Semmangudi and Dikshitar Krithis
When Semmangudi passed away I had posted in Sangeetham detailing the rare krithis of Dikshitar sung by Semmangudi. Unfortunately Sangeetham bulletin board has closed down and I had this bad practice of not saving my own posts !! Here is an attempt to recreate that post. Semmangudi is well known as a person who was responsible for popularizing Swathi Tirunal krithis and rightly so. What I wanted to highlight was the fact that he had also sung many rare Dikshitar krithis. I don't know from whom or where he learnt these from but it is our good fortune that he sang these krithis. I can divide Dikshitar krithis into three. (In fact you can do that for most composers). The first are those krithis which are very popular and you get to hear them at many concerts. Examples are Vatapi Ganapathim, Hariharaputram, Siddi Vinayakam, Meenakshi Memudam Dehi, Akshaya Linga Vibo, Navagraha krithis etc. The second are those krithis sung by a particular school of singers and many serious concert goe...