Happy New Year!

Another year comes to a close tonight and 2010 is upon us. I just paused for a second to look back on a fairly eventful year in my music career. It was quite a hectic one with a lot of travel and concerts. The Europe tour early on in summer, the fairly hectic US tour in the fall and of course the season here at home in Chennai in December. 23 years have gone by since my first season as a performer and I m still already looking forward to the next one. Afterall it is this feeling of looking forward to the next concert that keeps musicians like us going. As long as that feeling is there it automatically motivates us to work harder to do better each time.

Like in the previous years this season has also been very special for me personally. Beginning with the Jaya TV concert and a few more concerts still to happen, it has been great but a little hectic. I am indeed moved by the overwhelming response from the rasikas and music lovers. Every concert, the audience has patiently put up with my music, my difficulties at times and have always been there to tell me that they deserve nothing but 100%. They have braved the traffic, sometimes overcrowding, good/bad sound systems and still turned out in large numbers in all the venues to accept whatever I had to offer.

Musically of course the journey continues for me with more ragas, compositions and other forays that promise to be filled with exciting potential. Thanks once again to all of you and wish you all a very very Happy New Year!

Dec 2003 concert available for download from Charsur

Charsur has made available another concert of mine from the December season 2003. This was held on 5th of December 2003 at Narada Gana Sabha under the auspices of Karthik Fine Arts. The concert had MR Gopinath - Violin, Mannargudi Easwaran - Mrudangam and S Karthick - Ghatam as the accompanists. Click here for a review of that concert that appeared on the Hindu dated 19th Dec 2003. Interestingly Suresh of Charsur called me up and said that he was planning to release this concert but did not know who the accompanists were. I did a simple search on Google and came with a link to the concert review! The internet is just changing the way we do things completely.

Here is the link to the download page for the concert.

Download December Season 2003 Live concert for Karthik Fine Arts

Please support legal downloads and refrain from uploading these concerts to free servers as Charsur is making special arrangements for royalties from these downloadable concerts to reach all artistes including the accompanists.

Season kick off and Mayuram Viswanatha Sastri

Another season kicks off today with a concert for the Margazhi Maha Utsavam. I have been silent these past months on the blog. A couple of reasons. Travel has been hectic and the creative juices are not flowing. This is just a note to say that I do intend to keep this going in whatever way I can. The Jaya TV concert annually has been my season beginner and I do enjoy it so much. It is a concert where I can tap into this huge library of music and come up with compsitions that go on to occupy a regular place in my concert repertoire. In the eighties when I was still in the process of learning songs, the biggest motivation came from competitions and thematic concerts. Everytime there was a competition one had to learn many songs of a composer and thus one managed to expand one's repertoire. Later when I started performing there was an explosion of thematic concerts in Chennai. This gave me another opportunity to learn songs. Some of those themes from the early nineties that I have sung included Songs on Devi by Tyagaraja, Harikambhoji and its janyas, Ambujam Krishna songs, Papanasam Sivan songs, Koteeswara Iyer (a special recording for Charangi, then run by Mr RT Chari of Tag centre), Gopalakrishna Bharati special concert at Anandatandavapuram, Swati Tirunal, Compositions of Annamacharya, Bhadrachala Ramdas & Narayana Teertha, several concerts of Dikshitar kritis by Guruguhanjali where a songlist was given to me in advance and I hardly knew a single composition!

Jaya TV gives me the perfect space to work out a theme, do some 'data mining' and come with a list of songs. The thing I like about these concerts is that because of the tremendous reach of television so many people listen and come back to concerts with requests of the same. This kind of ensures that these songs do not die prematurely as a one off effort as in some cases. Instead they enjoy a decent lease of life and I also get to keep singing fresh songs rather than repeated requests from some of my old recorded commercial albums. I have also concentrated a lot on tamizh composers and compositions. After all it is the language I am most comfortable with. I grew up speaking it everyday!

This year's theme is interesting in that I have chosen an almost forgotten composer. Mayuram Viswanatha Sastri was a vaggeyakara in the true sense of the word. I have heard a senior musiclogist once mention about the composer Tiruvarur Ramaswamy Pillai as a 'vidwan' who also composed. So also were composers like Patnam, Poochi, Muthiah Bhagavatar, Papanasam Sivan and Mysore Vasudevacharya from the early days for the 20th century. Mayuram Viswanatha Sastri was a brilliant composer who unfortunately did not enjoy the patronage of performing musicians like many others. Only GNB and later DK Pattammal sang some of his songs. In fact his most popular song, Jayati jayati in Khamas became well known mostly thru GNB's record. There is a story that Jayati jayati made it to the final round for selection as the Indian national anthem. Another sidelight on Viswanatha Sastri is that the Music Academy had organised a competition to encourage vaggeyakaras and Viswanatha Sastri won the first prize.

During the eighties Viswanatha Sastri's brother Shri Vaitheeswaran used to conduct concerts dedicated to his compositions annually. I have heard concerts of musicians like Kalakkad Ramanarayana Iyer and Manakkal Rangarajan in Sastri hall singing these songs. After that nothing much was heard except that I know Vidwan Bagalore S Shankar belongs to Viswanatha Sastri's sishya parampara and has sung many of his songs. During the Jayalalitha Govt rule in Tamizh Nadu, Semmangudi had publicly asked for musicians to take up Viswanatha Sastri's Tirukkural madura keertanaigal to increase the presence of tamizh songs in concerts. In this connection the then Chief minister had awarded a financial grant to the Viswanatha Sastri family for popularising his compositions. At that time, a close relative of Viswanatha Sastri met me in Bangalore and gave me several of the books with his compositions and asked if we could do a recording sometime. Somehow I never got the time to sit down and examine the songs. Thankfully the Jaya TV concert has given me the perfect forum to bring out some of these hidden gems. As I perused the songs I was stunned by the musical quality of the songs I really felt bad for having ignored him. As in the case of Dandapani Desigar last year Viswanatha Sastri is another excellent composer who's songs need to be sung more on the concert stage.

Apart from his tirukkural madura keertanaigal, where he has set the tirukkural to music in kriti format, he has also composed songs like murugan madura keertanaigal, krishna madura keertanaigal and bharath bhajan - a collection of sanskrit songs with a patriotic fervour. He has also explored several composition forms like varnam, kriti, swarajati, ragamalika, folk tunes, nadai changes in songs etc. I really enjoyed learning up these songs and I hope rasikas will support this and more of his songs will become popular.

Looking forward to yet another season and hopefully a few more posts before the year is over!

A Knowledgeable Rasika - 2

Srinivasan has been quite active on the internet these days. He had seen places where people discuss carnatic music online. He loved these discussions. There was so much to be learnt from so many knowledgeable persons. Also the huge amount of music available online for download was such a boon. Any musical point was immediately demonstrated with a downloadable link to a piece of music. He started slowly posting about his own views and opinions. He had cultivated friendships online with a number of like minded music lovers from all over the world.

Last week he had posted a long detailed post on some rakti ragas like Mukhari and Dhanyasi and as a result found some rare recordings of Ramnad Krishnan posted online. He loved both these ragas and thought that a number of modern day artistes were ignoring them. He had gone to attend a family wedding in Coimbatore and met a distant uncle of his who was a long time lover of carnatic music. He had heard several of the great masters and would usually be happy to talk about his experiences. Here is a gist of the conversation.

S: Mama (in an excited tone) I have just got some very rare recordings of Mukhari and Dhanyasi alapanas.

Uncle: Oh! Where do you get all these?

S: From the internet. Nowadays you can get anything online. Have you heard any of the great masters sing these ragas in your times?

U: Let me see. These were generally considered minor ragas. It was only after Ariyakudi and Maharajapuram that these ragas were sung more often. My father used to tell me that in the early twentieth century they still sang only the major ragas like Kambhoji, Todi and Sankarabharanam. Ariyakudi wanted a lot of variety in his concerts and so he increased the number of compositions presented. This resulted in a need to learn up more songs so that he does not sound repetitive. Otherwise our music would have retained the creative aspect like Hindustani music.

S: But these are such beautiful ragas and so classical in their nature. Why are modern day musicians ignoring them? Look at the way Ramnad Krishnan sang these ragas.

U: Yes Ramnad Krishnan was an exceptional singer. But he was not very successful commercially. Listeners don't have the patience to listen to an elaborate Dhanyasi with intricate phrases. It is all right in front of a knowledgeable audience in a small place. For instance my father would tell me that he has heard Maha Vaidyanatha Iyer sing Narayanagowla. Even your so called great masters have not sung this ragam. When Maha sang Chakravakam nobody even knew the name of the ragam. Patnam Subramaniya Iyer composed a varnam in Balahamsa. Does anyone know what it is today? Afterall if Patnam thought a raga as rakti and created a major composition like an ata tala varnam, why did 'your' greats ignore it? Today you don't like it if someone sings some rare raga. But you don't mind something that was considered rare a 100 years back?? I don't understand your logic. In my father's time Ariyakudi was considered an upstart who had diluted carnatic music with his new kutcery bhani. Today he is hailed as a margadarshi. I have heard so many people lamenting about how Ariyakudi is primarily responsible for killing creativity in carnatic music. But Ariyakudi's success is enough to say that he was a man ahead of his times. You have to understand that especially in India people have to wait much longer to be recognised for their efforts in the larger scale of things. Also everything that attracts attention will not set a trend. GNB introduced a lot of innovations in his time. Not all of them have become a trend. For instance he sang Sanmukhapriya for 45 minutes. No musician is doing it these days. Even when they try they are so repetitive that it gets boring from the 6th minute. I am comparing GNB's music with today and saying this. But when my father heard GNB in the 40s he never liked it. He said that college students were unnecessarily hyping him up. Today you are so excited with the music of Ramnad Krishnan. But we all never considered him so great. He got away with singing minor ragas like Mukhari and Dhanyasi. I also see a lot of people getting excited over MDR. Have you heard the great Tiger? MDR was just a pale imitation! But then there is no access to Tiger's music today and so we have to be happy with what we get. One thing I can definitely tell after more than 60 years of listening to music. Thee will always be a group who preferred an earlier generation to the current performing generation. That is why the fans of Maha and Patnam don't like the fans of Ariyakudi and Maharajapuram, who don't like the fans of GNB and Semmangudi, who don't like the fans of MDR and Ramnad Krishnan, who don't like fans of KVN and Nedanuri, who don't like the fans of Seshagopalan and Sankaranarayan who don't like fans of Unnikrishnan and Vijay Siva, who don't like fans of Sikkil Gurucharan and Balamuralikrishna!

Note: This is entirely fictional.

Dec 2002 concert available for download from Charsur

This concert, available for download at the Charsur site now, is from Narada Gana Sabha, December 2002. There is an interesting story behind this concert. A particular rasika, who was also a retired officer of the bank where I have my account, met me there sometime in the ebginning of December 2002. As we were talking he asked me if I could sing Bhavapriya sometime. I told him I have never sung it but would definitely do so if he told me which concert he is coming to. On the 16th of December, the day of my NGS concert, he called me to remind me that he was coming to the concert and if I was going to sing Bhavapriya. I realised that I did not know any composition in Bhavapriya and so sang an RTP at the concert that evening! The accompanists were RK Shriramkumar, K Arun Prakash and KV Gopalakrishnan.

Here is the link to the download page for the concert.

Download December Season 2002 Live concert for Narada Gana Sabha


Please support legal downloads and refrain from uploading these concerts to free servers as Charsur is making special arrangements for royalties from these downloadable concerts to reach all artistes including the accompanists.

The Sanjay Subrahmanyan Show - Episode 11 - Chat with Dr N Ramanathan and Sriram V

Chat with renowned musicologist Dr N Ramanathan and Sriram V.

Click below to listen

The Sanjay Subrahmanyan Show - Episode 11 - Chat with Dr N Ramanathan and Sriram V

A December 2001 concert available for download

Charsur has made available a December 2001 concert of mine on their website for download only. This concert was held as part of the series organised by the Mylapore Academy at the RR Sabha hall. The concert featured S Varadarajan, Srimushnam Raja Rao and G Harishankar. The 2001 season was very special for me because Shri Harishankar played several concerts for me in a period of about 2 months. He was quite keen to play more but unfortunately he passed away in early 2002. If I remember Charsur had released another concert from December 2001 that I sang in Kalakshetra with Nagai Muralidharan, Trichy Sankaran and G Harishankar.

Charsur usually followed a practice of recording 3 or 4 concerts every season and releasing only one in CD form. Now with the new website and digital downloads possible more concerts from earlier seasons will be released in the coming months.

Here is the link to the download page for the concert.

Download December Season 2001 Live concert for Mylapore Academy at RR Sabha Hall.

Please support legal downloads and refrain from uploading these concerts to free servers as Charsur is making special arrangements for royalties from these downloadable concerts to reach all artistes including the accompanists.