Sruti Editorial

FROM THE EDITOR

Fears that some of our senior musicians may go unrewarded as Sangita Kalanidhi by the Madras Music Academy have receded somewhat with the announcement of vidwan T.V. Gopalakrishnan’s elevation to that coveted honour this year. A versatile artist of many dimensions, TVG has been a youthful, energetic presence in the world of Carnatic music, sometimes beyond it, for some seven decades, now. As a mridanga vidwan, vocalist in more than one genre, composer, guru and proselytizer, the man from Tripunithura has been known to be a swashbuckler among the orthodox, a traditionalist amidst the pro-changers, reverent towards his gurus and questioning of taboos, all at once. His admirers and critics may be about equal in number, but no one who has followed Carnatic music closely for a long time will question his credentials. He has been consistently hard to ignore, and many of us who had given up the hope – after he crossed 80 – that he would follow in his guru Chembai’s footsteps, now rejoice in this richly deserved recognition. Knowing his articulation, we can expect him to bring flair to the conduct of the academic sessions at this year’s conference.

Musicians of the calibre of M.S. Anantharaman, T.H. Vinayakram, V.V. Subramaniam, Vyjayantimala Bali (though essentially a dancer, like Sangita Kalanidhi T. Balasaraswati), P.S. Narayanaswami, Suguna Purushothaman, R. Visweswaran, and Tanjavur Sankara Iyer are some other names that come to mind as artists deserving of high honours. While the Music Academy has decorated some of them as Sangita Kala Acharya, there may still be a case for a Kalanidhi or lifetime achievement award for a few of them. Synonymous with the ghatam, Vinayakram, would, in particular, seem to be a perfect candidate for the ultimate award.

It is no easy task to select one honouree every year from a large pool of contenders, we know, and this is no attempt to offer criticism or gratuitous advice to an institution that has been grappling with it and generally giving satisfaction to all but its most strident critics. We must, however, acknowledge the very real danger that among a vast variety of specialists, vocal and instrumental – lead and accompanying, wind, string and percussion – some outstanding vidwans can escape the radar altogether. Some, like M.D. Ramanathan, were ignored for far too long, while others like Rajarathnam Pillai and Ramnad Krishnan perhaps did not live long enough.

The truly great may care little for worldly success. We know from the extraordinary lives of the Van Goghs, Gauguins, Monets and Manets of the Western artistic world, that many geniuses went unsung and unhonoured in their lifetime, but we do not often hear of giants of Carnatic music who led impoverished lives of no reward, and whose greatness the world came to appreciate only after their death. There is a high probability that there were several such instances that went unrecorded, quite literally before the advent of the gramophone, and owing to our lack of rigour in documenting our history, though there may be stories galore floating around in the realm of legend.

V. RAMNARAYAN

Thinking Music (from Frontline magazine)

TM Krishna’s A Southern Music is one of the most important books to emerge in the recent history of Carnatic music. (If the book uses the spelling Karnatik rather than Carnatic in an attempt at authenticity, it should have really gone the whole hog and said Karnatak or Karnataka).

Its importance lies in its earnest attempt to explain a complex system of what it terms as art music to a reader who may or may not be exposed to its nuances, but even more in the kind of questions technical, philosophical and sociological it raises.

The value of the book is further enhanced by the fact that the author is a young musician, a star vocalist at that, some of whose recent actions on and off the performance stage have led to a variety of mixed reactions ranging from amused to angry (not excluding adoring) from his audiences. The book serves to answer some of the questions agitating them as to the rationale behind some of the structural changes he has been attempting in the concert format as it exists today.

Of the three parts of the book entitled The Experience, The Context and The History, the author appears to strike mid-season form in the first part, especially in the chapter on manodharma, the art of improvisation.  

Elaborating the contours of alapana (or raga exploration without the aid of verse or tala), for example, Krishna takes us on a tour-de-force as beautifully crafted as a memorable alapana by an accomplished artist. 

One of the major distinctions Krishna sets out to make from the popular discourse on Carnatic music lies in his choice of the phrase ‘art music’ to describe it, something that Sruti magazine (which is mentioned in the bibliography) tried to disseminate based on the musicologist Ashok D Ranade’s preference for the term over ‘classical music’ for traditional Indian music performed on the formal concert stage. The cutcheri stage is home to art music, according to the author, as different from devotional music belonging to the bhajana sampradaya, though this distinction may not be so clear to many followers of Carnatic music. It is a lovely distinction by which to highlight the beauty of the music per se without the adventitious aid of lyrics or bhakti to the gods and goddesses often hailed in the kritis of the great vaggeyakaras—’bicameral geniuses’ as the book describes them—who compose both words and tune.

The author makes an elaborate case for separating art and religious fervour in concert music, though he says, ‘I will be the first to concede that, in spite of my views on the relative unimportance of textual meaning in art music, certain names of gods and adjectives touch a deep chord in me.” We can hardly argue against Krishna’s assertion in this regard that when a musician presents a composition, “its very presence must inspire the musician to abstraction.” We can agree with his assertion that when the composition is seen as a religious presentation, “divinity becomes the rendering’s principal inspiration” and “limits the melodic and rhythmic possibilities, as the musician is conscious that his creativity must not undermine the emotional quality of the religious content.” As years of listening experience, however, suggest that the more serious—and therefore more impact-making—musicians rarely waver from their pursuit of musical excellence, their thoughts focused on music and not devotion, their religiosity outside music notwithstanding, Krishna is perhaps addressing here a problem that is not core to the world of the practitioners of Carnatic music, even if some of its commentators may suggest otherwise. Again Carnatic music every now and then offers lyrical gems of sublime beauty focusing on the human condition—especially the total surrender of the devotee tossed around by his destiny. Such verses, which can move the listener even without reference to the gods they address, often enhance the beauty of the raga. These would seem to be examples of ‘art’ music even if their original intent was ‘devotional.’

Known for his abundant creativity as a musician, Krishna takes the reader on an exciting journey of understanding the contours of manodharma in Carnatic music in the sixth chapter of the book, an excellent exercise in deconstructing the process of improvisation on the performance stage. While explaining the various steps of raga alapana in considerable detail—as he does all other aspects of manodharma—he says for instance, “The alapana cannot be an aesthetic form unless there is cohesion within every phrase, between phrases and the larger picture that the alapana is painting. The raga exists in every svara as much as it does in the whole presentation of the raga. The alapana is not a bunch of known phrases around which the musician creates newer phrases, melodic lines. It is the distilled aesthetic experience of the raga in its entirety. Thus the alapana leaves at the end of its rendition a wholesome experience of the raga and of the creative genius of the musician.” Several similar passages of lucid exposition of the many components of the whole Carnatic music experience add weight to the book. They—and the descriptions of the many compositional forms—are so well thought out and helpful to the reader in augmenting his understanding of the art form that they could well have added up to an independent book by themselves.

The great merit of A Southern Music is its transparent public-spiritedness. Evidently a man of admirable social conscience, Krishna comes through as a forceful champion of what is ethical and moral in his field of endeavour and a vehement opponent of its ills as he sees them. Caste, the place of the nagaswaram and nagaswara vidwans, gender, the diasporic influence, technology, fusion, the connection with Hindustani music…none of these issues escapes his piercing gaze. His views on fusion, the role of overseas Indians in promoting the art, the suitability or otherwise of foreign instruments, and the appropriate use of technology in propagating music and learning/ teaching are particularly well articulated and reflect deep thought on the subject. He has also dared to go where angels fear to tread while dissecting the history of caste and gender discrimination. These, especially the caste dimension, are a poorly documented part of the history of Carnatic music, and it is hard not to wonder if Krishna oversimplifies their complexity by making the male Brahmin out to be a rather more deliberate architect of its trajectory in the last hundred years or so than he has actually been.  There are no easy answers to these ills, but Krishna is absolutely right in asserting that it is time for our musicians and the people who call the shots in our music—predominantly Brahmin males as they are—to examine the troubling legacy of Carnatic music and take corrective measures even as its reach expands to include greater numbers in its fold.

Over the last couple of years, the TM Krishna concert format has been a hotly discussed phenomenon, and in chapter 9 titled The Karnatik Concert Today: A Critique, Krishna has made an elaborate presentation of his views on the Carnatic music cutcheri as it is performed today, and the way he prefers to approach it. He explains for instance why he sometimes does not follow an alapana with a kriti—going against the norm so far—by saying, “At the experiential level, after rendering an alapana, I have often felt that I had finished all that I could present all that I could present of the raga on the day…” It makes “the whole experience laboured” when niraval and swara singing are made de rigueur during the kriti that follows. The structural changes Krishna has been experimenting with in his concerts often polarize the audience between diehard fans and vociferous critics. So long as the quality of music remains high, audiences are likely to accept the changes in time, even if his explanations do not convince the orthodox listener today.

In his epilogue, Krishna says, “Are all the thoughts I have expressed accurate, perfect? They are not, and I am glad they are not.”  He concludes with the sentence, “As for me, as I write the last words of this book I know of only one thing: my next question.” Admirable as such a hint of self-doubt is, the tone of the book is sometimes dogmatic, its text often clothed in language that leaves little room for doubt. More expert editing than it has apparently received would perhaps have made the book more consistently readable, and less heavy as it tends to be at times. All in all, a truly commendable first book by one of our leading musicians, full of thought provoking questions vital to the well being of Carnatic music. It resonates with the amazing clarity of thinking of an obviously brilliant mind.

Can art heal?

By  V. Ramnarayan

Baiju Bawra was the unlikely hero of the eponymous 1952 Hindi film, a legendary character loosely based on the life of a 16th century Gwalior court musician. Played by Bharat Bhushan, Baiju performs miracles through the movie, in the limpid voice of Mohammad Rafi, singing the lyrics of Shakeel Badayuni in tunes composed by Naushad. He is joined by such eminent Hindustani vocalists as D.V. Paluskar and Amir Khan in variously bringing tears to the eyes of a stone idol with raga Darbari, starting a fire with Deepak and dousing it with Megh, and making a bed-ridden guru walk with a poignant Malkauns. The ringing tones of Rafi and Lata Mangeshkar can be heard across rivers and mountains, though they can unite lovers only in death. It was a love story all right, but more about the power of art, of such sublime music that the viewer was more than willing to suspend disbelief.

Music in Indian films often breaks or melts hearts, reunites families torn asunder in childhood, heals the sick, settles arguments about the superiority of one or other school of music or artist. In one astonishing sequence in a popular film in the 1960s, a personal attendant sings in a hospital ward for the patient, accompanying herself on the veena. The screenplay did not suggest that the music had a hand in the recovery of the patient believed to be terminally ill, giving the credit entirely to the doctor working day and night to save him and dying in the process, but such a turn would have lent it a nice touch. This writer for one thought the scene was absurd, but had to eat humble pie as he twice became witness to similar scenes in real life.

On the first occasion, a young burns victim found solace in the songs of M.S. Subbulakshmi which she asked her friend to sing for her during her last hours on earth. The second instance had a happier ending, as the same woman visitor sang for another young patient the night before she underwent major surgery and made a complete recovery — at the very hospital where the film had been shot decades earlier.

Most of us have felt elevated by great music, often enough to wonder if music — and art in general — can indeed ennoble human minds and hearts, even lend a healing touch in times of sorrow and stress. Music has been used in therapy in both east and west through the centuries, though it is hard to explain to the skeptic how exactly the treatment works. Sruti has attempted to introduce some of the concepts of music therapy to its readers in some past issues (221 and 268 for instance). In this issue we present some ideas and case studies by men and women engaged in research and practice in the field.

According to the eminent neurologist Oliver Sacks, “Humans are uniquely able to produce and enjoy music — very few other animals can do so. But not only is music one of the fundamental ways we bond with each other, it literally shapes our brains. Perhaps this is so because musical activity involves many parts of the brain (emotional, motor, and cognitive areas), even more than we use for our other great human achievement, language. This is why it can be such an effective way to remember or to learn. It is no accident that we teach our youngest children with rhymes and songs. As anyone who can’t get an advertising jingle or a popular song out of their head knows, music burrows its way deep into the nervous system, so deep, in fact, that even when people suffer devastating neurological disease or injury, music is usually the last thing they lose.

Sacks frequently saw that music could enable a Parkinson’s disease victim to dance or sing, even though, in the absence of music, he could not take a step or say a word. Songs brought back words to people with aphasia, a loss of the use of language most commonly caused by stroke, Music could even help victims of Tourette’s syndrome bypass the embarrassing physical and verbal tics that afflict them. Sacks even itnessed people with extreme amnesia sing or play long, complicated pieces of music, or conduct an orchestra or choir, though their loss of temporary memory was often total.

”Perhaps most remarkably, people with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias can respond to music when nothing else reaches them,” Sacks says. “Alzheimer’s can totally destroy the ability to remember family members or events from one’s own life — but musical memory somehow survives the ravages of disease, and even in people with advanced dementia, music can often reawaken personal memories and associations that are otherwise lost.”

Music has been used in medicine since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers, who believed that it could heal both the body and the soul. Native healers in the West as well as the third world sing and chant as part of their healing rituals. In World War II, U.S. Veterans Administration hospitals employed music to help treat soldiers suffering from shell shock. In 1944, Michigan State University established the first music therapy degree course in the world.

There are claims that, when used with conventional treatment, music therapy can help to reduce pain, even relieve chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting. Studies indicate that music therapy can lower the heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate.

Conversely, there can be little doubt that noise or loud music can cause serious health problems. Again this writer once saw a friend with a chronic ear infection literally collapse when exposed to deafening music at a wedding reception. At the very least, constant noise pollution has made our whole generation noticeably hearing deficient.

A Dalit’s eternal night

By V Ramnarayan

I am ashamed to say that I did not know who Cho Dharman was when I went to a book review event relating to his novel Kookai last evening at TAG Centre, Chennai, organized by the Puthaka Nanbargal Kuzhu.

My worst fears of having to suffer a barrage of platitudes and being bored to death were more or less confirmed until a passage from his novel was read out. In the author’s own voice, the words sprang to life, full of raw power, honesty, humour even. It was a truthful telling of the lives of Dalits—oppressed, reviled, ill-treated and crushed by a cruel society—by someone who knows them and other marginalized people intimately. The passage is about two young Dalit men, who dream of a hearty meal at a roadside ‘club kadai’, bathe and dress grandly for it, and actually live their dream, only to be thrashed to death by their caste superiors for their intransigence.  

When it was the ordinary looking, moustachioed Dharman’s turn to speak, he did so with quiet confidence, in a clear, ringing voice. He spoke of his craft and his desire for anonymity for fear celebrityhood would prevent people from opening up to him as they do. “If you come looking for me at Kovilpatti, my neighbours will want to know if you are looking for the man with the ancient bicycle,” The people in his books are people he knows personally, and he does not want to interfere with the supply chain of raw material for his writing. “That is why you won’t find my photograph in my books. Only in my eighth book have I given my address following a request from a scholar who referred to me in the past tense in her MPhil thesis. ‘Please give your address in your books,’ she said. ‘Otherwise more students of your works will murder you as I did,” she warned.

“I write stories from my own life,” Dharman continued. “I believe the novel is the best form of recording our history. There is nothing new under the sun, and it is my writing, my style that will make you read my novel, not the story itself.”

Dharman illustrated the point by telling us how he would describe the forest in just a sentence or two. “You may enter the forest a hundred times to sight the tiger and come back seeing it only once, but the tiger saw you each of those hundred times.”  He gave us a sample of his indirect depiction of the decimation of a forest by man by following the flight of a parrot that cannot find a tree tall enough to offer a nook for its eggs, so leaves the jungle to deposit it in a neighbouring palm.

Dharman is fascinated by the marginalized among us including nomads and tribes. They have so much wisdom to offer the rest of us, we misjudge them so badly, he believes. He has been trying to befriend nari kuravas and other tribals for some years now in an attempt to understand and learn from them. “Polish, for that is his name, is my kurava friend,” he told yesterday’s audience. “He is of course unlettered, but quite a philosopher. I first met him when he and his fellow kuravas were camping near my house, and a number of clothes went missing from the clotheslines of our colony. Most of my neighbours suspected the kuravas, and I decided to meet him and check it out. I took my son with me, and found Polish cleaning his rifle, and the birds he had shot lying in a heap near him, with ants crawling all over them. There was no sign of the stolen clothes anywhere as Polish and the other kuravas went about their business clad in nothing more than their loincloths. My little son saw peacock feathers lying near Polish and asked him if he could have one. ‘Why do you need one?’ Polish asked him. ‘I’ll keep it with me and collect its fledglings when it gives birth to them,’ my son said. ‘Will you give me one of the little feathers?’ Polish asked him. Once my son nodded in the affirmative, Polish gave him the feather. He refused to accept the five rupees I offered him. ‘This is not for you. Between you and me it would be business, but this is a transaction between your son and me. He has promised to give me a feather in return.’ However, as we prepared tro leave, he shouted to my son, ‘The feather won’t deliver any more feathers.’ Polish is such a gentle, wise person, and we are so ready to brand his tribe as dirty, cunning, dishonest,” Dharman concluded.

When Dharman asked to accompany Polish on a rabbit hunt, the gypsy’s retort was immediate. “Why do you want to share my burden of killing lives? It is natural for a tiger to kill his prey, and it is in my nature to hunt, not yours.” Dharman managed to convince Polish, and did accompany him on the hunting expedition at night. Wearing goggles on his forehead, Polish went in search of rabbits, but when he sighted a couple of young ones, he did not shoot at them. “I will not kill the young,” he explained to Dharman.

There is so much in nature that we do not understand, Dharman told us. He spoke of tailorbirds whose nests have windows opening to one side or the other, depending on which monsoon the northeast or southwest would arrive first in a particular season. He also marvelled at how nesting birds can tell male palmyras from female palms—something no human can—and always build their nests on the male trees, as the female ones rich with fruit are prone to climbing and fruit plucking depredations from humans.

Dharman shared some of his rare experiences with hill tribes with the audience. “The tribals leave untouched overripe jackfruit hanging from the trees for the birds and the bees, never plucking them, and content with the fruit that fall to the ground on their own.  At an annual festival, men and women alike get drunk and dance merrily, dressed in strange bat-like costumes. ‘Without the pollination these creatures do, we would have no forest. Should we not show our gratitude to them?’ the tribals explained to Dharman.

The award winning novel Kookai (Night Owl) is the story of Dalits today, as we can see from this passage from Dharman’s foreword to the novel:

It was some forty years ago. The noon sun was blazing hot. It was perhaps the month of Chittirai, as the neem trees in our woodshad blossomed into a canopy of shade. The neem only blooms in summer. My father and I were standing in another part of our land.

All of a sudden a whole variety of birds, crows, mynahs, karichans and vultures, started surrounding the neem and screaming. Watching the scene wonder-struck, I asked my Ayya what it was all about. Ayya said, “There must be a kookai sitting on the neem tree. Have you seen one?” When I said, no, he took me to the neem tree, walking rapidly.

Ayya bowed before the neem tree with folded hands. When my eyes followed the direction of his obeisance, I saw a big, ugly bird seated there.The other birds flew repeatedly towards it and poked his head with their beaks. The kookai (kottan or owl) kept turning his head to each side and opening his mouth. Every time he opened his mouth, I saw a red  ball of fire inside it.

As Ayya shooed the other birds away, I asked him to explain the horror of the attack on the kookai. “Why do the birds poke the kookai?” He explained that even the smallest of the karichans could attack it. “Why can’t the kookai retaliate?” I asked him. He said, “The poor kookai cannot see during the day. That’s why all these birds attack him at daytime. At night no bird can dare to approach him.”

“Ok, but how do the birds know that the kookai is sitting in this tree?” I asked Ayya.
”There is so much in God’s creation that we don’t know but these birds seem to know.”

The story of the kookai continued to surprise me. After that first sighting, I saw it many times under different circumstances. Every time I see a kookai, I realize I am a kookai too, with an identity inerasable for millennia, an identity that is invisible to me but everyone else can see, an identity that I carry as my burden everywhere. Nights are the most important events of these night owls, nights are when their happiness and sorrows occur. In my novel Kookai, all important incidents must needs be centred around night. 

I believe that the novel is the most appropriate medium to demonstrate how a society, a community moves beyond itself in the space of time. I still see kookais. They slink in holes, hide in tree branches, pierced by other birds, just the way I saw them forty years ago.  

(This passage was translated from the Tamil original by V Ramnarayan).

Remembering PB Srinivas

By V Ramnarayan

Visitors to Chennai’s iconic Woodlands drive-in restaurant near the Gemini flyover during the 1990s and the first decade of the new millennium came to expect the presence there of another icon of the city—PB Srinivas, the man with a mellifluous voice who had entertained film music listeners for decades earlier. Srinivas was already a senior citizen but with his creative instincts intact and his productivity as a composer of semi-classical and devotional songs amazingly high. Grandly attired in traditional south Indian clothes topped by a resplendent zari-bordered turban, he sat through the day at one of the tables of the restaurant surrounded by files and his pocket filled with pens of different hues. Over the years, some of the restaurant’s regular clients picked up the courage to go up to him and engage him in conversation, discovering in the process that his voice was still as strong and resonant as when he sang his immortal melodies in films.

When the drive-in restaurant was taken over by the state government in 2008, not only were residents of Chennai deprived of a popular meeting place where students, salesmen, entrepreneurs and executives wove their dreams and planned their projects, they were also denied the pleasure of running into a much-loved celebrity of the city. Srinivas shifted his informal office to other Woodlands cafeterias in the city, but it was never the same again.

Srinivas, popularly known as PBS, was arguably the most versatile, cerebral and well-read musician in the film world for the six decades he was part of it. He was a fluent linguist, for one thing, with mastery over the enunciation of lyrics in Tamil. Telugu, Malayalam. Kannada and Hindi, among other languages. For those not familiar with Indian films, they often have songs in them (six to ten songs in a movie was par for the course for several decades until recently), with the actor lip-syncing with the recorded voices of ‘playback’ singers. Tamil cinema was dominated by a handful of stars when PBS entered the scene, and singers like TM Soundararajan lent their voices to the leading stars of the day, like Sivaji Ganesan and MG Ramachandran. PBS’s voice was not a good match for those of these stars, but fortunately for him, it suited the voices of some other actors like Gemini Ganesan and Muthuraman, for whom PBS sang some of the most memorable melodies in southern cinema.

Born to P.B.V.L. Phanindraswami, an inspector of cooperatives, and Seshagiriamma, in coastal Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh, Srinivas grew up in a sprawling house belonging to his grandparents. He was in his early teens when he fell in love with Hindi film songs composed by such wizards as Naushad.

In the early 1950s, PBS and film music composers GK Venkatesh and M.S. Viswanathan—who brought out Srinivas’s best in Tamil cinema—made a trio of musicians who swore by Naushad. Encouraged by maternal uncle Kidambi Krishnamacharya, a theatre actor and director, Srinivas dreamt of becoming a playback singer like the famous Mohammad Rafi, Mukesh and Lata Mangeshkar of Hindi cinema.

His disciplinarian father discouraged him, even tried to forbid him, and insisted he obtain a degree even after he tripped twice in his school finals. Thanks to tutorials in Madras, PBS finally earned a BCom degree, but his father now wanted him to study for a law degree. Moving to Madras to join the Government Law College, PBS spent more time on music practice than law classes, even winning inter-collegiate singing competitions in the process. He enlisted the services of an astrologer to convince his father that his future lay in film music rather than a conventional job!

Veena virtuoso Emani Sankara Sastri, one of the music directors of Gemini Studios in charge of Hindi films, and a family friend, recognised merit in Srinivas’s lovely voice, and started employing Srinivas as his assistant. Emani proved a loving benefactor who tended to the younger friend like a father, showering him with warmth and affection. Sastri mentored him in growing into a sensitive purveyor of raga-based songs. (“A few decades hence, Emani was to witness the mature Srinivas compose and sing a ragamalika tribute to Tyagaraja. Srinivas even stumbled upon a new raga, which he named Navaneeta Sumasudha,” says film music expert Vamanan in his obituary).

Adinarayana Rao, G Ramanathan and MB Srinivasan, great composers of film songs with a classical touch to them, were some of the music directors to spot the talent in PBS and give him early breaks in Tamil and other southern cinema.

Through the 1960s and seventies, PBS enjoyed success as the most delicate and sensitive voice in Tamil cinema, with his duets with woman singers of the calibre of P Susila winning him a sizable number of admirers, but without the fanatical following of the likes of TM Soundararajan. He was at his evocative best while rendering sad or philosophical songs. He became part of a popular trio that included the music directorsViswanathan-Ramamurthy and lyricist Kannadasan, and delivered some of the most tuneful and emotive songs of the era.

Competition soon caught up with PBS, with some brilliant new voices in KJ Yesudas and SP Balasubramaniam and music directors like Ilaiyaraja transformed the film industry altogether with a predominance of SPB and Yesudas songs. Fading away from the playback-singing world, PBS reinvented himself as a composer of semi-classical and devotional music, exploiting his proficiency in languages, poetry and compositional ability. Though no longer a star singer in the films, he continued in the music field almost till his death in April 2013.

A man of many interests, PBS was a regular at many classical music concerts in the city, Hindustani music in particular, and invariably made it a point at the end of a performance to applaud the artists with some choice phrases of praise, including verses he composed on the spot. This writer was among those who marvelled at his devotion to music that made him nonchalantly climb a steep spiral staircase to attend a Hindustani vocal recital at a suburban venue one evening just a couple of months before his death.

Among some of the quirky sidelights of PBS’s life was a song he composed when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, PBS sent a recording of the song to Armstrong and Richard Nixon, then president of the US. He treasured their replies to him.

According to his devoted wife Janaki,  ‘He lived a carefree man; he has departed just as he lived’. The singer had had close brushes with death earlier, once butted by a cow with fierce horns on a busy Chennai street. When the end came, however, he had just sat at the dining table and passed away peacefully.

First published in Matrix, the house journal of The Sanmar Group

The KVN bani

In one of his last concerts, KVN  moved listeners to tears with the depth of feeling of his rendering of Gopalakrishna Bharati’s, Varugalamo Ayya, Nandan’s desperate plea before the lord.

It was hardly surprising, for he was known for the emotional impact his music had on listeners, but he was himself always in control of the sruti- and laya-perfect music he purveyed.

Sangita Kalanidhi KV Narayanaswamy’s music continues to have a huge impact on many of the present generation of singers, the youngest of whom probably never heard him live.

I asked some of them why they liked KVN’s singing so much. None came up with an answer that really answered my question. It is as if the young musicians, both men and women, have turned to the quietude and bhava of his singing almost intuitively in their quest for beauty in their art. One of them said she admired KVN’s vocal technique, which he had devised to suit his voice; it put no strain on his voice or physique.

She described his style as a blend of melody and vishayam, with in-built rhythm and without undue emphasis on kanakku.

All the young musicians I spoke to agreed that his niraval singing went beyond stitching words and melody together to seamlessly integrate the rhythmic dimension as well.

Was his voice ever a powerful rather than a mellifluous one? Few recordings prove the existence of such a reality. His career is generally believed to have been divided by a heart condition into two distinct phases. Some of the early recordings hint at a more full-bodied, slightly more akaram-oriented style of singing than the later KVN voice.

But the KVN way has been a continuum uninterrupted by stylistic changes. It is already becoming evident that a number of young vocalists, of his and other sishya paramparas, are proving to be exemplars of his melody-rich school of music. I’m sure we shall soon be regularly speaking of the KVN bani.

His was effortless music of a kind we rarely come across. It has been said that he became “immersed in his music, thoroughly forgetting himself and thereby providing a divine experience for the listener.”

This effortlessness could be very misleading. I generally avoid cricketing metaphors, but I cannot resist the temptation today. Sir Garfield Sobers, arguably the greatest cricketer of all time, did look effortless while batting, bowling or fielding in a Test match. He indeed rarely practised in the nets in his mature years. Hidden, however, were years of strenuous practice, or rather sheer enjoyment of playing the game endlessly on the beaches and grounds of his native Barbados.

Likewise, KVN was known not to labour too much over pre-concert sadhakam in his mature years but to go on stage and sing spontaneously. The effortlessness was therefore more than mere appearance. What were not visible were the years of effort behind it.

His sishyas and associates knew that though he was blessed with natural fidelity to sruti, he was never satisfied during practice until he was certain he had got the notes absolutely right. In fact, sruti perfection was an article of faith with KVN, and lack of it in a sishya was the only thing that ever made him angry. The best tribute an aspiring vocalist can pay to KVN’s memory would be tireless practice to guarantee sruti suddham, not imitation of his style of singing.

Gowri Ramnarayan once said, “Some musicians appeal to the mind, to the intellect. Other musicians appeal to the heart. But only a very few in the history of music appeal to the soul. They charge the spirit within.” She was obviously referring to the rare musician that KVN was.

Could such soulful music rooted in all the vital aspects of music come together in a single musician by serendipity? Perhaps, they can, in one so naturally musical as KVN. But his teachers and mentors other than his Gurunathar Ariyakudi–whom he worshipped—included his father Kollenkode Viswanatha Bhagavatar and Papa Venkataramiah, both violinists, and mridangam maestro Palghat Mani Iyer. (A rare photograph of KVN playing the tavil indicates the extent of his laya proficiency). His love of the Dhanammal school of music and his experience of learning songs from the family were also a significant influence on his music.

All these varied influences must be the background behind his mastery of raga and tala as well as his superb team ethos that invariably energized his accompanists to give of their best in his concerts.

It was my good fortune that I had several interactions with KVN and his family and a whole brood of sishyas—towards the end of the 20^th century, right up to a few months before he passed away.

Assigned the task of editing and publishing his biography in Tamil by journalist Neelam of Swadesamitran fame, and an English translation by Justice VR Krishna Iyer, as well as several tributes by his admirers, I ended up also interviewing his family and his disciples including Prashanth Hemmige, Balaji Shankar, Pattabhiram Pandit, Karthik and Sudhir—to add weight to the slim volume.

Through many informal sessions at his home, I got to see at close quarters evidence of his endearing qualities of heart, his natural musicality (including his tendency to even speak in his singing sruti), his lovely habit of whistling some raga or kriti, and his affectionate hospitality. His students, a constant presence at the Narayanaswamy residence at Mandaveli, termed it “sishyakulavasam”. It was KVN and Padma who looked after them with love and concern, not the other way around.

KVN’s son Viswanathan confirms that KVN forgot the world in his pursuit of music. “He did not even know which branch of engineering I was studying,” he told me. He praised the Sruti commemorative volume on KVN soon after his death as the best tribute he read, Pattabhi Raman’s interview with Padma Narayanaswamy in particular.

He drew my attention to a reference in it to a conversation between KVN and Jon Higgins. Higgins wanted to know why audiences sat entranced when KVN was rendering Tyagaraja yoga vaibhavam, but tried to slip away when Higgins sang it. KVN explained to Higgins how to go about investing the song with appeal, but startled him by saying he learnt the song from a Higgins record.

Viswanathan also spoke of KVN’s mastery of concert music. He never asked anyone what he or she thought of his music. Once on stage, he was absolutely confident. He lifted the audience to a different plane when he sang songs like Varugalamo, Krishna nee begane, Enneramum, Aliveni, Mayamma and other favourites like Kana vendamo or Tiruvadi saranam, songs of total surrender. 

The listener was invariably moist-eyed, but KVN was in full control. According to KNV, a famous mridanga vidwan said he never had to worry about an exodus during tani, because everyone stayed to listen to KVN’s soul-stirring post-main pieces.

Another devoted sishya has been a close friend of mine. The self-effacing, now US-based Tulsi Ram (he was then known as Toufiq Tuzeme) was a French-Algerian disciple completely devoted to KVN, who in turn showered his affection on him. Tulsi fondly recalls how KVN once introduced him to the sage of Kanchi, proudly declaring that the young man was a vegetarian who shunned leather.

He also recalled how KVN enjoyed watching films like Maya Bazaar and Nandanar Charitram at Kapali or Eros cinemas, or during his Berkeley California days watching a kung fu tv serial up to the point sometimes of almost being late for the weekly concerts at the Center for World Music, fortunately only a few yards from the flat. He also remembers with gratitude how KVN and Padma looked after him spending their own money when he was seriously ill and again when he met with an accident. Tulsi never made it as a concert musician, but he could laugh at himself. 

When I once asked him about his progress in music, he said: “I must be improving. People ask me to stop singing these days. Earlier they would ask me to stop making noise.”

After the book I edited was done, I made an anxious phone call to KVN inquiring about it, as he had not called to comment on the just published book. Reassuring me, he said, “Bookkai aaraakkum undaakkiyathu? Ramanarayanan allavo?!” (Who produced the book? Was it not Ramanarayanan?)

It was typically kind of him; I had myself not been satisfied with the outcome of the project. He was perhaps making allowances for something the two of us shared: Ramanarayanan had been his given name at birth!

In conclusion, I’d like to say that KVN has left a unique legacy of music rooted in bhava, technically perfect but never designed to show off technical prowess, a model for present and future practitioners to adopt for its total adherence to sruti suddham. Equally important is to remember that KVN’s pure music came from his pure heart and good nature, as Sruti Pattabhi Raman said.

Guruguhamarta tribute to RK Srikantan

When I was young, I had the great good fortune of growing up in a large complex of three bungalows that straddled two major streets in the Alwarpet-Teynampet area, Murrays Gate Road, and Eldams Road. There were no compound walls separating the three houses, and the result was a vast, tree-shaded play area for all of us kids, a dozen or so cousins occupying those houses. Two granduncles, both sportsmen in their youth, were our match referees and adjudicators. The older of them, Venkata Mama, was by then semi-retired, and a sage presence in the midst of some of our frenetic games ranging from cricket and I Spy to carrom and Monopoly. We took all our disputes to him, all our interpretations of the laws governing our games. His word was always final, delivered firmly but with affection and kindness.

Vidwan RK Srikantan always reminded me of Venkata Mama, not in his physical appearance, but in his largely involuntary role of elder statesman among Carnatic musicians. If he had been a Chennaivasi, we would have heard his voice—not his singing voice but his views and perspectives on the great art he represents--more often than we actually did.

We all know he held strong views on tradition in Carnatic music—on voice training and sruti and laya suddham; we know his repect for the great vaggeyakaras and vidwans of the past. Sruti magazine, and I as a rasika, have been great fans of his music for the grandeur he brought to it—for his vast repertoire, his sense of balance in manodharma and most of all for his wonderful voice, his fidelity to sruti.

The many stalwarts present here today have a much better understanding of Carnatic music, far greater exposure to it, but I’ll rush in where angels fear to tread, and state that there has rarely been a greater male voice in Carnatic music than Sangita Kalanidhi RK Srikantan’s.

But Srikantan, like MS Subbulakshmi, was more than a great voice.

Someone- his son Ramakanth I think—once said Srikantan was a late bloomer. That one attribute of his straightaway endeared him to me, because I too belong to such a tribe, though my friends believe that I am a never-bloomer. BVK Sastry writing in Sruti November 1995, actually described his early singing as robust and impulsive. “Virtuosity seemed to overshadow artistic sensibility in expression.”  He pointed out this and other shortcomings which he said were “counterbalanced by his resonant, ringing voice, which invested his singing with a dynamic quality and which seemed to overwhelm the audience.”

Those of us who never heard the young Srikantan will find it hard to believe that his music did go through such a phase. In the same article, however, Sastry acknowledged the transformation in Srikantan’s music, beginning with the first noticeable changes in his mid-thirties, after he had internalized the music of great masters like Maharajapuram, Musiri, Semmangudi and GNB.

Sastry claims that Srikantan imitated GNB’s brigas for a while, adding his own touches, and gradually evolved his own style.  He noticed deep introspection, greater control and thoughtful planning in his concerts. He marvelled at Srikantan’s infinite capacity to surprise and delight audiences by singing different compositions in the same raga by different composers, in different concerts, even as the listeners expected the repeat of some song he had dealt with expansively in an earlier concert. This became a striking aspect of Srikantan’s music through the decades thanks to his enormous repertoire across genres and vaggeyakaras. Yet keen listeners could often guess the kriti correctly during his alapana because of his uncanny anchoring of it in the kriti without ever singing identical phrases.

The Sruti article came in 1995 to commemorate Srikantan’s 75^th birthday, and Sastry concluded by saying, “his voice has not lost either its resonance or its ring. Thus the ragas sound full-blooded. They are handled now with greater involvement and feeling. The swaraprastara too has undergone a change. There is more spontaneity than deliberate designing, though he occasionally yields to the temptation of mathematical permutations.”

Srikantan only got better and better in all these respects, so that in his nineties, he was in full possession of his faculties physical, intellectual and musical. About the mathematical permutations, there was never any need to complain, as his arithmetic had its own beauty; never lost its umbilical connection to the ragas he was painting.

Returning to the theme of Srikantan as the archetypal guru and de facto oracle, Sruti was fortunate to hear some of his views and thoughts on matters relating to the teaching of music.  I ‘ll try to list some of these here.

An aspiring vocalist must sing naturally and without effort in a rich and flexible voice. He must be bold and creative as a performer. He must be free from bad habits. He should not be hasty and overenthusiastic to appear on the cutcheri platform.

The teacher should ask the student to listen to the sruti or the key note for a while and then sing sa-pa-sa. 

The guru may hum two different notes and ask the student to identify the note that is higher in pitch. 

He may sing some notes in one sruti and ask the pupil to repeat the same notes in a different sruti. 

He may test the student similarly with a tambura not quite in tune, asking him which of the two strings is higher in pitch. He must train the better students to tune the tambura and other string instruments.

Similarly, he gives several examples of training in laya, stressing the value of the age-old practice of singing at least three speeds as a learner.  He cites varnam singing in three speeds as good training. One of the exercises he conducted with students included the guru singing simple melodies and asking the student to guess the talas.

I found Srikantan’s methods of voice training most attractive. In an interview to Sruti, he said a mellifluous, clear and pleasant voice was a gift of God. It is a delicate organ, easily injured by wrong use.

He gives hope to those not blessed with melodious voices, by assuring them that they can train theirs into musical voices. Here he highlights the benefits of yoga and pranayama, as well as higher and lower octave swara exercises. 

Resonant humming is another method of training he recommends. Most important, all the voice training exercises should be practised in four tempos.

An important disclaimer Srikantan puts forth is the distinction he makes between loud singing by forcing the voice and a clear, ringing voice that is the product of good training.

Here, I will quote him verbatim: “A rich, full tone is to be aimed at rather than mere loud singing. Proper management of the voice is the very soul of good singing, or for that matter speaking, also.

Last but not least, he says, “The possession of a good ear is an essential requisite.”

Happily for a listener like me, Srikantan emphasizes lakshya gnana, even more than lakshana gnana, as well as good taste and aptitude for music. “Too much of theory orientation destroys the aesthetic side of the performer, he says.”

Srikantan was an opponent of distance learning.  He was against crash courses. According to him, an enduring student-teacher relationship is the key to true learning.

In his speeches and lec-dems, Srikantan expressed his views fearlessly, but with a gentle touch, despite his stentorian speaking voice. At an interaction organized by Sampradaya, he criticized TM Krishna for singing a varnam as the main piece of a concert. Krishna who was the organizer of the event smilingly quipped, “Let’s discuss this in private later?” I would have been delighted to be a fly on the wall when that discussion took place. Just like my own Venkata Mama, I’m sure Srikantan would have been gentle and affectionate but firm in his pronouncement in the matter.

The most fitting tribute to this extraordinary musician would be for musicians to follow his sterling guidelines and emulate his values, without of course, sacrificing originality. Let’s not forget that he was a self-made musician away from Carnatic music’s headquarters, and he was an innovator as well, for all his respect for tradition.