Two signatures on a composition

Please listen to two renderings of 'Sarasa Saama Daana', the Tyagaraja composition in Raga Kapi Narayani. The first one is by Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer (1908-2003) and the second by Maharajapuram Santhanam (1928-1992). I remember a friend from the North asking what difference two singers can deliver when the Carnatic singers are destined to follow the compositions so strictly. These songs have been uploaded as one track for that friend and he replied to me that both carry totally different signatures and each represent different 'Gharanas'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65lH6dt52AI

It was 3.30 am...and I was searching for a suitable raga for pre-dawn or last part of the night. I have no words to express my fortunes when I have reached on this short but celestial rendering of Raga Kalingara ( or Kalingada) by none other than Ustad Bade Gulam Ali Khan (1902-1968). Please see the mood that he creates for the time...I think it's not the raga, but the singer who makes it suitable for a period of the day or night.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aWinnPxw0A

Yes, what Karaikudi said was right!

What a beautiful start for my day by listening to an alapana of Raga Kalyani by M.S.Subbulakshmi!
Once a journalist asked about her first public appearance. She replied: "When it happened, I felt only annoyance at being yanked from my favourite game - making mud pies. Someone picked me up, dusted my hands and skirt, carried me to the nearby Sethupati School where my mother was playing before 50 to 100 people. In those days that was the usual concert attendance. At mother's bidding I sang a couple of songs. I was too young for the smiles and the claps to mean much. I was thinking more of returning to the mud" As per records, her debut concert in Madras music academy was when she was 17 in 1934. Her mother only played Tanpura. After the concert, Karaikudi Sambasiva Iyer, stalwart Veena maestro said 'Child, you carry a veena in your throat'. http://www.muzigle.com/artist/ms-subbulakshmi/albums#!track/birana-brovaite

One Abhang, Two renderings

Please listen to two different styles of renderings of the same Abhang ‘Bolava Vithala, Pahava Vithala’ by Pt. Jitendra Abhisheki in Hindustani and Ranjani Gayatri in Carnatic traditions.

Once Ranjani and Gayatri said about their learning Marathi Abhangs:

“We happened to sing ‘Hiranmayeem’, the Lalita raga kriti of Muthuswami Dikshitar in the presence of Manik Bhide, mother of Ashwini Bhide, once. We had just started and she immediately asked Ashwini to listen to the song. We already knew a few abhangs, which we learnt from Kolhapur Appa Saheb Deshpande. However, we learnt more from Manik Bhide. The emotion you bring in, the modulation of voice, the timing and the way you sing it… all these matter in rendering ‘abhangs’. Above all, it should be made concert-worthy. Abhangs have universal appeal. In a concert in Houston, a Spanish sound engineer virtually began to dance! We have a good understanding of Marathi and have tuned a few abhangs, too”

1. Pt. Jitendra Abhisheki: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3kXEClWSHc
2. Ranjani Gayatri: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiT7Hqk_uwg

Thumri was a state of mind for her

Sumati Mutatkar, renowned musicologist and singer writes about an evening spent with Sidheshwari Devi in Rajbhavan at Nagpur in 1950:

“ Sidheshwari started explaining to us the role and importance of feelings, and the emphasis to be placed on words in Thumri. The biggest aspect, she said, of the thumri style of singing is ‘baithak’ meaning thereby not the way we sit, but the fact that thumri singing requires a special attitude and aptitude on a singer’s part- special sentiments, delicacy of feelings, and the abundance of love in the heart. This baithak in thumri is a state of mind, its soul and without which there can be no ras or beauty in our singing”

Yesterday night I was listening to the renderings of the famous thumri ‘Ras Ke Bhare Tore Nain’ in Rag Bhairavi by stalwarts like Ustad Barakat Ali Khan, Rasoolan Bai, Girija Devi, Heera Devi Sharma (for Film Gaman), and Noor Jahan. But when I reached Sidheshwari Devi’s ‘out of the world’ performance of this thumri, I realized what she meant by the importance of ‘baithak’ in her singing.

http://www.raaga.com/play/?id=273163

G.N.Balasubramaniam on Ariyakudi

Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar was twenty years elder to G.N.Balasubramaniam (1910-1965). For Ariyakudi’s commemorative souvenir, G.N.B wrote an article titled ‘The Hero as a Musician’ and let me quote a short paragraph from it:

” Sri Ariyakudi is a musician with a clear vision and idea of what he is about. He never allowed himself, even in his early days, to fall into the dangerous illusion that originality comes only with the avoidance of the well-known, obvious and basic sancharas and form of a raga, a shoal on which many young musical minds are apt to wreck themselves. He has to his credit introduced the largest number of new compositions of the Trinity…..He, it is, who had codified and adapted to modern times, the aspects of a concert, their spacing and timings- and this so well done that both the lay and the learned never have a dull moment or feeling of boredom, throughout the concert”

1. Gnanamusakarada- by Ariyakkudi: http://www.muzigle.com/artist/ariyakkudi-t-ramanuja-iyengar#!track/gnanamosagarada-ragG.Na-purvikalyani

Manasuloni- by G. N. Balasubramaniam: http://www.muzigle.com/artist/gn-balasubramaniam#!track/manasulonima

Music: Biology or Chemistry?

We can't say whether creation of music has anything special to do with emotion though I am inclined to believe that music listening has something to do with our emotional states. There too, it's a fact that relating certain music to certain moods or emotions is the result of a habitual listening. Yesterday I happened to talk to a friend about theories of emotions in the context of history of music listening. I remember reading an article which dealt with biological responses of the brain while listening to music. If you are trained in music, how do your brain relates to it? Let me quote from the article:
"Once again, there was a bias towards the right hemisphere—at least among those with no musical training. In such non-musicians, blood flow to the right hemisphere increased on exposure to music with a lot of harmonic intervals. (The researchers picked a 16th-century madrigal whose words were in Latin, a language chosen because it was not spoken by any of the participants, and so would not activate speech processing.) In musicians, however, the reverse was true; blood-flow increased to their left hemispheres, suggesting that their training was affecting the way they perceived harmony" ( http://www.economist.com/node/329414?Story_ID=329414)

Please listen to Madurai Somasundaram (who is known for the 'emotional' content in his music) singing Sindhu Bhairavi


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj-6WVGf3tU

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