Semmangudi and Song Structure
July 25th was the 111th birth anniversary of Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer. On this occasion I had written a thread on Twitter on him. I am expanding it here and saving for future reference. One of the aspect of his music that I love is the way he structures a krithi. There are many ways to sing a krithi. Semmangudi believes in structuring the krithi in such a way that it is highlights the development of a raga. By structure, I mean his selection of sangatis, how many times you repeat a line, how you phrase the words, the pauses, everything. This gives it an order. And once this order is established, it is repeatable. The important thing is just not just the selection of sangatis but in which order they are sung. The idea is to slowly reveal the range of the raga. Each sangati must very naturally flow into the next one. This is how the edifice of the raga is built using the krithi. Once this structure for a particular krithi is established, this becomes what is commonly called as a &