary aesthetics) over amplified to an extent that over acting is the lest we can say about it then Yakshagana does not have it.

Much annoying is how musicians want to see in their yellow eyes. Should something be called classical art only if it belongs to or follows Karnataka Sangeetha or Hindustani? Sometimes, to an Yakshagana follower abhinaya in Kathak and Bharathanatya for instance seems inadequate and uninteresting compared to the amount of preparation that goes in to it. Moreover, none of the classical art forms now recognised by academies as so are complete thetrical art forms. They lack at least one form of theatrical performance. Yakshagana on the other hand has dialog, debate , dance, music, naration, very well developed poetry (written in celebrated Kannada metres), plot, costumes, and some features like interacting with audience that some urban elite might call "modern art" and publish papers (read bullshit) about (when done by Yakshagana artists it is nothing more than primitive folk concepts).

I will list here a few things that I think are more refined. ...

Bharata Ratna for Bhimsen Joshi

Mile sur meara tumharaaa:
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=gstRrEmTcBc

Did you know Joshi is a classical dancr?:
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu2O21kASKw

One that i like:
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv0xkLaOmYM

The Cold Coffee

A trouble that is ignorance

I get irritated every time I am reminded that I do not know something. Irritation is incredible when I realise that no one knows! damn it, such simple things as:

• -there is no way to say where tip of the pin is when placed in between the marks 1 and 2 in a measuring ruler.
• -we have no clue why there are prime numbers. there are some ideas but again they leave some questions unanswered.
• -why are most of fractals occurring nature mostly are of the order 2 or 3? (Or I do not know)
• -given a set of rules there is at least one thing we can not prove using them (roughly)
• the distribution of prime number! what the hell is the way to predict the next prime number given p a prime number?
• -why is receptor mechanism in organisms so reliable even when it is not definitive?
• -simple thing as matching strings is NP complete.
  
• -hell, there no way to prove some problem is NP complete.
  

What do we know then? Nothing!