No words to explain !

I happened to meet one of my friend at Microsoft and thus his friends and friend's friends and so on, simply, buch of like aged folks. Pretty interesting crowd comprising of people with varied interests ranging from western classical music to some thing as crazy as piercing. Somehow we got into this discussion about music particularly how western music has evolved over the past few decades. I was suggesting that western classical has remained pretty much the same for a long time. It's only the rock,pop,jazz and other alternative music that has been changing. In fact people now cannot distinguish between rock/pop any more. All this have created way for alternative-rock, alternative-pop which are even more confusing in terms of style. And of course nothing can be called contemporary/mainstream pop/rock these days. It is quite understandable that like anything else in this world, music too evolves over a period of time. This was where I made a point about Carnatic music.

I was suggesting that western music in the form of rock/pop etc. didn't follow any rules and most cases were based on the difference in the use of percussion and the style of compositions. While, Carnatic music has a set of rules; these rules form the foundation of the system. I was trying to explain to them that Carnatic music was a perfect combination of art and science. With the science part covering the necessary conditions and the art part of it covering the sufficient conditions. I actually could not articulate what ever I was thinking and was trying to convey at that time. I was tad surprised that nobody could understand/appreciate this beautiful aspect of Carnatic music.

That reminded me of a Tamil kezhamozi(proverb) "Kazhudai'kku theriyuma karpoora vaasanai" i.e. how can a donkey appreciate the smell of camphor ? anyways, I just thought that to myself, the intention was to be metaphorical and not literal,though. Partly it's my spoken-english skills that failed me, also, put me in an awkward situation where I had an answer but could not communicate it properly. Anyways, I got back home, browsed the internet to see if someone had tried to do this before. Found something interesting on the same lines here an article by "Shri Mudicondan Venkatarama Iyer" presumably written few decades ago.