Ragamalika in Carnatic Music - A followup

The ragamalika in carnatic music post that I wrote had quite a few people talking to me and giving their feedback. The feedback was good so I thought I will follow up my own post with some more details.

My good friend of mine told me that the article did not feature Dikshitar Ashtotra shata raaga taala malika. It features 108 raagas. I had known about this mammoth composition of Dikshitar but I have never heard it. So I did not put it in the article. He also mentioned about the Dasavathara Ragamalika of Swathi Tirunal, 'kamalajasya'. He mentioned that M D Ramanathan has sung this. I have heard this only once and that is why this did not occur to me when composing my post.

Another good friend Shaila had replied to me asking me on why the ragamalikas of Purandaradasa were not mentioned. She mentioned krithis like 'devaki nandana', 'rama rama' etc. Honestly my knowledge on Purandaradasa's compositions is weak. From what I gather, many of Purandaradasa compositions have been set to music by later day musicians. I am not sure which ragamalikas have become 'standard' now. In the sense that most of the singers sing the same ragas. Like say, Bharathiyar's 'chinnan chiru kiliye'. If any of you know about more Purandaradasa krithis in ragamalika, kindly let me know or post your comments here.

My classmate Krithika mailed me saying that I missed the 'Ranjani' ragamalika. Aaah. That was indeed a bad miss, I would say. This is the famous ragamalika which starts as 'ranjani mrudu pankaja locani' where ragas with names which are a variation of 'Ranjani' appear. Ranjani, Sriranjani, Janaranjani, Megaranjani are the ragas that appear in this composition. This was composed by Tanjavur Shankar Iyer and has been sung by many artists and is quite popular in the concert platform.

My former roommate, Siva, had called up to say that he was not too happy with the blog post since it did not give him any insights. I should thank him for two things. One for his frank feedback and one for thinking I can provide some insights!!! Anyway, his question was about how ragas for a ragamalika are chosen. I am no composer and I can only guess. So what follows as my answer to him should be taken with a bit of salt that it deserves.

Here is my take on how ragas are chosen for a ragamalika. Let us first take the case of tuning for long slokas. In olden days the major criteria for choosing ragas for slokas seem to be that all the ragas should have a 'mangalakaram' ring to them. In the sense, the ragas must sound 'auspicious'. So ragas which sounded bright and happy were chosen and ragas which sounded sad were avoided. Ragas like Aarabhi, Mohanam, Dhanyasi, Atana, Kedaragowla, Suruti, Madhywamavathi, Sree were favorites. You can find these ragas being sung often for slokas by tranditionalists like D K Pattammal. Of couse, times change and nowadays people don't think twice before using ragas like Sivaranjani, Revathi, Subhapanthuvarali etc which have some sort sadness associated with them. In earlier days, the choice generally fell on strong Carnatic oriented ragas like Begada, Bilahari, Yadhukulakambhoji, Sahana etc. Again tastes keep changing and nowadays Hindustani oriented ragas like Behag, Yamunakalyani, Sindhubhairavi, Hamir Kalyani, Maand are being preferred. "When ragamalika itself is to showcase variety, why restrict it?" seems to be the current thinking.

One obvious way to tune a ragamalika would be to choose ragas which portray the emotion inherent in the words. Of course, if you are the 'vaggeyakara', it is easy for you since you compose both the words and the music. In case you are tuning for a pre existing work, you can still tune as per what the words say. Examples of such tuning are the 'chinnan chiru kilye' song wherein I had mentioned about the choice of a raga portraying sadness when the 'un kannil neer vazhindal' appears. Similarly, Mayamalavagowla, in a sad avatar, comes in the 'penmadi paedhamayal' part of 'malai pozhudhinile' song. There are some challenges though when you tune for pre existing work. A single para can convey multiple emotions. So which emotion do you tune for? One of my friends pointed to the 'vitatadanda' paragraph of 'Bhavayami Raghuramam' to highlight this dilemma. The choice of Mohanam works for most of the paragraph but doesn't jell with 'athi gora surpanaka' part. So the concerned composer has to make a choice of the emotion to raga mapping based on what he / she wants to highlight in that paragraph.

But what do you do when you have tune for some sloka which has no emotion?!!! I mean, there are so many slokas which just keep praising the lord (or lordess) or listing out the multiple names of the said lord. How do you tune for these? One way is what I had said earlier of choosing 'mangalakara' ragams. The next way is to choose ragas which are the preferred ones of the composer / singer. For example, in most of the ragamalikas tuned for MS, you can definitely find a Nadanamakriya or Punnagavarali appearing. MS had preference for those ragas. Another way of tuning is to latch on to one word in the sloka which denotes a raga and tune in that raga. So you will find some verses tuned to Kalyani or Mohanam or Bhairavi since that word appears in the verse. An example of this is the tuning of 'Sharadabhujangam' as sung by Vijay Siva. The first two verses don't have any word you can latch on to but the later verses give you such an hold. So you have raga to word mapping of 'Sree', 'Keeravani', 'Latangi' and 'Sama'. While this is a nice way of tuning, I sometimes feel this compromises the overall integrity of the song. Let me take the 'Sharada Bujangam' tuning as sung by Vijay Siva. When ragas like Sree, Keeravani, Latangi come one after another, energy is built up by the choice of the raga as well as how they are tuned. Once Sama enters, the whole energy level dips. 'Sama' is not a raga which is energetic. It is infact a raga of 'shantham'. So I personally find a huge dip in the energy of the song when the transition from Latangi to Sama happens. If another raga was chosen which could have maintained or upped the energy of Latangi, the overall integrity of the song could have been higher. It can be argued that being a ragamalika the composer probably wanted to use ragas which portray different emotions. So it all boils down to your aesthectics in the end.

Edit: A followup to the followup. Here is what a good friend of mine has to say, "That rAgamAlikA (108 of which 61 rAgas are available) is by Ramaswami Dikshitar. SSP shows 14 rAgamAlikas composed by the three -- MD, Ramaswami DIkshitar and Subbarama Dikshitar. Veerabhadriah guru of Ramaswami Dikshitar is believed to have composed the first rAgamAlikA varNam. You are right that many of them are available from books (SSP) rather than aurally.

Apart from navarAgamALikA valaci vacci there is a varNam intakOpamElarA, composed by Kalahasti Vemkataswami Raju, played by Smt. Kalpakam Swaminathan and some contemporary artistes inc Shashank. It features the ghana and dvitIya ghana pancakas. nATTa, gauLa, .... s'rI, nArayanagauLa, rItigauLa, bauLi, kEdAram etc,. Among the many contemporary varNams available in rAgamAlikA, Sri Lalgudi's navarasa varNam is one that also comes to mind. Prof Sambamurthy has composed one called dinarAgamAlikA notated in his book. It has bilahari, dhanyasi, madhyamavati, kalyani, purvikalyani, kedaragaula, mohanam, bhupalam. Looking at the ragas and the name dina, I guess he used the ragas as per time of day order."