It is like a musician and a scientist. A musician has his own way of pleasing the world, the music-lovers, and again a scientist will have his own way. When people think of Indian music, unfortunately it is associated nowadays with classical music. But no, vocal music and lyrical songs are also well appreciated by countless people.
Again, if you deal with the young generation, you may get a different response. I remember once I played in Japan. Tagore wrote in his famous book about Japan, that Japanese people do not express their emotion; perhaps they do not have emotion. My experience was totally different. Once I gave a concert at the Budokan in Japan. There were about 10,000 people. When the concert was over, they were so excited, thrilled. That was not enough. They formed a line, a queue. We didn’t ask them to, but thousands of people passed by me in a line, cheering and all that. I had a totally different experience, with thousands of people passing by me.
Another time I gave a concert in a Japanese high school. After it was over, the students stood up. They were waving their hands and screaming. What kind of emotion they showed! Tagore wrote about a different experience. He said he gave lectures in quite a few places in Japan, but they did not express their emotion. In my case, the Japanese behaved in a different way. To come back to Indian classical music, I do not have the right to criticise, but again I do have the right to say that classical music is not my forte. I cannot appreciate it. That does not mean that an Indian classical musician is not a great musician. There are many things we cannot appreciate, but we do respect the artists because they are well established in their fields. There are many, many things I do not appreciate, cannot appreciate. But again, I do admire the performers; I separate the art at that time from the performer.From:Sri Chinmoy,Concern: A Reality of the Heart, Agni Press, 2025
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/crh