Section Synopsis

NEWS & NOTES

Nritya Sangam
A rare treat in Jamshedpur   -SUNIL KOTHARI

Organised by the Central Sangeet Natak Akademi, Nritya Sangam, a festival of classical dances of India was held at Jamshedpur recently in collaboration with the Department of Tourism, Government of Jharkhand at the Tata Auditorium, XLRI, featuring leading dancers of the country, and showcasing the important Indian dance forms.

"This Nritya Sangam is aimed at as a rare treat to the rasika-s, students and teachers of Jamshedpur… as a helpful signpost in their own journey into the world of dance," said Jayant Kastuar, who fifty years ago started his career as a child artist in Kathak at Jamshedpur. He acknowledged the support of the new state of Jharkhand. Their enthusiasm for organising such a festival was commendable.

The aim was to sensitise the audience, including dancers from nearby Seraikella village. The dancers and guru-s from the Seraikella project of Sangeet Natak Akademi attended the festival along with local artists. The presence of a cross section of leading artists and officers of government agencies was a hopeful sign of the interest these bodies were evincing.

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Koluvamaregada Kothanda­pani... "Aren’t you well-enshrined holding court here, Archer-king divine?"
 (transl. William Jackson). We too can dream with Tyagaraja to the lilt of Todi on the Lord Resplendent as young Abhishek Raghuram sings an alapana rich with aakaara syllables ("O for a fresh vowel, buoyant, to bear the weight of being" — Vasantha Surya scores again!). And, O, if only we could go on as we begin without yielding to an ebullience of swara display. But he could not and did. Youth will have its fling. We know that. But the young should, hopefully, grow out of the arithmetic of numbers into a nobler vision of their art.

After this, we would give anything, even into half our kingdom, for a mellow Bhairavi. Unnikrishnan obliges at Hamsadhwani.

Time doth not sour
Nor custom stale
The honey in his voice,
As, with Bhairavi and brio,
He wows them again.

Another evening, Savita Narasimhan goes one better, singing Bala Gopala (Dikshitar) to Mala Chandrasekhar’s flute, a happy convergence of flute and voice. But, for an ideal "sing-along" instrument to go with the human voice, I would opt for the veena.

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COVER STORY

On the path to Tyagaraja

Tyagaraja was born 221 years ago this month. Numerous aradhana-s are held not only in Tiruvaiyaru, home of his samadhi, but all over the world, the great saint composer’s devotees leaving no stone unturned in paying homage to his memory. Some of these celebrations continuing into his birth month rival the traditional winter homage in number and variety of programmes as much as the devotion and dedication with which they are conducted. In this issue we publish accounts of a few of them across the globe.

Biographies of the bard-sage abound, and some of them are of high quality. William J. Jackson, Head of the Department of Religious Studies, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis, U.S.A., who first came to south India in 1970, has not only written books on Tyagaraja but also translated his songs, including the opera Nauka Charitram. Serendipity recently brought him into contact with Sruti, resulting in the following first person account of his journey on the path to Tyagaraja.

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Endaro mahanubhavulu -William J. Jackson

Growing up in Rock Island, Illinois, my earliest memories of music were sounds from the radio — marching bands, pop and rockabilly music, and from the church altar and choir, chanting of the Latin liturgy. I served as acolyte at daily mass, answering the priest’s Latin prayers. As a teenager, it seemed to me that music uniquely offered ways of expressing feelings, inner life. The energy and excitement of fast songs, the sad and soulful, yet graceful flows of slow songs, both had their special powers. The combination of lyrics about love and loss, hope and celebration, together with spruced up couples on gym and tennis court dance floors, attracted us teenagers week after week. We flocked to those venues where three-minute 45 rpm records of current hits and recent favourites were played. Moving to New York City at 20 I began to enjoy other musics, including Latin American. Puerto Ricans had storefront churches and social clubs where rhythms of vitality and catchy melodies reached out and caught the imagination of passersby. I also heard the exuberant Congolese chanting of the Missa Luba. Acting in Shakespeare plays I heard Elizabethan music and learned about iambic pentameter verse too.

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Semponnarkoil S.R.D. Vaidyanathan is the recipient of two noteworthy awards this year. He  was recently honoured with the Golden Jubilee Award of the Narada Gana Sabha which was presented to him by A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. The prestigious Central Sangeet Natak Akademi Award was presented to him by the President of India, Pratibha Devisingh Patil, in February in New Delhi.

S.R.D. Vaidyanathan is a fifth generation nagaswara vidwan from an illustrious family of artists from the village of Semponnarkoil near Mayiladuturai in Tamil Nadu. He traces his ancestry to Pallavi Vaidyanatha Pillai and his son V. Ramaswamy Pillai, whose music was recorded for HMV ninety years ago, a first for a nagaswara vidwan. He was accompanied by Ammachatiram Kannusamy Pillai — the guru of Mudicondan Venkatarama Iyer — on the tavil.

Ramaswamy Pillai and his wife Kuttiammal had two sons S.R. Govindaswamy Pillai and S.R. Dakshinamoorthy Pillai. Both of them learnt vocal music from Koorainadu Sambamoorthy Iyer and the nagaswara from their father. They initially accompanied him in his concerts and later started performing as a duo. They were the adheena vidwans or court musicians of Dharmapuram, Tiruvavaduturai and Tiruppanandal, played in the zameens of Sivagiri, Sethur, Neykarampatti, Singampatti and the samasthanam-s of Mysore, Vijayanagar, and Pithapuram, earning wide acclaim. They were known for their rakti melam and sarvalaghu.

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PEER PLEASURE

A feature in which one artist writes about another on a personal note

Two Yuva Puraskar awardees
Gentle sunshine: The music of Sikkil Gurucharan  - ANIL SRINIVASAN

There are shafts of golden sunlight falling on the floor. I am listening to a rendition of verses from the Krishna Leela Tarangini. There is something delectable about this voice.

Something which makes me think of a feather falling gently to the ground, curving its way around unseen monuments in the air with sensuousness and delicacy. This is a voice I only know too well.

In the midst of the Madhyamavati composition Rama katha sudha, I feel a release from the temporal. I am inside the sanctum of a shrine in the deep South, breathing in an energy that is ancient, yet overwhelmingly alive. Quiet but active contemplation takes me on its wings across silent surfaces to sacred places. Once again, I am acutely aware of how well I have come to know this voice.

 

K.S.R. Aniruddha: Hearing the Dance 

I am on a tricycle. In the space between a large building and the adjoining wall, I see a narrow gap. It is one of these moments in life when you decide you can risk it, even though your head could get badly hurt by the process, to go ahead and navigate the curve smoothly. As I am thinking all these grown-up thoughts, I see a good friend of mine race past smoothly and do the same navigation. He looks unfazed, and I think he must be the cleverest person in the world.

Nearly thirty years later, I still retain my opinion about the musician that K.S.R. Aniruddha has turned out to be. Recipient of the Kalaimamani title and the Sangeet Natak Akademi’s Yuva Puraskar for this year in the ‘music for dance’ category, Aniruddha has come a
long way. But the child on the tricycle still lingers in the mind’s eye.

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POINT OF VIEW

'Vikku' for Sangeeta Kalanidhi  -A. SESHAN

The preparation for next year’s Wimbledon tennis tourney starts even before the completion of this year’s championships. Advance planning and consultations are always helpful. It is not too early now to think of the Music Academy’s choice of the next Sangeeta Kalanidhi. The President of the Academy should not fight shy of a public debate on the issue as his institution has achieved a unique place in the music and dance world and he has himself pioneered new ideas. 

It is typical of the class-conscious and caste-ridden Hindu society to have used the concepts of upper and lower places in status in the field of music and dance also. For a long time women singers were considered an inferior species not fit to sing ragam-tanam-pallavi until D.K. Pattammal came along.

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BOOKSHELF

SCIENCE  OF  SREE CHAKRA. Appended with Dikshitar’s Kamalamba Navavarana Kriti-s. By Dr. Pappu Venugopala Rao. [Pappus Academic & Cultural Trust (PACT), Chennai. Hardbound. Pp. 204. Rs. 999 / US $ 45].  
- Dr. PADMA SUBRAHMANYAM

"Dr. Venugopala Rao says in his introduction that we should not have fears and apprehensions about Sree Chakra. After all, it is the yantra of the Mother Goddess. There may be bad children but there is no bad mother.

The book has a beautiful cover page with the figure of Tripurasundari drawn by no less an artist than Bapu. This, along with the rich red calico binding with the Sree Chakra printed in gold, and the embossing of the Sree Chakra in every page, make it appear like a divine diamond set in gold. The extremely heavy para-intellectual and para-emotional, spiritual subject seems to unwind itself with a clarity possible only through the conviction and self experience of this erudite author. The success of the book is the achievement of communication.

OOTTUKADU VENKATA KAVI - LIFE AND CONTRIBUTIONS (With over 230 lyrical illustra-tions/references). By Chitravina N. Ravikiran. [The International Foundation for Carnatic Music (IFCM). Pp. 145. Rs. 99 / US $ 5].- ANNAM

Periodically, some versatile composer of the pre-Trinity era is discovered, necessitating revisions in our understanding of some aspects of Carnatic music history.

Two such significant discoveries during the mid-twentieth century were Annamacharya and Oothukadu Venkatasubba Iyer. Annamacharya was luckier in the sense that the resourceful Tirumalai Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD) initiated a whole project on him and has been engaged in propagating his compositions. In the case of Oothukadu, it was left to a humble person like Needamangalam Krishnamurthy Bhagavatar to undertake such an endeavour. Still, only a few compositions have been in circulation.
 

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PHOTO NEWS

Sri Mayavaram Fiddle Govindaraja Pillai Trust was inaugurated on 17th April at the Sivagami Pethachi Auditorium in Mylapore. A portrait of Govindaraja Pillai was unveiled by violin maestro T.N. Krishnan who later presented a solo violin concert. Nalli Kuppuswami Chetti presided over the function, Washington' T.P. Shanmuganathan welcomed the gathering, and Vazhuvoor Ravi proposed the vote of thanks.




Music critic Karai A. Shangarasethu (Karai Shangara), Sruti Correspondent and Representative in Karaikudi, was honoured with the title 'Isai Vimarsaka Rasikamani' by Kanchi Sankaracharya Jayendra Saraswati on 26th March in Devakottai. He was felicitated by Devakottai zamindar Narayanan Chettiar and scholar Somasundaram.




DVDs titled 'JATHIS for Bharatanatyam' and 'The Dancing Face' were released. Jatis has dance choreography by Sudharani Raghupathy, and concept, composition and mridanga by K.S.R. Anirudha with more than 30 jati-s — for opening numbers, varnam-s, and set to different tala-s.





Scholars Dr. M.B. Vedavalli, Dr. Premeela Gurumurthy, Dr. Seetha, Dr. N. Ramanathan, and C. Vinod Kumar (Publisher) at the book release function of A Dictionary of South Indian Music & Musicians of Prof. P. Sambamoorthy – Vol. IV, edited by Dr. M.B. Vedavalli, in Chennai.




Writer, music historian, and Sruti Contributing Editor Sriram V receives the UNFPA-Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity (2007) from Dr. Poongothai, Minister for Social Welfare, Govt. of Tamil Nadu, as David Hopper, Consul General, U.S.A. looks on. Sriram received the award for writing the book titled ‘The Devadasi and the Saint’ on the life and times of Bangalore Nagarathnamma. The Function was organised on 28th March at the Music Academy in Chennai



Hindustani music maestro Gangubai Hangal honouring veteran Carnatic musician Parassala Ponnammal on 18th April at Gana Sudha in Hubli.








Layodaya, an organisation launched by mridanga vidwan K.R. Ganesh, paid homage to his father, mridanga vidwan Sangeeta Kala Acharya Kumbakonam Rajappa Iyer on the first anniversary of his demise, on 5th March at Srinivasa Sastri Hall, in Chennai. V.V. Srivatsa, Guruvayur Dorai, spoke on the occasion of the ‘Gurusmaranam’. Nagai Soundararajan, one of the senior disciples of Rajappa Iyer was honoured. A four-CD pack on mridanga playing techniques was also released. There was a ‘special programme’ featuring mridanga vidwan Vellore G. Ramabhadran in the double role of mridanga accompanist for his own singing. He sang kriti-s made famous by Semmangudi, Madurai Mani and others.
 

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NEWS YOU CAN USE
 

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