Music And Movies

  We have heard MS sing the Tyagaraja and Dikshitar classics in this series's earlier part. In this part, we will look at MS singing Syama Sastry. Many Tyagaraja krithis are redolent with high poetry, while Dikshitar krithis are embedded with deep Sanskrit scholarship and sthala puranas. Syama Sastry's krithis, on the other hand, are simple and direct pleas to the Goddess. Syama Sastry rejects exalted language in favour of simple words. His krithis oftentimes have the feeling of prose rather than poetry. Despite the simple and sometimes simplistic lyrics, the combination of music and lyrics makes his krithis emotionally heavy, and only the best artists can do justice to his compositions. While he was known for his superb use of the chapu thala, what stands out is the merging of the thala with the bhakti bhava, which provides an unforgettable experience to the listener.  Even when he takes up a 'minor' raga like Ahiri or Paras, he fills them up with so much raga bhava an...

  When it comes to singing krithis, there are predominantly two schools of thought: one that believes that kriti is one more way of expressing your manodharma and another that believes that kriti structure is sacrosanct. The artist must not tamper with the structure.  The first school of thought encourages on-the-spur sangatis, and the artist can elongate a word, condense it or glide over it based on the 'mood of the day.' We generally hear, "You will never hear this artist sing the krithi the same way twice." T N Seshagopalan may be seen as a good example of this approach. The second school of thought believes that the structure of the kriti must be kept intact, and whenever the artist sings the krithi, the same set of sangatis are repeated the same number of times, and they don't encourage the artist to go their own path. They rather ask the artist to stick to a particular 'padantharam.' The Brinda-Mukta school, Semmangudi school and the Pattamal school ...

In this second article of this series, we once again look at a Khambhoji kriti of Tyagaraja. Tyagaraja visited Srirangam on his way to Madras and stayed at Srirangam for some time. During that time he composed five krithis on the Lord of Srirangam, collectively called the Sriranga Pancaratnam. The krithis are: O Ranga Sayee (Khambhoji), 'Vinarada Na Manavi' (Devagandhari), 'Chootamu Rare' (Aarabhi), 'Raju Vedale' (Todi) and 'Karunachoodavayya' (Saranga). The grandest of these is 'O Rangasayee' whose majesty towers as high as the gopuram of Rangan.  MS chooses a languid pace that enhances the majesty of the krithi. Observe the perfection of the sangatis in the pallavi. The sangatis are built so grandly, brick by brick, initially simple, slowly adding complexity before demanding great breath control to execute them. Observe the jaaru sangatis at 'raa raadha,' starting deep down and climbing smoothly like an eagle gliding up. The breath cont...

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 ...