Carnatic Music, Women and some Women Musicians
I strongly hold the view that women have been very instrumental in ensuring the continuing popularity of carnatic music. While the number of male musicians may be more, it is women in the form of mother and sister who have inculcated the taste for carnatic music in many a youngster. I can vouch for my own interest in carnatic music developing from my mother. She used to sing quite well, though she was not formally trained. I used to regularly take her help in identifying ragas and that slowly translated into a mammoth interest in this great art form. I know of many friends who also have a similar experience in their formative years.
Another important thing is the number of rare krithis that many women (who are not musicians) know. When my classmate visited me with his family, I was pleasantly surprised to hear a rare Tyagaraja Divyanama sankeetam being sung by his wife. My colleague's wife rendered an outstanding 'Sree Bhargavi' of Dikshitar much to my surprise and awe !!! I have also heard some of my knowledgeable friends say that they have learnt some rare krithi from a housewife next door !!!
In this post I want to write about a few women musicians. Lot has been written about the great artists like MS, Pattammal, MLV, Brindamma etc. I had earlier posted about my interaction with Muktamma. I will write about some excellent musicians who may not have achieved the fame of those mention earlier.
Kalpagam Swaminathan: Affectionately known as Kalpagam mami, she is probably one of the best vainikas around. A set of friends and I were fortunate enough to host a concert of mami at Bangalore. It was great interacting her and those were moments to cherish. She was staying at my friend Kiran's house. I went to his house to pick up mami and take her to the venue. The concert was made up of krithis of Dikshitar. I still remember the excellent Kalyani that she played. According to many Kalyani is like an old lady. Many people get tired of it but when mami played, it was a different experience. I was sitting with my mouth open wondering how such a Kalyani, like a teen girl, like fresh dew on flowers, like the freshness of the morning mist was emanating from the veena. What a sight it was. An old lady, her hair fully white, was conjuring up a youthful Kalyani !!
Next day morning we met her at Kiran's house. The interaction was truly an humbling experience. Here was a great vainika, the acknowledged expert on Dikshitar krithi, asking us as to what we wanted to hear !!! And she played our request !! She was then speaking with us for some time and you can clearly make out that some of the best things of Indian culture is imbibed by these great people. Whatever fate has thrown at them they have taken it in their stride and even if things in the past had not been very pleasant, when the incident was narrated, there was no trace of bitterness. You can understand the sort of hard work that she had put in and the sort of sacrifice she had to make. As I said, it was truly a humbling experience. Hope we can make it to our old age with such a spirit.
I make it point to wish her every year at the music festival. She generally comes to attend the lecture demonstrations and I go and pay my respects. A excellent lady and an extraordinary musician.
The musicians I am going to mention below are people whom I have never met. I have heard them and have been impressed with the work that they have put in.
R. Vedavalli : She is a well known and a well respected musician, who was conferred the title of Sangeetha Kalanidhi. I first listened to her when I was in 11th or 12th standard (called Intermediate in Hyderabad). Early in the morning, before 8 am, we used to catch AIR Tiruchi on Medium Wave on our radio !! We used to get a lot more stations but it was Tiruchi I was interested in. They had a very nice program every morning at 7:30am, where one ragam was introduced by an expert and then a krithi in the ragam was sung by a leading vidwan. S.Ramanathan, Vedavalli and R Parthasarathy. The introduction by all three of them used to be very scholarly and we were lucky to hear them. Because the signal would start fading around 7:45, when a leading vidwan would start his alapana and then the krithi. I still remember Seshagopal sing a lovely Subhapathuvarali and 'Sree Satyanarayanam' amidst unbearable noise. It was then I knew that Vedavalli was a great musicologist.
I later had the chance to listen to some more lectures of her on AIR Chennai. She is a stickler to sampradaya and wants the krithis rendered in exactly the ragas conceived by the composers. It si from her lectures that I learnt that 'Sitamma Mayamma' was actually tuned in Lalitha and not Vasantha. Also the krithi 'Gnanamosagarada', popularly sung in Poorvi Kalyani is actually tuned in the ragam Shadvidamargini. In her lecture she sang the first line of this song in Shadvidamargini and showed how the raga supplemented the feelings of the lyric, which basically asks the Lord to bestow 'Gnana'. She said that the way the song was sung in Poorvi Kalyani almost terrorized the Lord in bestowing 'Gnana' !!!
She seems to have undertaken many projects. I saw a very interest program by her on TV where she was interviewing a nadaswaram player and asking him to play various types of 'Mallari'. I have also heard the 'Nauka Charitram' being produced by her for AIR. She has a released a couple of interesting tapes on how to sing Neravals and Kalpanaswarams.
I have heard a couple of her concerts and the one concert which I still remember is the one she gave for Nada Inbam a couple of seasons back. She sand a brief but superb Huseni. I have never heard such a short but so complete an Huseni. It was as if she has distilled all her experience to sing this alapana. S.Varadarajan too played very well that day and it was a very memorable concert.
Rama Ravi: I had never heard of her till I met Ravi and Sridhar. They gave me a tape of hers and asked me to listen to it. I was very impressed when I heard her and was very surprised that I had not heard her earlier. I was probably listening to carnatic music for more than 20 yrs before I heard for the first time. Needless to say, the loss was entirely mine.
It was Nada Inbam again, where I heard a lovely concert by this self effacing lady. She was singing quite well till she sang the 'main' piece of the concert. After this she started singing padams and javalis and that took the concert to a different plane. You can see the audience connecting so well with the chaste music that she was dishing out. The sabha secretary made the right comment when he said that people came to hear her sing padams and javalis. He forced her to sing the first few lines of the Nadanamakriya Padam, 'Payyeda'. There were lot of musicians sitting in the front row including artists like Sanjay Subramaniam and everyone was enjoying themselves.
She had been to Bangalore a couple of times and there was a very nice program in Ananya, where Rama Ravi sang padams and Kalanidhi Narayanan gave expression to the lyrics. What a combination of sangeetham and abhinayam it was. A truly different experience.
Seetha Rajan : Being ignorant of the carnatic music scene since I was based in Secunderabad for a long time, Seetha Rajan was a totally unknown name to me when I picked up a double volume of 'Prahlada Bhakti Vijayam'. I had been looking for Tyagaraja's 'Prahlada Bhakti Vijayam' for a long time and the moment I saw the tape I picked it up and it is something that I never regretted. Infact it was probably one of my best buys.
Seetha Rajan gives superb commentary about this 'geya natakam' of Tyagaraja. She opens with the verse on Tyagaraja by Valajapeta Venkatarama Bhagavatar, 'Vyaso Naigama Charchaya'. Then she gives an introduction about the dance drama and then sings the padyams, as composed by Tyagaraja, before the krithi. While the padyams are sung by her, the krithis are rendered by her troupe, called 'Bala Brindam'. She seems to have put in tremendous effort to train very young singers and make them sing these krithis. The group delivers the krithis beautifully and the krithis are sung as per tradition. She also sings a lovely gadyam, which is a part of 'Prahalada Bhakti Vijayam'. She sings it in Arabhi and it is a charming piece. The effort she had put in to give an outstanding tape of 'Prahlada Bhakti Vijayam' is very commendable.
I had heard only one concert of hers in the morning slot at Academy. It was a nice concert though I wouldn't call it a memorable one. She has also released a tape of Kamalambal Navavarna krithis, which is quite. I remember seeing one more tape of her troupe 'Bala Brindam' on Narayana Teerthar Tarangams.
There are ofcourse innumerable other ladies who have and who are contributing to Carnatic music. I hope those who know about their contribution will write about them. No praise is too high for these ladies who have kept the flag of Carnatic music flying high.
Another important thing is the number of rare krithis that many women (who are not musicians) know. When my classmate visited me with his family, I was pleasantly surprised to hear a rare Tyagaraja Divyanama sankeetam being sung by his wife. My colleague's wife rendered an outstanding 'Sree Bhargavi' of Dikshitar much to my surprise and awe !!! I have also heard some of my knowledgeable friends say that they have learnt some rare krithi from a housewife next door !!!
In this post I want to write about a few women musicians. Lot has been written about the great artists like MS, Pattammal, MLV, Brindamma etc. I had earlier posted about my interaction with Muktamma. I will write about some excellent musicians who may not have achieved the fame of those mention earlier.
Kalpagam Swaminathan: Affectionately known as Kalpagam mami, she is probably one of the best vainikas around. A set of friends and I were fortunate enough to host a concert of mami at Bangalore. It was great interacting her and those were moments to cherish. She was staying at my friend Kiran's house. I went to his house to pick up mami and take her to the venue. The concert was made up of krithis of Dikshitar. I still remember the excellent Kalyani that she played. According to many Kalyani is like an old lady. Many people get tired of it but when mami played, it was a different experience. I was sitting with my mouth open wondering how such a Kalyani, like a teen girl, like fresh dew on flowers, like the freshness of the morning mist was emanating from the veena. What a sight it was. An old lady, her hair fully white, was conjuring up a youthful Kalyani !!
Next day morning we met her at Kiran's house. The interaction was truly an humbling experience. Here was a great vainika, the acknowledged expert on Dikshitar krithi, asking us as to what we wanted to hear !!! And she played our request !! She was then speaking with us for some time and you can clearly make out that some of the best things of Indian culture is imbibed by these great people. Whatever fate has thrown at them they have taken it in their stride and even if things in the past had not been very pleasant, when the incident was narrated, there was no trace of bitterness. You can understand the sort of hard work that she had put in and the sort of sacrifice she had to make. As I said, it was truly a humbling experience. Hope we can make it to our old age with such a spirit.
I make it point to wish her every year at the music festival. She generally comes to attend the lecture demonstrations and I go and pay my respects. A excellent lady and an extraordinary musician.
The musicians I am going to mention below are people whom I have never met. I have heard them and have been impressed with the work that they have put in.
R. Vedavalli : She is a well known and a well respected musician, who was conferred the title of Sangeetha Kalanidhi. I first listened to her when I was in 11th or 12th standard (called Intermediate in Hyderabad). Early in the morning, before 8 am, we used to catch AIR Tiruchi on Medium Wave on our radio !! We used to get a lot more stations but it was Tiruchi I was interested in. They had a very nice program every morning at 7:30am, where one ragam was introduced by an expert and then a krithi in the ragam was sung by a leading vidwan. S.Ramanathan, Vedavalli and R Parthasarathy. The introduction by all three of them used to be very scholarly and we were lucky to hear them. Because the signal would start fading around 7:45, when a leading vidwan would start his alapana and then the krithi. I still remember Seshagopal sing a lovely Subhapathuvarali and 'Sree Satyanarayanam' amidst unbearable noise. It was then I knew that Vedavalli was a great musicologist.
I later had the chance to listen to some more lectures of her on AIR Chennai. She is a stickler to sampradaya and wants the krithis rendered in exactly the ragas conceived by the composers. It si from her lectures that I learnt that 'Sitamma Mayamma' was actually tuned in Lalitha and not Vasantha. Also the krithi 'Gnanamosagarada', popularly sung in Poorvi Kalyani is actually tuned in the ragam Shadvidamargini. In her lecture she sang the first line of this song in Shadvidamargini and showed how the raga supplemented the feelings of the lyric, which basically asks the Lord to bestow 'Gnana'. She said that the way the song was sung in Poorvi Kalyani almost terrorized the Lord in bestowing 'Gnana' !!!
She seems to have undertaken many projects. I saw a very interest program by her on TV where she was interviewing a nadaswaram player and asking him to play various types of 'Mallari'. I have also heard the 'Nauka Charitram' being produced by her for AIR. She has a released a couple of interesting tapes on how to sing Neravals and Kalpanaswarams.
I have heard a couple of her concerts and the one concert which I still remember is the one she gave for Nada Inbam a couple of seasons back. She sand a brief but superb Huseni. I have never heard such a short but so complete an Huseni. It was as if she has distilled all her experience to sing this alapana. S.Varadarajan too played very well that day and it was a very memorable concert.
Rama Ravi: I had never heard of her till I met Ravi and Sridhar. They gave me a tape of hers and asked me to listen to it. I was very impressed when I heard her and was very surprised that I had not heard her earlier. I was probably listening to carnatic music for more than 20 yrs before I heard for the first time. Needless to say, the loss was entirely mine.
It was Nada Inbam again, where I heard a lovely concert by this self effacing lady. She was singing quite well till she sang the 'main' piece of the concert. After this she started singing padams and javalis and that took the concert to a different plane. You can see the audience connecting so well with the chaste music that she was dishing out. The sabha secretary made the right comment when he said that people came to hear her sing padams and javalis. He forced her to sing the first few lines of the Nadanamakriya Padam, 'Payyeda'. There were lot of musicians sitting in the front row including artists like Sanjay Subramaniam and everyone was enjoying themselves.
She had been to Bangalore a couple of times and there was a very nice program in Ananya, where Rama Ravi sang padams and Kalanidhi Narayanan gave expression to the lyrics. What a combination of sangeetham and abhinayam it was. A truly different experience.
Seetha Rajan : Being ignorant of the carnatic music scene since I was based in Secunderabad for a long time, Seetha Rajan was a totally unknown name to me when I picked up a double volume of 'Prahlada Bhakti Vijayam'. I had been looking for Tyagaraja's 'Prahlada Bhakti Vijayam' for a long time and the moment I saw the tape I picked it up and it is something that I never regretted. Infact it was probably one of my best buys.
Seetha Rajan gives superb commentary about this 'geya natakam' of Tyagaraja. She opens with the verse on Tyagaraja by Valajapeta Venkatarama Bhagavatar, 'Vyaso Naigama Charchaya'. Then she gives an introduction about the dance drama and then sings the padyams, as composed by Tyagaraja, before the krithi. While the padyams are sung by her, the krithis are rendered by her troupe, called 'Bala Brindam'. She seems to have put in tremendous effort to train very young singers and make them sing these krithis. The group delivers the krithis beautifully and the krithis are sung as per tradition. She also sings a lovely gadyam, which is a part of 'Prahalada Bhakti Vijayam'. She sings it in Arabhi and it is a charming piece. The effort she had put in to give an outstanding tape of 'Prahlada Bhakti Vijayam' is very commendable.
I had heard only one concert of hers in the morning slot at Academy. It was a nice concert though I wouldn't call it a memorable one. She has also released a tape of Kamalambal Navavarna krithis, which is quite. I remember seeing one more tape of her troupe 'Bala Brindam' on Narayana Teerthar Tarangams.
There are ofcourse innumerable other ladies who have and who are contributing to Carnatic music. I hope those who know about their contribution will write about them. No praise is too high for these ladies who have kept the flag of Carnatic music flying high.
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Sharanya