Travelling light: a journey in music

By V Ramnarayan

Chapter 3

Akashvani

By the time Krishnan completed school, he had more or less developed a good ear for music, both classical and film music. Though going to concerts was no longer a regular habit with him--mainly on account of the RR Sabha membership expiring as a result of Appa's frequent transfers across India--he continued to enjoy listening to the music of his choice, thanks to the brilliant fare All India Radio offered.

In Carnatic music, there was this morning concert at 8.30 everyday in a programme entitled Arangisai that the Madras station broadcast. This was something Amma tried not to miss, once she finished her morning chores, but Krishnan himself was rarely at home to listen to. The National Programme on Saturday nights was a huge draw, and all leading musicians tried to reserve their best for it. It was indeed the high point of the weekend for the family, led by Grandfather, when they were all together at Trivandrum, crowding around the noisy Murphy valve radio at home. For Amma, this had been the staple from childhood, as she had rarely been able to attend sabha concerts.

Krishnan became familiar with the interior of All India Radio Madras, as he went there a few times to get the copies of his certificates attested by a Gazetted Officer. His classmate and closest friend Bala took him there to meet his father Mr Rangaswamy, who was an engineer in the radio station. It was an imposing mansion of an office building facing the sea at the beginning of the Beach Road, now known as Kamarajar Salai. This was back in the 1960s, and the AIR building was still in good repair, quite well maintained, unlike the gloomy, smelly premises it has deteriorated to become now. It was barely ten years old when Krishnan visited there, having been constructed in 1954.

Mr Rangaswamy was an interesting character. He was a small, wiry man, who did not smile much, but his somewhat forbidding exterior masked a gentle nature. When he was not very busy, he liked to tell the boys the story of All India Radio, sharing his experiences with them with much enthusiasm. He was a smoker, and had a packet of Wills Filter kept within easy reach on his desk, but that was only for visitors. In private he preferred smoking bidis, and lit one up while talking to Bala and Krishnan.

AIR had moved to Santhome on 11 July 1954, and its first programme was a short alapana in the raga Todi by that genius of a nagaswara vidwan TN Rajaratnam Pillai, he told them. "A truly auspicious beginning", he continued, his eyes taking on a dreamy look. "Can there ever be a better Todi? Only one other musician came close to it--GN Balasubramaniam. Do you know that the great Rajaratnam Pillai himself once acknowledged to GNB that his Todi was second to none. It happened here, in this very building."

"For those great nagaswara vidwans, the raga was supreme, the composition coming second, sometimes a distant second. Mr S Rajam, Veena Balachander's elder brother, who has been Music Supervisor here for so many years, once told me a story involving Rajaratnam. After he played a brilliant piece, someone asked him who the composer was. "Shall we say Tyagaraja?" was his reply. 

Krishnan learnt from Rangaswamy's long lecture that radio had come to Madras as early as 16 May 1924, when the Madras Presidency Radio Club was formed by a band of amateurs led by CV Krishnaswamy Chetty. The Club started daily broadcasts on 31 July 1924 from its premises at Holloways Garden, Egmore. Financial problems led to its early closure in 1827, when the Club donated its 200-watt transmitter to the Corporation of Madras. The Corporation Radio Station that began on 1 April 1930 proved very popular. In addition to daily two-hour entertainment programmes in the evening, it also broadcast music lessons and stories for children. Sundays and holidays featured 'gramophone music' , which was broadcast through speakers installed at different open-air venues in the city including the Marina beach. Éuropean music' was a special treat once a month, and much of all this entertainment was beamed to 14 Corporation schools.

The Corporation Radio's service was taken over by AIR on 16 June 1938. Its station was located on Marshalls Road, Egmore and the service was inaugurated by Lord Erskine, the Madras Governor.  The programme was launched with a nagaswaram concert by Tiruvengadu Subramania Pillai.

When Bala asked his father if Madras was the first broadcasting station in India, Mr Rangaswamy excitedly told him of the early days of radio in India. "You know radio came to India within a couple of years of its debut in the world. The first broadcasting station in the world was set up in Pittsburgh, USA in 1920, and on 23 February  1920, Marconi Co. went on air in England from Chelmsford. In fact, India's first broadcasts were even ahead of the British Broadcasting Corporation's first set of regular programmes in November 1922. The Times of India, in collaboration with the Posts and Telegraphs Department, relayed a special programme of music at the instance of Sir George Lloyd, the Governor of Bombay. A one-off event, it was heard long distance by the governor who was at the time in Poona, 175 kilometres away. An amateur radio club in Bombay started regular programmes in June 1923, followed by Calcutta Radio Club in November the same year.

Rangaswamy also told the boys about the important role played by Dr BV Keskar, Minister for Information and Broadcasting from 1952 to 1961. His several initiatives included the huge impetus AIR gave Indian classical music, the institution of such iconic programmes as the National Programme of Music and the Radio Sangeet Sammelan, and the establishment of Vadya Vrinda, the Indian music orchestra, headed by giants like Pandit Ravi Shankar, and TK Jayarama Iyer. He was also instrumental in slowing the entry of film music and the banning of the harmonium in AIR.

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By the way

Vividh Bharati and its loyal band of listeners

Anand Akela from Marwar Mundwa. Allah Rakha from Jhumritalaiya. Sharad Agarwal from Rajnandgaon. And countless others from Yeotmal, Mancherial, Nanded, Karim Nagar, Nepa Nagar, Indore, Rajkot, Beed, Ujjain and Dhanbad. People to whom we should forever be indebted for introducing some of the greatest Hindi film songs to us. If Akashvani’s Aap ki Farmaish in which the names of all these listeners figured regularly brought us so many evergreen melodies, programmes like Sangeet Sarita not only played film songs based on ragas, but also presented classical music renderings of the same ragas, thus adding to the listener’s appreciation of good music.

Some of the most famous songs of all time based on classical music-songs included Man tarpat Hari darsan ko aaj, Poocho na kaise maine rayn bitayi, Jyoti kalash chhalke, Manmohana bade jhoote, Madhuban me Radhika nache re, or Zindagi bhar nahin bhulegi, each one a blockbuster-but also other melodies that did not quite hit the jackpot in box office terms, yet touched a chord with a whole generation of listeners.

Some little gems have stood the test of time, gems that we would probably never have come across but for Vividh Bharati. Of course, O sajna of Parakh belongs to the first category of all-time favourites, but the other Lata Mangeshkar beauty from the same film, Mila hai kisika jhumka, is a typical Salil Chaudhuri charmer whose first acquaintance we owe some anonymous listener from Ajmer or Sriganganagar.

Jaoon kahan bataye dil from Chhoti Bahen is a subtly poignant Mukesh-Shanker Jaikishen number. The haunting Saranga teri yaad mein and Haan deevana hun main, songs from the film Saranga which bring back memories of sleepy afternoons with book in hand and transistor radio by your side, were by Sardar Malik.

Songs heard on radio can be misleading. Kohinoor, a film released in the sixties, had a rich slew of delightful raga-based melodies. From Madhuban mein Radhika nache re, to Do sitaron ka zameen par hai milan aaj ki rat, or Dhal chuki shame gham, everyone of them promises a scene of serious purpose or sentimental romance, but what you saw on screen was a spoof-like treatment by the brilliant comic genius of Dilip Kumar with Meena Kumari, adding to heady music by Team Naushad-Shakeel Badayuni-Mohammed Rafi/ Lata Mangeshkar.

The same musical foursome had been a runaway success in Baiju Bawra, whose cast had Bharat Bhushan and Meen Kumari in the lead. Incredibly--well not so incredibly, for it was almost the norm in Hindi film music--the classic Man tarpat Hari darsan ko aaj was the result of a collaboration among a trio of Muslims in Shakeel Badayuni, Naushad, and Mohammad Rafi, as were the songs in Kohinoor, which offered the additional dimension of both the lead actors belonging to that category.

If Bharat Bhushan was not exactly known for his histrionic ability, he proved a credible Baiju in Baiju Bawra, but gave a relatively wooden performance in Barsaat ki Raat, in which he got to lip-sync for the all-time favourite Zindagi bhar nahin bhulegi. The actor’s portrayal of Mirza Ghalib in the eponymous film was unaffected if touchingly naïve, with at least one moment of delicious nonchalance when the poet swaggers away on hearing a wandering mendicant sing the praise of the incomparable Ghalib, though he does not recognise him:

‘Hai aur bhi duniya men sukhanvar bahut ache
Kahten hain ke Ghalib ka hai andazen bayan aur
(There are doubtless many good poets in this world 
But Ghalib has a unique style all his own, they say)

An extreme case of a complete ham getting to ‘sing’ some of the greatest songs in Hindi cinema was Pradeep Kumar, the star of movies featuring some unforgettable melodies by music director Roshan, with Man re tu kahe na dheer dhare from Chitralekha my personal favourite among that composer’s delightfully original numbers based on classical ragas.

While Naushad’s were probably the creations I most frequently heard on these wonderful broadcasts on Vividh Bharati--not to mention Jai Mala for India’s jawans, and the Urdu programme of Akashvani relayed at 3 pm or so--Sachin Dev Burman was never far behind, while Madan Mohan, C Ramachandra, Jaidev, Roshan, Chitragupt, Ghulam Mohammed, Ravi, and Shanker-Jaikishen kept you in constant supply of delightful compositions, each composer affixing his trademark touches to his songs.

And Khayyam! Was there ever a more completely original music director? Particularly engaging was his use of Punjabi folk, Pahadi dhun and ghazals. It was thanks to Vividh Bharati that I first heard that priceless Rafi-Suman Kalyanpur duet Thahariye hosh men aaloon that Khayyam composed for the film Mohabbat isko kahten hain. His Pahadi delights included Lata Mangeshkar’s Baharon mera jeevan bhi savaaro from Akhri Khat and his wife Jagjit Kaur’s Tum apna ranj-o-gham from Shagun, not to mention the title song from Kabhi Kabhi, written by Harivansh Rai Bacchan and sung by Mukesh. 

Travelling light: a journey in music

By V Ramnarayan

Chapter 2

Growing up with music

The monthly programme at RR Sabha was Krishnan's window to concert music, but his musical education did not stop there, even though he had discontinued Paattu Vadyar's evening classes, vacating the arena for his sister and cousin to continue to wrestle with them.  He was by now an avid listener of All India Radio and Radio Ceylon, and he had already attended his first December season concert at the Music Academy, at the temporary pandal erected at the PS High School.

To go to RR Sabha, Krishnan had to walk about half a kilometre to take a bus to Mylapore Tank, and an equal distance from the tank to the sabha. Alwarpet where his family lived was a quiet enclave then, and at Mylapore, livelier thanks to the Kapali temple and the worshippers that thronged it, there was nothing frenetic about the traffic, no chaos on the Mada streets. It was perfectly safe for a ten-year-old to stay till the end of the concert, catch a bus and go home well past nine pm.

At the sabha, Krishnan also had his first taste of Tamil theatre--a mixture of comedies, serious drama and crime thrillers. If I Get It, Aaravamudan Asada, Kalyaniyin Kanavan, Avvaiyar, Gomathiyin  Kaathalan, Mr Vedantam, Tuppariyum Sambu and a Tamil adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde were some of the plays he watched there. Unfortunately, he did not get to witness any of the famous musicals of the time. The iconic MK Tyagaraja Bhagavatar had retired from the scene, and the spectacular productions of RS Manohar did not come to RR Sabha during the time Krishnan was a regular there.

He heard some great musicians during that phase of about two years, when his father, stuck at work in the Mylapore office of an insurance company, gave him his season ticket which his membership of the sabha granted him. Though he was barely ten, Krishnan could recognise the subtle changes taking place in the voice of MS Subbulakshmi, gaining in strength and depth. He found the breezy glides of ML Vasanthakumari exhilarating, her guru GN Balasubramaniam's baritone very attractive, the veterans of the day--Ariyakudi, Maharajapuram and Semmangudi--going over his head somewhat, but it was Madurai Mani Iyer that captured his imagination most, with his cascading music of perfect sruti, and immaculate if idiosyncratic precision in the rendering of swaras.

It was much later that he learnt to pay attention to the accompanists to differentiate between the varied techniques and skills of Lalgudi Jayaraman, TN Krishnan and MS Gopalakrishnan or Palghat Mani Iyer, Palani Subramaniam and the up-and-coming Umayalpuram Sivaraman. He watched entranced as Vilvadri Iyer threw up his ghatam in mid-concert, and he tried hard to enjoy the customary tani-avartanam,  but found it hard going. Strangely, he liked listening to raga alapana more than the manodharma within kritis, which he found often overdone, at least to his young, untrained ears. Though he generally enjoyed most of the music on offer, he tended to cross his threshold of boredom some 90 minutes into the concert, but did not know that he could get up and leave midway through a cutcheri. So it was that he actually managed time after time to sit through concerts longer than three hours.

Krishnan went to a school in Mylapore, the redoubtable PS High School, which had produced some top class leaders of a whole variety of fields of activity, from lawyers and businessmen, doctors and engineers, sportsmen and artists, to bureaucrats and politicians, even ministers. During his tenure there however, the school was in decline, and its standards had fallen. Some of the students there were fast earning notoriety as ill-behaved louts. Happily, Krishnan's class was an exceptionally nice and well-behaved lot, fortunately taught by some brilliant and caring teachers. Outside the classroom, the school's vast playground afforded plenty of scope to enjoy competitive games of football and cricket. Krishnan got into the school's junior cricket team, which was so strong that some of his seniors went on to play for the state, one of them even for the country. Krishnan did not fare too badly either.

School also provided Krishnan the opportunity to broaden the horizon of his music appreciation. One of his classmates was the son of Mr Sudarsanam, a fine music director in films, and through him Krishnan had access to some excellent songs based on classical music. He learnt to appreciate the songs composed by such talented music directors as G Ramanathan, and KV Mahadevan, before Tamil film music witnessed the phenomenon of Viswanathan-Ramamurthi, the duo who dominated the scene for many years. He was intrigued by the strange fact that the brilliant raga-based music of a Hindi film called Swarna Sundari was produced by a music director of the unlikely name of Adinarayana Rao. The mystery was solved when he learnt that the songs in the film were originally scored for a Telugu film. The same tunes were retained when the film was dubbed in Hindi, with the voices of Mohammad Rafi and Lata Mangeshkar replacing those of Ghanatasala Venkateswara Rao and Jikki, as G Krishnaveni was popularly known.  A song that started with the words Kuhoo kuhoo bole koyaliya in a ragamala that included the ragas Sohni, Darbari Kanada and Bahar, was a runaway hit of the day, and is still popular among followers of film music of yore.

Thanks to the influence of one of his relatives, and led by his own natural inclination, Krishnan began to enjoy Hindi film music much more than he did what Tamil cinema had to offer. Introduced by cousin Venkat to the more jazzy numbers prominent in the hugely popular weekly Binaca Geetmala Hit Parade, broadcast by Radio Ceylon in the magnetic voice of Amin Sayani, Krishnan was completely hooked by the drama of the programme and the wonderful voices of Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Mukesh, Hemant Kumar and Manna Dey, not to mention Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle and Geeta Dutt.  In time, he graduated to some of the more nuanced music offered by Akashvani's Vividh Bharati, many gems based on ragas composed by some of the best music directors Indian cinema has seen. Naushad, SD Burman, Shankar-Jaikishan, C Ramchandra, Madan Mohan, Roshan, Khayyam, OP Nayyar, Chitragupt...the list was long and distinguished.

In the 1960s, Vividh Bharati produced some superb film music programmes including Jai Mala on Sunday afternoons, and a lovely little miniature called Sangit Sarita, which lasted all of 15 minutes everyday, but played raga-based songs followed by some basic explanation of the ragas.  It was a delightful way of learning to identify ragas. Akashvani also broadcast an Urdu programme, which was a veritable feast of ghazals, qawwalis and other songs from films. Lazy weekends were never better for a young (or old) music lover. 

Travelling light: a journey in music

By V Ramnarayan

Chapter 1
(Revised and expanded)

Beginnings

The first time Krishnan heard Carnatic music, he was barely five. He did not know it was Carnatic music, but it was clear to him that his mother Radha's singing was special. She had a sweet, ringing voice, perfectly aligned to sruti, and she loved the kritis she sang, sitting before the little puja alcove in the kitchen-cum-dining space in their first floor apartment. Her favourite composer was Tyagaraja (1767-1847), the saint-poet the rasikas of the present day classical music of south India worshipped as an avatara purusha. Largely influenced by her eldest brother Ramu, a successful  executive of Burmah Shell, but a firm believer in tradition and culture, she learnt music from a teacher who came home three times a week, and strenuously practised what she learnt from him. She was as eager to please him as she did her parents, and she became a regular devotee of Tyagaraja, because her brother was one.

Radha was also a devout young girl, though not an ostentatious practitioner of rituals.  She spent a quiet half hour every morning in puja, praying to her ishta devata Rama, whose Ravi Varma portrait in full regal splendour accompanied by his consort Sita, brother Lakshmana and lieutenant Hanuman, filled one wall of the puja space. A brilliant student, strong in English and mathematics, Radha was the joy of her family, with her perfect behaviour and unfailing courtesy to everyone, trusting ways and love of her siblings and parents. 87 years today, she still gets all misty-eyed when she recalls the care and concern eldest brother Ramu had for her. By the time she entered her teens, Ramu recognised her unusual musical ability and located good teachers for her at every stage. Two of her mentors were the veena vidwan Kalyanakrishna Bhagavatar and Professor Srinivasaraghavan.

Marriage when she was 18 to insurance company officer Ramanan put an end to her college education and her music classes. She married into a large middle class joint family, whose head was Srinivasan, a brilliant but unworldy-wise scholar in his mid-fifties. A widower, he lived in Mylapore, Madras, at a somewhat decrepit old two-storeyed bungalow, Sarada, named after the wife of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, whom Srinivasan, a devotee of the saintly couple, had once met.

His three sons Raja (and wife Kamala), Ramanan (and Radha) and Raju and three sisters Lakshmi, Kalyani and Lalita lived together under one roof at Sarada, when Radha came into the family.

Srinivasan was a believer in women's empowerment and encouraged his daughters and daughters-in-law to develop an interest in literature, art and music. He had a good ear for music, and enjoyed listening to Radha's singing on the rare occasions she could take a break from housework. Srinivasan died two years after Radha came into the family. Soon after that, Ramanan and Radha left for Trivandrum, Kerala, where the insurance company transferred Ramanan.

Five years later, when Ramanan, Radha and their three children returned to Madras, the head of the family was Ramanan's grandmother, Paatti, a wise old widow. With both her daughter and son-in-law long dead, and only two grandsons earning any income, she had to run a tight ship. She told Radha she must give up her aspirations and merge into the family as a typical woman member bound to the kitchen and household duties, as grandma could not be seen to favour one daughter, granddaughter or daughter-in-law over another. The extended family under one roof then included Ramanan's two brothers and two yet-to-be-married sisters Happily, Kamala, the other daughter-in-law of the family, and Radha got on well. Kamala, the older of the two, was easy-going, and not afraid of hard work, so the workload of cooking and cleaning for an army of hungry adults and children, was shared equally by the two women in a true spirit of give and take. When the two had a few quiet moments to share, in the afternoons when the menfolk and schoolgoing children were away, the pair grabbed a shut-eye in a corner of the cool dark of the vast puja room, before the next round of housework caught up with them. Frequently, Kamala (whom Radha called Manni) asked Radha to sing for her a song or two out of her considerable repertoire. One of Manni's favourites was Syama Sastri's (1762-1827) Brovavamma in the raga Manji, which Radha sang in a deeply moving voice that captured the delicate nuances of the kriti with its pleading, plaintive verses before the goddess Kamakshi.

It was only when Ramanan's sisters had married and left Sarada, and  Krishnan and his sisters were old enough to go to school unescorted that Radha was able to find time to sing in the puja room of an evening. She was also able to persuade Ramanan to hire a music teacher for her daughter Vijaya and niece Gita. Ramanan's family then occupied the first floor of Sarada while his elder brother Raja, his wife Kamala and their four children lived downstairs. After his parents passed away, Ramanan never took a step without Raja's permission, and he duly approached Raja with Radha's proposal. Raja was a strict, orthodox traditionalist, but not an unreasonable man. With some music training because of his proximity to Balakrishna Sastrigal, an iconic harikatha exponent, he agreed, but not before teaching the girls to sing a couple of slokas, and satisfying himself that they had it in them to learn the rudiments of a complex art.

The paattu vadyar who came home twice or thrice a week to teach the girls the basic lessons of Carnatic music was a disciple of well known vocalist Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar. He saw some talent in the girls, and taught them conscientiously, with patience and skill.

Listening to these music classes and Amma's tentative attempts to start singing the songs she had learnt in her own teenage years, Krishnan discovered a latent love of music in himself. As he managed to do a fair imitation of Amma's Kamalambambhajare in the raga Kalyani, and her rendition of Munnu Ravana in Todi, both Appa and Amma decided to enrol him in the paattu class, along with Vijaya and Gita. That year, he was also a member of a group of siblings and cousins that Raja Periappa gathered together to teach them Tiruppavai verses in preparation for a competition at nearby Subramaniaswami temple. With inputs from both Periappa and Amma, Krishnan did manage to learn a few verses in a ragamalika, which he sang with great gusto during practice, raising hopes that he might win at least a consolation prize. But, come the day of the competition, and he was a bundle of nerves, and made an ignominious exit without completing even the opening verse.

Krishnan had been born in Trivandrum, a ''midnight's child'', whose arrival into the world had been welcomed by much noise and celebration, as only hours earlier had the new Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru announced the fulfilment of India's tryst with destiny from the ramparts of the Red Fort. The Ramanans were at the time close neighbours of Radha's parents. A retired schoolmaster, Radha's father Swaminathan was a great music lover, and his offspring including his eldest son Ramu arrived every year to spend the summer vacation with their parents.

While Krishnan had been too young during the Ramanan family's Trivandrum tenure to remember much about these huge family gatherings, he now began to look forward to the annual summer trips from Madras to Trivandrum, where he would be joined by cousins and uncles and aunts. Grandfather Swaminathan's house was stacked with books, which had begun to attract Krishnan. Indoor games galore from Pallankuzhi to Scrabble were delightful escapes from the heat outside, while the late evening was reserved for singing by the adults of the family, Ramu Uncle leading the way. Though not the most talented of the many amateur singers in the extended family, Ramu was the most devoted, most prolific and most disciplined of them. If Tyagaraja was God incarnate to him, Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar was his hero. One of his younger brothers, Mani, had a strong, sonorous and malleable voice with excellent reach. He loved to sing slokas in elaborate ragamalikas, and did so movingly, keeping his audience spell bound, even though he perhaps did not know a single kriti in its entirety. Radha was the most gifted of the women of the family, most of whom had learnt music from private tutors.

The high point of the week during these vacations was the Friday evening soiree in which everyone with a semblance of musical ability sang by turns, with Ramu Uncle guiding and controlling them. Though Tyagaraja was the favourite composer, the climax of  the evening was invariably provided by the grand coronation song Mamava Pattabhi Rama by Muttuswami Dikshitar (1775-1835) in the raga Manirangu, which almost everyone present joined to render together. Magically, the family sang in one voice, the grandeur of the chorus somehow managing to hide any false notes by individual singers.

Tyagaraja (1767-1847)

A link from Chapter 1

By V Ramnarayan

Tyagaraja was one of the greatest composers in Carnatic music. Known as the ‘pitamaha’ of the realm, he became part of a miraculous trinity of the greatest composers in the tradition-the other two were Muthuswami Dikshitar (1775-1835) and Syama Sastry (1762-1827)-born in the same little town of Tiruvarur, within a few years of one another.

Tyagaraja was born to Kakarla Ramabrahmam and Sitamma, a Telugu brahmin couple, at the home of his maternal grandfather Giriraja Kavi, a poet-composer in the court of the king of Tanjavur. He was named after the presiding deity of the temple at Tiruvarur.

Tyagaraja began his musical training under Sonti Venkataramanayya, a noted music scholar and court musician, at an early age. Music was a spiritual pursuit for him, his expression of his devotion to his favourite god, Rama. From a talented and devout singer, he eventually became a composer. Singing the praises of Rama was reward in itself for him, so much so that he refused lucrative offers to become a court musician. His rejection of worldly success and wealth in favour of the service of Rama is beautifully encapsulated in the famous song Nidhi chala sukhama in the raga Kalyani. “His lyrics reveal great depth of knowledge of the sciptures, epics, legends, purana, musical expertise, his humility as well as self-respect, introspection, and sense of humour,” says The Illustrated Companion to South Indian Classical Music (by Ludwig Pesch, Oxford University Press, 1999).

Tyagaraja was a prolific composer who had a major impact on the development of the south Indian classical music tradition, the structure of the typical Carnatic music composition, in particular. He developed the kriti as we know it today from the kirtanas belonging to the utsava sampradaya or tradition of festivals celebrating gods.

To Tyagaraja is attributed the origin of the present pattern of the kriti consisting of the pallavi, anupallavi and charanam, the song developing upwards from the opening or pallavi towards the middle part or anupallavi and concluding in the charanam. All three portions of the song, which occur in seamless progression, are marked by sangatis or melodic and rhythmic variations on the lines of verse that make up the song. The sangati is regarded as Tyagaraja’s major contribution to Carnatic music.

While Tyagaraja composed kirtanas in the bhajana tradition as well, but predominantly kritis in over 200 ragas-including several he created-he was also responsible for Prahlada bhakti vijayam and Nauka charitam, musical narratives of myths in the operatic style. Most of his compositions were in Telugu, a language brought to Tanjavur from migrants from Vijayanagar in present-day Andhra Pradesh.

His pancharatna kritis are five compositions in the ghana ragas Nattai, Gowlai, Arabhi, Sriragam and Varali, which crown the annual Tyagaraja Aradhana at Tiruvaiyaru where his samadhi or final resting place is situated.

Tyagaraja sang his compositions facing Rama’s idol while his disciples wrote the lyrics down on palm leaves, which were handed down to future generations of disciples in an unbroken thread. Though he is said to have composed thousands of songs, only some 800 or so have survived.

SOME TRIBUTES TO TYAGARAJA

Dr S Radhakrishnan says in his preface to The Spiritual Heritage of Tyagaraja by Sri C Ramanujachari:

“The name Tyagaraja means the prince of renouncers, of those who give up worldly desires. Tyaga or renunciation is the way to mental peace and freedom. In one of his songs Tera tiyagarada? Tyagaraja says, “O Supreme Being, Tirupati Venkataramana, could you not remove the screen of pride and envy, which is taking a firm stand within me, keeping me out of the reach of dharma and the like.”

“Tyagaraja was a person of great humility. He expresses the truths of the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita in simple and appealing language. He addresses the Supreme as Rama. The kingdom of God acquired through devotion is the greatest of all treasures: Rama bhakti samrajyamu.

 “If we have faith in the Divine, there is no need to worry: ma kelara vicharamu.

“The secular must be invaded by the spiritual; only then is life dignified. Self-realisation is through self-giving.”

In the Introductory Thesis of the same book, Dr V Raghavan says Tyagaraja is probably the greatest of the great music-makers of south India.

He attributes his success to his powerful genius that comprehended the varied excellences of the early masters as well as his own brilliant contemporaries. 

He compares Tyagaraja with Purandaradasa and Kshetrayya for sheer volume of output; he calls him a second Bhadrachala Ramadasa in his anguished appeals to Rama; he finds him as lyrical as Kshetrayya; in devotion, religious fervour and reformatory zeal, he considers him an equal of Purandaradasa again, and so on and so forth.

“From plain Divyanama sankirtana, full of words, epithets and long and difficult compounds, he soars to artistic creations in which, into a few words, an eddying flood of music is thrown.”

Dr Raghavan speaks of the poetic excellence and spiritual value of Tyagaraja’s compositions. He describes his creativity as the consummation of fragrant gold as in the works of Jayadeva, Purandaradasa and Kshetrayya. However, while praising his sangita, he also speaks of his sahitya as “a treasure of thought the contemplation of which would make one forget everything about his music.”

An article in Issue 41 of Sruti by N.S. Srinivasan, a producer at AIR-Hyderabad and a flautist trained by Mali, titled Tyagaraja As Composer: More Human Than Divine argues that Tyagaraja’s music is a product of great musical intelligence and acumen, not the handiwork of Providence alone.

Srinivasan asks if the bhava which is said to be the lifeblood of Tyagaraja’s kritis is sahitya bhava or sangita bhava.

He maintains that the musical mood conveys the meaning of a song even when the singer mutilates the lyrics, as in the case of classical musicians who do not know Telugu.

They may mispronounce words or split them ridiculously when they sing Tyagaraja’s songs, sometimes unwittingly conveying inappropriate meaning in the process, but the emotional appeal of the music is still intact.

He stresses that not sahitya alone but music also contributes to the bhava of a composition. “It has been rightly said that a song is a fusion (samyuktam) of notes (datu) and words (matu). This fusion is indeed one of the secrets of Tyagaraja’s success.”

Tyagaraja was a Rama bhakta but also a composer par excellence. To call his compositions the products of divine ecstasy is to ascribe his genius to his heart and take away credit from his brilliant mind.

Tyagaraja expressed sorrow and turmoil with great musical beauty. He handled ragas rare and common, even vakra ragas, with ease, intimating the raga in a flash and painting its whole picture in the very first line. His kritis show perfect balance between form and structure. To place too much emphasis on his bhakti alone is an injustice to his musical genius.

According to his biographer William Jackson, Tyagaraja represents an archetype, a symbol in which opposites unite dynamically. 

He may be accessible, even popular in his musical outpourings, but he is inwardly a mystic with the power that emanates from self-realisation. 

His songs, steeped in the essence of over 200 ragas, including some he created, draw from a reservoir of collective memory and wisdom. In turn, he made a lasting impression on the collective memory of south India.

Sangita Kalanidhi TV Subba Rao as quoted by Jackson, said, “Tyagaraja united the apparently opposite qualities of conservatism and progress, of reverence for antiquity and impatience of restraint, of the prejudices of the heart and the revolt of intellect. He is a classic romanticist and a conservative radical. His life in ethics and aesthetics is the evolution of perfect harmony and attunement from the discordant principles of thought and action. Nothing short of the absolute universality of his mind could have succeeded in saturating his songs with that spirit of sweetness, peace and bliss which lingers in our soul long after the sounds have faded away.”

No wonder Tyagaraja’s anniversary has been commemorated for over 160 years—now in several parts of the world. For this we must thank the thousands of humble devotees who have selflessly contributed time and effort, as well as money, to show their reverence to the saint composer through music.