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Two leading exponents of Carnatic music have come together to give rasikas an enchanting journey through the times and contributions of seven doyens of the art form. This rich, well-conceputalised coffee table book, with its wonderful black and white photographs and an easy-going text, lingers in the mind, and the next piece of music you listen to will not quite be the same after it. Each chapter’s structure is reminiscent of a tightly delivered kriti, with controlled cadences and crescendos, and the book succeeds admirably in its aim to offer not information, but perspectives, "not a collage of biographies, but an offering and a sharing, and a passing on of an inheritance." The book features four vocalists – Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar, Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, G.N. Balasubramaniam and M.S. Subbulakshmi – nagaswara exponent T.N. Rajarathinam Pillai, percussionist Palghat Mani Iyer, and flutist T.R. Mahalingam. Ariyakudi (1890-1967) is the margadarshi, the man who established the modern kutcheri (concert) format which is used to his day. A kutcheri opens with a varnam, followed by a few krithis. The main raga of the day is then explored and elaborated upon for the audience’s listening pleasure, followed by a Ragam-Thanam-Pallavi, to end with a few "thukkudas", including perhaps a thillana. Ariyakudi was a technician par excellence, with a repertoire that was unmatched. While the Carnatic classics were in Telugu and Sanskrit, he also popularised Tamil songs. The little vignettes that the book presents of the man, whether angling for gifts like rings and watches or swaying gently in his oonjal (swing), help to bring him alive for a new generation, and further whet their appetite to hear his music. T.N. Rajarathnam Pillai (1898-1956) is the ‘rebel king’, in that he fought for, and achieved, an equal status for the nagaswara player, who did not, at one time, even have the right to cover his chest or to sit down when playing. But when he set out on an alapana, everything and everyone one paled in comparison. He was one "who responded flamboyantly to whatever called to him – whether it was alcohol, art or life itself." Then there is Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer (1908-2003), who went beyond operations for nasal blocks and tonsils to become the grand old man of Carnatic music, who was mesmerising audiences on stage till 92. From the text emerges a picture of a great genius, and even a sense of mystique, about music "rendered when on his own or with a select small group, late into the night or on a train journey" which showed a "passion and beauty that was an antithesis to what his larger concert audiences heard." As for G.N. Balasubramaniam (1910-1965), he is there in all his glory, perfume, diamond earrings, English-literature education and handsome face, creating a "new school, a new bani of music," after which "Carnatic music would never be the same again." After GNB, Carnatic music "did not just loosen its tie but peeled away its formal clothes," the text tells us. He did so by strengthening its traditional base, with a more scientific "note by note" approach even in the raga alapana. Palghat Mani Iyer (1912-1981) is the mridangam player who hated mikes, the child prodigy whose fingers were like silk on the reverberating leather, eliciting "rapturous aahaas" with well-timed strokes that rang out pure, strong and true – mani maniyaa ketkiradu! – mani in Tamil means both bell and precious gems. The journey continues with the one and only M.S. Subbulakshmi (1916-2004), the lady who fused "bhakti and bhava" and became a singing saint. While she has made the "Venkateshwara Suprabhatam" and "Bhaja Govindam" her own, the book tells us how she would take the "best elements" of a kriti and put it together "to arrive at a final version, practiced and polished for concert delivery." And it ends with T.R. Mahalingam (1926-1986), the flute player, whose purity of shruti and intricacy of laya, control over breath and ability to play the lower octave on the eighth hole, set a benchmark yet to be scaled. The book is a wonderful
first effort from Matrka, set up by the two artists to "reach
lovers of music in various ways." The world it portrays of
eccentric geniuses, singing on stage, in cars, trains, and wedding
halls, revolutionising music as they went along, is a precious
inheritance indeed.
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