Muttuswami Dikshitar (1775-1835)

Travelling light: a journey in music

Link from Chapter 1

Born on 24 March 1775 at Tiruvarur to Ramaswami Dikshitar and Subbamma, was the youngest of the three great composers hailing from his home town who went on to be celebrated as the Trinity of Carnatic music.

Named after the temple deity, Muttukumaraswamy of the Vaitheeswaran temple, Dikshitar had two younger brothers Baluswami and Chinnaswami and a sister Balambal.

Belonging to the priestly Dikshitar tradition, Muthuswami learnt Sanskrit, the Vedas, and other religious texts, and music from his father, who was an accomplished musician and composer, besides discharging administrative duties at the Tiruvarur temple.

While he was still in his teens, Muttuswami’s father sent him on a pilgrimage with Chidambaranatha Yogi, a wandering yogi, to learn both music and philosophy. The duo visited many places in north India before settling down for a long stay at Kasi. Dikshitar’s eclectic sweep of thought as reflected in his grand compositions was a result of the north Indian sojourn.

His five years at Kasi exposed Dikshitar to dhrupad, India’s ancient form of classical music. Many of his slow songs known for their grandeur and relatively straight notes show a remarkable resemblance to the dhrupad tradition.

A Srividya upasaka, or follower of the cult of devi worship, Dikshitar was a deeply religious person and mystic, who visited several temples and composed songs in praise of the deities there in a spontaneous expression of his devotion. Thus most of his compositions are marked by a deep sense of reverence and calm. Trained in veena playing, he developed a combination of the vocal and instrumental styles in his compositions—around 500 in number—marked by rich gamaka, a majestic gait, and a general preference for the chauka kala. He employed the signature Guruguha.

Muttuswami Dikshitar taught the four dance masters from Tanjavur who came to be known as the Tanjore Quartet. Dikshitar passed on to them the 72-mela-raga tradition of Venkatamakhi, which (unlike Tyagaraja), he followed. Sivanandam, Ponnayya, Chinnayya and Vadivelu were the star foursome who spread the Muttuswami Dikshitar legacy all over the south.

Evidently fond of Mayamalavagaula, Dikshitar composed several songs in such ragas. and ragas derived from it. Many of his songs were in Sanskrit, and were of the samashti charana variety, opening with a pallavi, eschewing the middle section or anupallavi, and ending in the samashti charana section. His songs can be divided into several groups, with the major Guruguha group including such sections as the Kamalamba Navavarna kritis and Navagraha kritis. He composed as many as 26 songs in praise of Vinayaka or Ganapati.

During his travels, Muttuswami Dikshitar was fascinated by the music of the British military band, which he heard at Madras, and inspired by them he created some 40 songs, of which 36 have survived as nottu swara sahitya. Some of the songs are set to familiar English numbers like God Save the King, but are odes to Hindu deities, including Saraswati, the goddess of learning. Some of these songs are taught as early lessons to students of Carnatic music.

Baluswami Dikshitar is credited with adapting the violin to Carnatic music, which was further popularised by Vadivelu. The descendants of Baluswami Dikshitar are said to be responsible for keeping alive the Dikshitar sishya parampara.

Krishnan's Hindustani guru

Travelling light: a journey in music

By V Ramnarayan

Chapter 5

Krishnan first met Guru in 1963, when he was doing his Pre-University Course (the equivalent of today's 12th standard) at Vivekananda College, run by the Ramakrishna Mission at Mylapore. Facing the college was a dhobi settlement advertised by the slow moving traffic of donkeys carrying laundry. The college itself  was located in a fairly large tree-shaded complex of buildings constructed in a non-descript style, but cool and reasonably friendly with its spacious classrooms and high ceilings serving to keep the heat out. Except for the Monday morning religion classes, there was no attempt at indoctrinating the students into the teachings of the mission. The teachers were generally of a high standard, but other than the general emphasis on academics, there was no overt pressure on the students to perform.

Krishnan, his old schoolmate Bala and Guru hit it off straightaway, all three in the Natural Science section, as they found many things of common interest to share with one another.

Bala was the most studious of the trio, though he wore his industriousness lightly, never showing off his academic superiority over the other two. Krishnan was the middle-order batsman and Guru the tailender, so to speak, in order of effort put in, which all showed in the results. Bala topped the class, and Krishnan was not very far behind, while Guru did just enough to pass tests and exams. Though all three were close to one another, Guru and Krishnan forged a special bond thanks to their common interest in music.

The bonus was that Guru was an accomplished tabla maestro, taught by the eminent percussionist Tabla Nawaz Shaik Dawood of Hyderabad.  Krishnan had always been fascinated by Hindustani music ever since he heard Nikhil Banerjee and Ravi Shankar as a boy, and he was proud to call himself a friend of Guru. He regularly went to the concerts in which Guru performed. He was thrilled when Guru was introduced before a concert at the SGS Sabha as The Young Man with the Magic Fingers.

That was the time Krishnan got to listen to some LP records of Hindustani music and such devotional music as Lata Mangeshkar's renderings of Meera bhajans, and the non-film music bhajans and ghazals of Mohammad Rafi, another great Hindi film singer. The Meera bhajans by Lata Mangeshkar had been set to music by her brother Hridaynath Mangeshkar, and many of Rafi's bhajans and ghazals by such iconic music directors as Khayyam. These the two youngsters listened to at the T'Nagar home of Guru's cousin who had been named after the Rajasthani songstress of yore. Meera, her mother and her siblings were lovely hosts in whose company the truant friends spent many an afternoon talking nonsense and listening to great music on the radiogram in their spacious, gracious home. In what was proving to be a completely unstructured if eclectic initiation into Hindustani music, Krishnan started listening \not only to the likes of Amir Khan, Paluskar and Bhimsen Joshi, but also to Lakshmi Shankar, A Kanan and Malabika Kanan, Bismillah Khan, Ali Akbar Khan, Omkarnath Thakur and N Rajam.

From Guru, Krishnan learnt some Hindustani music basics, and also tried to share some of his amateur knowledge of Carnatic music with him. He not only introduced Guru to the music of some of the leading Carnatic artists, but also made an attempt to explain the history and rationale of Carnatic music as well as the structure of a typical concert.

If we stitch together the bits and pieces of Krishnan's intermittent explanations to Guru over a period of about a year in college together, and flesh it out with the knowledge he acquired through reading and listening to through the years, it would read somewhat like what follows:

Carnatic music or karnataka sangitam is the classical or art music of south India—the area covering the four states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala.

Traditional followers of Indian music believe that it is of divine origin. In this, people who listen to north Indian or Hindustani and south Indian or Carnatic classical music, are united. In particular, the 

Vedas, more specifically the Sama Veda, are said to be the wellspring of what has evolved through the millennia into Indian classical music.

Carnatic music, like its northern counterpart, is essentially raga music—raga and tala music, to be more precise—with a vast number of songs based on an austere structure of melodic and rhythmic fundamentals. In short, every Carnatic music composition is rendered in a particular raga and a definite tala or rhythm cycle.

In Tamil Nadu, ancient Tamil compositions such as the Tevaram or Devaram and Tiruvachakam have been sung for centuries by a community of temple musicians known as Oduvars. The music they render is based on melodies called panns, which predate raga music.

A raga is a unique arrangement of the seven swaras or solfa notes—sa, ri, ga, ma, pa, dha and ni, with the microtones in between distinguishing it from western music. In practice, 12 such srutis are identified—with two ri-s (rishabha), two ga-s (gandhara), two ma-s (madhyama), two dha-s (dhaivata), and two ni-s (nishada).

In the melakarta scheme of ragas, 72 parent ragas are identified, and divided into two sets of ragas, based on the two types of madhyama—suddha and prati—with 36 suddha madhyama and 36 prati madhyama ragas.

All 72 parent ragas are complete ragas, with each raga containing all seven notes in both ascent and descent. In other words, each melakarta raga will have the scale sa-ri-ga-ma-pa-dha-ni-Sa in the ascent and Sa-ni-dha-pa-ma-ga-ri-sa.

The two subsets are further divided into 6 chakras each, consisting of 6 ragas each. Each of the suddha madhyama and prati madhyama ragas is differentiated by the positions of the other swaras, with only the shadja and panchama constant.

While the parent ragas are known as mela or janaka ragas, their offspring are known as janya or offspring ragas. A large number of permutation-combinations is possible, with such variations as 5 swaras in the ascent and 6/ 7 in the descent or vice versa, 5 and 5, or 6 and 6, so on and so forth.  

Thousands of ragas are the result.

A tala is a rhythmic cycle with a specific number of beats. Carnatic music uses a comprehensive system of talas called the Suladi sapta tala system. It has seven families of talas, each of which has five members, one each of five types or varieties (jati or chapu), thus allowing 35 possible talas. In practice, a small number of talas are regularly used.

Sophisticated, arithmetically intricate rules govern the elaboration of tala patterns. Once the tempo of a song is decided, the musician can accelerate. The vilambita is the slow pace, while madhyama is double that pace and the durita four times the vilambita kala. The singer maintains the tala or tempo by slapping his hand on his thigh, while instrumentalists may resort to tapping their feet.   

This is Carnatic music in a nutshell, though it is an oversimplification of a complex, sophisticated system.

Travelling light: a journey in music

Chapter 4
The Chennai Season

The veteran violinist on stage is a picture of composure. He coaxes the most transcendental sounds out of his ancient violin. His opening salvo stirs the soul as only a great raga at the hands of a great master can. The concert is not all about total surrender in the best bhakti mode. It offers joy and playfulness as well, when the artist moves from worshipping at the altar of an omnipresent, compassionate god to marvel at the pranks of the little blue god, playing the perennial favourite, Krishna nee begane baro. As the concert progresses, you realise it is a master class for aspiring musicians.

The reverie is unfortunately broken by a cellphone going off in the second row. Soon a middle-aged man is engaged in loud conversation on his handset. You try to give him a dirty look and shame him, but he closes his eyes and continues his conversation. Another cellphone rings two rows from you. A couple have an equally loud conversation about the concert, with the man getting a free lesson in raga-identification.

At another venue, the same evening, a young woman is playing the flute with the mastery of someone years senior to her. Ten minutes into the concert, a young man walks in and occupies a seat in the front row. Seasoned listeners can identify him as the husband of the flautist on stage. Now what does he do to encourage his wife? He stretches his legs, leans back and spreads out the afternoon issue of Kutcheri Buzz--the tabloid avidly consumed by the hordes of music lovers who throng the auditoria during the famed Chennai music season, now covering almost all of November and December.

People constantly walk in and walk out. Videographers and photographers occupy vantage positions, unmindful of the people whose views they are blocking. Children wail. Mothers run out in panic.

The Chennai Season has arrived. People, who never so much as peep into an auditorium during the rest of the year, now invade all the well known halls of Chennai. Banners and hoardings mar the aesthetics of the concerts as much as the loud and often erratic amplification. When the musicians are not asking the mikemen to increase the volume of the “feedback”–invariably taken to be a signal to raise the decibellage of the speakers aimed at the audience—the senior citizens in the front rows shout “Not audible” in a chorus.

This is the time local Carnatic music buffs as well as the NRIs who descend on Chennai every winter go from concert hall to concert hall to take in one or more of the thousands of “cutcheris” organised in a marvel of logistics and time management. Various sabhas, a ubiquitous, uniquely Tamil Nadu institution, vie with one another to bring the best of Carnatic music to the city’s audiences in a frenzy of programming. Lecture demonstrations and concerts are held throughout the day, starting as early as 7.30 a.m. and ending around 10 p.m. for two weeks. Because each sabha starts its festival on a different date, the whole frenetic schedule nowadays stretches to a couple of months.

Kitchens are closed at countless homes, as there’s no time to cook and clean or even stop over between concerts. Delicious ‘tiffin’ and aromatic ‘full meals’ in the temporary eateries specially put up for the season draw rasikas from all parts of the city, but those who are there for the food alone and not the music far outnumber the music-lovers.

The unique atmosphere of the season has to be seen to be believed. All the great and aspiring artists of Carnatic music perform at different venues. Many of them overdo it, accepting literally every invitation to perform for fear of offending the sabha secretaries, their lifeline to a successful career in music. This season, some of the stars have decided to limit their appearances in order to preserve their voices (or instruments) and retain the freshness of their music. (One hugely popular star has gone on record saying she is really taking it easy, she is only doing 15 concerts during the season)!

Every newspaper brings out special supplements on the season. Some TV channels even conduct their own festivals. Critics damn or praise the musicians, but today’s musicians are often well educated and extremely tech-savvy, perfectly capable of striking back at the pen pushers.

 “Carnatic music is alive and well”, seems to be the verdict of most critics, but old timers predictably lament the inability of today’s practitioners to equal the class of the stalwarts of the past.

Among the musicians themselves, opinions vary as to the state of Carnatic music today. Some say, ‘Those were the days when the rasika-s were really serious about attending season concerts and it was not just a fad. Today, we miss the serious rasika.’

Others say, “The audience is more demanding now. It inspires us through the year to do well, give of our best.” 

Everyone who has ever been a part of the Chennai Season will however agree on one thing: There is nothing in the national music calendar to beat it for sheer excitement.

Our man in Madras-Chennai

Having been away from Chennai for a whole decade, Krishnan tried to attend season concerts at a feverish pace, going from sabha to sabha for the first couple of years since his return to the city in the early 1980s. That was the time the great men and women singers of the 20th century were in their ripest bloom, but there were also emerging superstars in the likes of TN Seshagopalan, TV Sankaranarayanan and Maharajapuram Santhanam. This was at the cusp of the era of the new kids on the block, like Vijay Siva, Bombay Jayashri, Sanjay Subrahmanyan and Unnikrishnan. The mandolin sensation U Srinivas was wowing audiences ranging from geriatric to juvenile. Ravikiran, the child prodigy, was making a second coming as a gottuvadyam tyro, still uncomfortable in dhoti-kurta, while another child prodigy Veenai Gayathri continued to play sensational music .

But all this was some two decades after Krishnan had had his first taste of the festival. The first time he had attended a concert that formed part of the Music Academy's December season was in the early 1960s, when he was around 17. Earlier, He had once or twice been part of the audience at the grounds of his first alma mater PS High School (before his father's transfer to a small town), where the music was performed in the very special atmosphere of a thatched roof pandal, as the Academy was yet to build its own auditorium.

By this time, he had been fully involved in his passion for cricket, followed closely by his interest in Hindi film music and Hindustani music. This was also a time of voracious appetite for reading what he considered great literature and philosophy. The inspiration came from a number of sources--his parents, cousins, friends and teachers. The range of reading was wide, and included Charles Dickens, RL Stevenson, Alexandre Dumas, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, JB Priestley, Terence Rattigan, Noel Coward, AJ Cronin,  Albert Camus, Somerset Maugham, Jerome K Jerome, Stephen Leacock, Aldous Huxley, RK Narayan, Manohar Malgonkar, a whole lot of American playwrights, and above all, PG Wodehouse. He was no longer into Tamil fiction by the likes of Kalki, Jayakanthan and Devan, a childhood interest that would resurface years later, though he did make an exception in the case of Sujatha's thrillers, and the novelty of Indira Parthasarathy's writings.

In the 1960s, he continued to savour the concerts of the giants of Carnatic music, whom he now heard at the Music Academy's premises on the rare occasion some elder spared him a ticket, but caught up with the concerts he missed via All India Radio, which broadcast season concerts by regular arrangement.

The high point of that first season that Krishnan attended was Ravi Shankar's concert, which ended at the stroke of midnight. Panditji and Ustad Allah Rakha gave the audience much to cheer, with their exquisite music, and exciting sawal-jawab exchanges. Though Krishnan heard great vocalists like Amir Khan, Paluskar and Bhimsen Joshi in the few film songs they rendered, Nikhil Banerji's sitar had been the only Hindustani music he had been exposed to. He only got to hear that great sitarist as an elder relative was his disciple. With the Ravi Shankar concert began Krishnan's life-long love of Hindustani music.

Travelling light: a journey in music

By V Ramnarayan

Chapter 3

Akashvani

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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By the way

Vividh Bharati and its loyal band of listeners

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Travelling light: a journey in music

By V Ramnarayan

Chapter 2

Growing up with music

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Travelling light: a journey in music

By V Ramnarayan

Chapter 1
(Revised and expanded)

Beginnings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tyagaraja (1767-1847)

A link from Chapter 1

By V Ramnarayan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOME TRIBUTES TO TYAGARAJA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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