Boy wonder all his life

But his best was yet to come

V Ramnarayan

Much loved, much adored Mandolin U Shrinivas, who remained a boy wonder all his life, is no more. He was a frail, shy 14-year-old when he appeared on the cover of Sruti’s inaugural issue in October 1983, along with DK Pattammal, Lakshmi Viswanathan and Sonal Man Singh. Founder-editor N Pattabhi Raman concluded his profile of the child prodigy with the passage: “Meteors are transient; they describe a fiery streak in the sky and then burn themselves out. Stars stay with us, adding sparkle to our life. It is the hope of almost everyone who has been exposed to the luminosity of Srinivas’s music (that is how he spelt his name then) that he will turn out to be a star on the firmament of South Indian classical music.”

 There are those that believe Shrinivas had accomplished so much in his brief sojourn on earth, that  it should not matter that he was snatched away in his prime just as Srinivasa Ramanujan and Subramania Bharati were. It is hard to agree with such a sentiment. At 45, he had many years of glorious creativity ahead of him, his music poised for a greatness beyond what he offered the world over the last three decades.  The way he approached ragas, his delicious new interpretations of them in recent years, suggested that the best of Mandolin Shrinivas was yet to come.

He was all of 14 when we at Sruti first interacted with him. He had already floored the most demanding rasikas of Mylapore and Mambalam, Perambur and Nungambakkam, on their own home turf in concert after concert, with his spectacular raga essays and swara fusillades. He was tiny, tongue-tied, knew very little Tamil and less English. He was respectful, even deferential in his dealings with parents, guru, mentors, sabha secretaries and mediapersons, yet he was comfortable in his skin.  Here was a boy completely free from self doubt, while at the same time totally bereft of airs

The boy Shrinivas was a unique amalgam of modernism (in the electrifying speed and magic of his music), an almost rustic old worldliness (in the way he dressed and behaved), and pure genius (in his astounding mastery of both his instrument and raga music). He came from the West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh, taught himself to play a mandolin that belonged to his father Uppalapu Sathyanarayana’s light music band, and learnt Carnatic music from a vocalist in his native village of Palakol. The guru, Rudraraju Subbaraju had been a disciple of Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar. While he sang his lessons, the boy pupil repeated them on his strings. Shrinivas’s grasp was astonishing, and he soon plunged into classical music and achieved spectacular variations, exploiting to the hilt a tiny instrument that no Carnatic musician before him had ventured to play.

His first concerts in Chennai were probably held in 1980 or 1981. An amazing cutcheris at the Ayodhya Mandapam at West Mambalam is still remembered by listeners on whom he cast a spell that day. It was perhaps a testimonial to Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar, his guru’s guru. He really arrived with a bang on 28 December 1982, at a concert at Indian Fine Arts Society. Soon senior artists were gladly agreeing to accompany him, though it was often an uphill task for the violinist to keep pace with his lightning fast phrases and novel turns of improvisation. Violinist Kanyakumari, mridanga vidwan Tanjavur Upendran, and even special tavil exponent Valangaiman Shanmugasundaram were among his willing, doting accompanists. So was Umayalpuram K Sivaraman soon.

The next decade was a sensational whirl of concerts at Madras and all across India, drawing huge, ecstatic crowds. He was probably Carnatic music’s greatest crowd-puller during that period. His repertoire of raga and compositions was considerable by now and his ragam-tanam-pallavi expositions became quite exhilarating. His manodharma was exquisite, but he rarely strayed from the strait and narrow path of classical music.

Shrinivas worked tirelessly at growing as a mandolin exponent while drinking deep of the treasures of Carnatic music, but to him, it was all play. Music was bliss. Whether he was playing the major ragas of Carnatic music, or rare ones, or those with a Hindustani tint, his understanding of their dimensions and nuances was astounding, and he gave expression to them in ways we often did not expect. His music could move you to tears as much as it could make your pulse throb with excitement. The secret was its purity.While he was perfectly capable of etching delicate raga essays or execute the slow songs of grandeur bequeathed to us by Carnatic music’s great composers, speed and virtuosity became his trademark and won him millions of rasikas.  

During an interview in 2008, I suggested to him that it was perhaps time to play what I believed must be music closest to his heart to select audiences in small intimate gatherings. After all, the mandolin was not a loud instrument and he managed to coax the most delicate glides out of it. He told me that he loved large audiences, that he wanted to continue to reach out to the greatest numbers.

Not only did Shrinivas convert an essentially folk music instrument into a mainstream instrument in classical music, he also took it worldwide and collaborated with musicians of several genres. His jugalbandis with Hindustani musicians were exciting crowd-pleasers. His forays into fusion with jazz and western musicians of other forms were huge successes in front of varied audiences. He also continued to please Carnatic music lovers of the Indian diaspora. In all his collaborative performances, he tended to play second fiddle, letting his counterparts bask in the admiration of the audience rather than show off his own superior skills. When asked about this, his typically modest reply was: “No, that is not true. They are all great musicians in their own right. And fusion concerts are not competitions, are they?”

Thirtytwo years  and many conquests in India and abroad after he first appeared in the pages of Sruti, with his ever increasing raga and composition repertoire, after scores of collaborative efforts that left his admirers wonderstruck by his virtuosity, Shrinivas retained the same simple, shy ways and humility unmarred by his supreme confidence in his art. His was not music for those of us who like it slow and soulful. It was fast, dazzling, breathtaking, awe-inspiring, with rarely a long stretch of quietude. Yet, it had soul. It was music that effortlessly bridged south and north, east and west.

Though Pattabhi Raman’s prayer in Sruti’s Issue No.1—almost exactly 31 years ago to the day—came true and Shrinivas did become a star in the firmament of Carnatic music, the end has come too soon. He was a role model among musicians, ever smiling, always modest, genuinely so. He brought thousands of new listeners in India and abroad into the fold of Carnatic music. His music touched both the lay listener and the cognoscenti. He thus played a major role in taking Carnatic music worldwide. There will never be another like him.

He claimed free speech as the right to breathe

Kaapichino

By Gowri Ramnarayan                                                             DNA, 29 AUGUST 2014

We met once in a while as interviewee and journalist, ran into each other at literary seminars, cultural events. Occasionally I consulted him. No, he was not a close friend. Not even the mentor that I longed for him to be, so invigorating were his words whenever, whatever he spoke. And yet, when UR Ananthamurthy (1932-2014) passed away last week, I fearelt a part of me die with him. Is it because he represented with brilliance and panache, those secular, liberal values now getting swiftly replaced by regressive ideologies? Because he claimed free speech as the right to breathe?

A pioneer of the Navya movement in Kannada literature, Padma Bhushan and Jnanpith awardee Ananthamurthy was acclaimed widely for his work, made available through translations in Indian and European languages. He was Vice-Chancellor, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, and head of the National Book Trust and the Sahitya Akademi. A scathing commentator on socio-political and literary issues, he was a spokesperson for the voiceless, the deprived and the damned. He was involved in wide-ranging protest movements from eco-conservation to the medium of instruction in schools.

However, his writings were not manifestos, but metaphoric expressions of multi-layered realities. Didn’t he say to his British tutor Malcolm Bradbury, “You have to go to a library to create classic or medieval times. (As an Indian living simultaneously in the past and present) I only have to look into myself. A straight line for you is a coil for me.” The physical and the metaphysical melded in Ananthamurthy’s vision. He remained a razor-sharp intellectual with a generous heart.

 “He was not afraid to be unpopular,” said friend GK Govinda Rao. Besides on-and-off spats with his fellows, Ananthamurthy invited hate-mails for declaring ‘I will leave India if Modi becomes Prime Minister’. When reminded that no ideological faction ever acknowledged unreserved kinship with him. Ananthamurthy’s amused reaction was, “Well, I must have done something right!”

I asked him, “Haven’t you been trying all your life to expiate the guilt of being Brahmin born?” He responded with one of his good-humoured, irony-tipped, mischief-spiced chuckles: “It is a love-hate relationship.”

Ananthamurthy’s masterpiece Samskara depicts a village Brahmin community, and the troubled journey of Praneshacharya, perfectly etched by a young Girish Karnad in the award-winning film. Here  “rebel” Brahmin Naranappa spurns his legitimate uppercaste wife who “smells of lentils”, preferring the prostitute Chandri, When I disclosed to the author that I was depressed because I suspected that I too was “tainted” by this vacuous aroma, Ananthamurthy riposted, “My dear, didn’t you guess? So am I!”

When I moderated a conversation between Ananthamurthy and BV Karanth, the writer breezed in. The thespian turned up in a glum mood. Their dialogue had to be heavily trimmed. “I will send the edited version to you before publishing”, I promised Ananthamurthy. “Look, I give you full permission to do whatever you like provided you don’t send it to me!” said he, adding impishly, “Karanth has become dull after he stopped drinking.” 

Once, referring to the upanishad image of two birds perched on branches high and low -- one a dispassionate onlooker, the other blindly engaged in action -- I asked, “Are the birds two wholly separate entities, or are they shifting states of being -- in the same person, but at different times?” He countered gently, “When we write we are simultaneously passionate and contemplative. Are we then both birds in one?” Why not? A writer’s job is to sweep cobwebs, sift contradictions, internalize the eternal, beware of the mirage, connect the finite with the infinite, and yes, discover paradoxical, even bitter truths. As Ananthamurthy strove to do, inexorably.

Gowri Ramnarayan

http://epaper.dnaindia.com/story.aspx?id=70090&boxid=20129&ed_date=2014-08-29&ed_code=820009&ed_page=10

Art as therapy 2

Column

V Ramnarayan

Art as therapy has been a subject of much interest at Sruti, and we have tried to get people qualified in the field to write for us on music and dance in treating medical conditions. Experts tell us that music usually forms a significant, pleasant part of our lives, actually enhancing its quality. This is true as much of the internal music playing in our heads as the external music we hear in a concert, film or recording.

Conversely, we have often wondered about the adverse effect of noise or loud, discordant music on the mental and physical well being of most of us. While continuous exposure to noise or loud music can most obviously cause hearing loss or deficiencies, it is less known that it can lead to other, serious illnesses as well.

What is unbelievable but true is that music, even very good music, can have deleterious effects on some people. In his book, Musicophilia, the eminent neuroscientist Oliver Sacks relates numerous intriguing cases of epileptic seizures brought on by music, ranging from ‘reminiscent’ songs to “well-punctuated rhythm,” which according to one patient “was for her the most dangerous feature in music.” Sacks relates the story (with, I suspect, ill-concealed glee) that the nineteenth century music critic Nikonov, who experienced several seizures starting from one suffered during Giacomo Meyerbeer’s opera, eventually went into convulsions every time he listened to any music, however soft. Developing a “veritable phobia” he was forced to avoid all contact with music. (When asked to comment on a critic, an actor once replied that it was like asking a lamppost what it thought of the dog, and I am sure Nikonov’s fate was “a consummation devoutly to be wished” in the opinion of many a musician).

“Musicophilia” deals extensively with musical imagery. Expectedly, it postulates that professional musicians have remarkable musical imagery. Many composers compose in their minds rather than on instruments, at least in the initial stages. The most spectacular example of this phenomenon was of course that of Beethoven composing some of his best music well after he became totally deaf. Sacks speculates that Beethoven’s musical imagery was enhanced by his deafness, much in the manner of the intensified visual imagery of the blind.

Attempting to shed light on earworms or brainworms, the songs that for no discernible reason enter your mind and refuse to leave, Sacks quotes from Theodor Reik’s book The Haunting Melody: Psychoanalytic Experiences in Life and Music:

“ Melodies which run through your mind…may give the analyst a clue to the secret life of emotions that every one of us lives…In this inward singing, the voice of an unknown self conveys not only passing moods and impulses, but sometimes a disavowed or denied wish, a longing and a drive we do not like to admit to ourselves… Whatever secret message it carries, the incidental music accompanying our conscious thinking is never accidental.” So, beware the next time the spouse goes around humming Kolaveri, kolaveri..

Songs of emotion

Seen, Heard Read

PNV Ram

Many of the recent concerts I attended have been emotionally rewarding. The first was a memorial tribute to a rasika, R Venkateswaran, a regular in the Chennai kutcheri circuit for several decades, who was at some sabha hall almost every evening of that period, taking bus rides, share autos and the like to reach his destination from his West Mambalam residence.

A chemical engineer and materials management expert, he was described by a friend as an asura rasika, meaning a monster of a rasika. The friend of course meant it as a compliment, and there was much to commend in Venkateswaran’s devotion to music and literature (I learnt of his considerable interest in the latter only posthumously, though). S Sivakumar, freelance journalist, and Kulkarni, rasika and founder of the very popular music site rasikas.org were among the speakers on the occasion. 

As warmly and affectionately rendered as the speeches was Sriram Parasuram’s vocal recital, accompanied by Sertalai Ananthakrishnan on the mridangam, KV Gopalakrishnan on the khanjira, and Gurumurti Vaidya on the tabla. Rendering both Carnatic and Hindustani ragas and compositions, Sriram Parasuram was at his evocative best in his Marubihag essay, as well as his twin offering of Sriranjani and Bageshree.

This consummate violinist is a marvel in the seamless manner he can straddle the two Indian classical systems, investing every phrase with the appropriate rasa. His exposition of the ragas and the musical and social milieu of the songs was lucid as ever, and he even stopped midway to share a few thoughts with the audience about the honouree of the evening. Sertalai Anantakrishnan’s  nuanced percussion  was a revelation.

I spoke at a recent community listening event of concert recordings of Madurai Mani Iyer at PS Higher Secondary School, Mylapore, in a long series conducted month after month, year after year, by his diehard fans including Venugopalan and Vishnu Ramprasad, who developed and maintains the portal maduraimani.tripod.org. The devotion with which the audience and organizers together participate in a collective celebration of Mani Iyer’s soul-stirring brand of  music is probably unique in the world of commemorative listening, resembled perhaps only by the following enjoyed by the likes of MD Ramanathan.

During my talk, I wondered aloud if Mani Iyer had cracked the genetic code of raga music, sp full of the essence of Hamsadhwani were every swara and every phrase of the raga was the Vatapi Ganapatim bhaje we heard that evening. “What is it about Mani Iyer’s music that unites so many of us here today,” I asked ? “I have been mulling over this question ever since Sri Venugopal asked me to speak here. And the answer seemed to come to me out of the blue, when I was listening to Anil Srinivasan play some gorgeous western music on the piano at Kalakshetra a few days ago. Among other things, he played Mozart’s Twinkle, twinkle little star, Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, some Bach, Chopin, Schubert, preludes, nocturnes and so on. Much of the music was celebratory of nature, tender, even cheerful, but there was no stopping the tears welling up in your eyes. 

Doesn’t the pure voice of Madurai Mani Iyer have the same impact on us, whether he is singing Tiruvadi saranam, or Eppo varuvaro, or Subrahamanyena rakshitoham, Ka va va, or Rangapura vihara, or even the English note. To touch the heart, melt it, you do not necessarily need profound sentiments, words of bhakti, to bolster your singing, though those will obviously move us when rendered in a clear, unsullied, sruti-perfect voice as well.

In the case of a good soul such as Mani Iyer, profound, deeply evocative music emerges not merely from his throat, his lungs or his diaphragm, but from his heart, his whole being. It is an expression of the ananda, the bliss he experiences in music. In Carnatic music, I can only think of one other vocalist who had the same impact on the listener, no matter what the composition or context. And that was MS Subbulakshmi.

Listening to Sanjay Subrahmanyan in concert with S Varadarajan (violin) and Arjun Ganesh (mridangam) for the Vidya Mandir Alumni Association on 17 August at the Music Academy was a similar experience. Sanjay was in excellent voice and mood, probably buoyed by the experience of singing for his alma mater and his old schoolmates. If his Sankarabharanam raga alapana followed by Swara raga sudha was a grand tour de force, the raga in which his handling of the lower reaches revealed a new strengthening of his voice, altogether more sonorous and vibrant than in the past, his variations while emoting the different bhavas of the later songs of the concert like Chinnan chiru kiliye were at once majestic and evocative, without resorting to sentimentality. He was in effect combining the vocal gravitas that Carnatic music demands with the rasanubhava usually more explicit in the popular genres of music than in the classical tradition. The violin and mridangam were a perfect foil to the voice, making it a true concert.

Savithri Satyamurthi: devoted to her music

By Rasika Viswanath

Every once in a while there comes a person whose life and accomplishments touch you very deeply. Savithri Satyamurthy’s life and musical journey touched the hearts of many accomplished musicians, students, music connoisseurs as well as  rasikas across eras and cities.

Born to Meenakshi and Ramanathan, Savithri started learning music in the town of Hosur with violin lessons from Madurai Subramania Iyer. A move to Trichy opened up a whole new world of music for her. She earned her stripes under the strict tutelage of Erode Viswanatha Iyer. Her growing  years involved spending three years as an inmate of the Ariyakudi household, when she also honed her violin technique under guru RajamanickamPillai. Imagine the wealth of musical experience she would have gained in those early years with these stalwarts as her guiding light, RajamIyer, K.V.Narayanaswami, Madurai Krishnan as co-disciples and as a regular accompanist to Dhanammal.

Right from her childhood, Savithri was a meticulous stickler for discipline and punctuality. She learfnt these lessons from her primary school teacher in Trichy and lived by it all through her life. Marriage and a move to Bombay changed the direction of her music career, and the birth of “Teacher Savithri”. Her musical knowledge and urge to keep learning combined with her inherent qualities made her set exacting standards and expect nothing short of perfection from her students.  Her music education continued in Bombay through the visits of stalwarts like Kumbakonam Rajamanikkam Pillai, Madurai Mani Iyer and Ramnad Krishnan, who stayed at her residence in Mumbai. Madurai Mani Iyer was especially fond of Savithri’s special idlis for breakfast.

After seeing her children well settled in life, Savithri came  to Chennai in 1972  and  the move resurrected the concert artist in Savithri.  The musicians she began to accompany in concerts represented the who’s who of the Carnatic music world. M.S.Subbalakshmi, D.K.Pattamal, T.Muktha, Mani Krishnaswami and R.Vedavalli were examples.

The shift also saw her blossoming as a teacher under the guidance of Dr. S. Ramanathan to whom she had also become a regular concert accompanist.  Her students would tremble at the thought of facing her even if they were a minute late to her classes or unprepared from the previous lesson. The quality of her teaching was the same regardless of where when and how she taught. Her students from across generations having learnt from her several decades apart could come together and sing the compositions learnt from her in perfect unison. It was this rigour that produced from among her students a number of concert artists as well as music lovers and connoisseurs. A strict disciplinarian as a teacher, she was a deeply loving person and friend to her students outside of her classes.

Complete devotion to music and her gurus as well as implicit faith in Lord Krishna were facets of her life that really stood out. Her meticulous maintenance of her music notations drew admiration from not only her students but many stalwarts as well. A number of Dr. Ramanathan’s compositions are alive today, thanks to her painstaking notation. She will be fondly remembered by all her students as well as the music fraternity.

(Rasika Viswanath is a granddaughter and disciple of the late Savithri Satyamurthy)

That sixties feeling

By V Ramnarayan

‘Alas the Jam Sahib is fat!” wrote AG Gardiner when Ranji turned forty. Those of us walking wounded of the 1960s who had recently gathered to catch a glimpse of the handsome, fiery young student leader of our generation at Mylapore, Chennai, were relieved to see Tariq Ali had not grown fat, though not any more the dashing, slim figure of the decade of the Beatles and Bob Dylan. The sparkle in his eyes had given way to a thoughtful gaze beneath glasses, a frown made him look almost magisterial, and he fitted in perfectly amidst the collection of grey eminences on stage.

The air of near-anonymity ends the moment Tariq Ali stands before the microphone, his weapon of destruction all those decades ago, when he spewed fire on the capitalists of the world, when he led the occupation of the Sorbonne by over 30,000 students, protesting against the Vietnam War among a host of burning issues of the day. He may not be fiery any more but he does make every word count and grips the listener’s attention from start to finish.

Today, as he addresses students of the Asian College of Journalism and other guests, he speaks in the measured tones of an elder statesman, with every word, every turn of phrase pregnant with meaning and purpose, witty, precise, quietly impassioned. “At Oxford in the 1960s, a distinguished Indian was a couple of years my junior. I haven’t changed since then, nor has Montek Singh Ahluwalia. He remains as deeply conservative as ever,” he took a sly barb at the economist, instantly winning over the young audience.

In a lecture titled ‘The State of Journalism in the 21^st Century: Celebrities, Trivia and Whistleblowers,’ Tariq Ali deplored the assault of the mainstream media by celebrity trivia—which he described as a phenomenon that began at the end of the Cold War—and the rapid subsequent decline in journalistic standards. He had predicted—rightly—at the time of the intense hyperbole over Princess Diana’s death, that in ten years’ time there would be no memorials for Diana, that she would disappear from the memory of the media. In contrast, there had been intrepid, principled correspondents and commentators, he said, who dared to criticise the double standards of the West whenever it went to war against nations like Korea and Vietnam, in total contrast to the capitulation of the western media to their governments at the time of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Describing India’s attitude in the matter of asylum seeker Edward Snowden as supine, he described the likes of Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and Snowden as freedom fighters, and not fugitives as the western press has shown great haste to call them.

It is evident from his writings and utterances that Tariq held and continues to hold the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in the greatest esteem. In his death, he believes the world has lost one of the political giants of the post-communist era. His bluntness and courage drew Tariq Ali to him, as did his thoughtful observations that could at times seem impulsive and “depending on the response, enlarged by spontaneous eruptions on his part.” 

According to him, Chávez lit up the political landscape, at a time when young voters cannot tell the ideological difference between one party and another, with all politicians obsessed with making money. Tariq Ali remembers Chavez “speaking for hours to his people in a warm, sonorous voice, a fiery eloquence” and stunning resonance, his speeches littered with homilies, history, quotes from the 19th-century revolutionary leader Simón Bolívar, pronouncements on the state of the world--and songs, that he sang with great enthusiasm and persuaded his audiences to join in.

A playwright and filmmaker in addition to being a prolific writer of essays, articles and books of non-fiction today, the passionate rebel and intellectual has never been far from the arts, music in particular. Disappointingly for this writer, he prefers the Rolling Stones to the Beatles (“more exciting, more sensual, better to dance to”). The women of his youth, according to him, might have worshipped the Beatles, but the “real men”  followed the Stones. He recalls with something akin to glee how sitar maestro Ravi Shankar dismissed the media hype that his music had any impact on that of the Fab Four.

The first play Tariq Ali saw in England was Joan Littlewood's Oh What a Lovely War, “a moving homage to music hall culture and Brecht.” London was the most exciting place for the theatre enthusiast in the 1960s,with Beckett and Ionescu, Pinter and Peter Brook, all doing or preparing to do monumental work at the Royal Theatre and elsewhere.

His despair of Pakistani politicians—plunderers with no concern for the welfare of the people—is no different from his contempt for its military dictators, just as corrupt and greedy.  Expressing great sadness in an article in The Guardian, soon after Mohammad Amir, Mohammad Asif and Salman Butt were caught cheating in a sting operation, he wrote: “Yes, WG Grace was a cheat on and off the field. Yes, captains of other teams – India and South Africa – have engaged in similar practices. Yes, the betting syndicates are a major part of the problem. So what? Since when has one crime justified another? How many times have I heard apologists for corrupt Pakistani politicians justifying their pillage by arguing that Europe and America also have corrupt politicians. The problem is that in Pakistan that's all we have, with few exceptions – one of whom is Imran Khan, who was also Pakistan's finest and most incorruptible captain.”

The all-round social degeneration has not made Tariq Ali a cynic, or lessened his resolve to try to change the world. At the recent Chennai lecture, he encouraged his young audience to stick to their principles: “It is important for you not to forget the history of journalism and its development.”

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.