Tavil maestro Valayapatti AR. Subramaniam - MANNA SRINIVASAN
Tavil maestro Valayapatti AR. Subramaniam has become a legend in his own lifetime with his introduction of new dimensions to the art of percussion, scoring several firsts as a performing artist and bringing laurels to the traditional temple drum. His accomplishments include the performance of more than 3000 concerts with violin virtuoso Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan, and a solo tavil record brought out by HMV. His awards and honours include the title of Isai Perarignar from the Tamil Isai Sangam in 1990; the Rajaratnam memorial award from Muthamizh Peravai in 1998; the central Sangeet Natak Akademi award in 1989; the Puttu Rao memorial Palghat Mani Iyer award from the Academy of Music, Bangalore in 1995; and his appointment as Asthana Vidwan of the Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham in 2002. The latest milestone of his life has been the conferment of the award of Sangita Kalanidhi by the Music Academy in 2009.
Sruti’s roving editor Manna Srinivasan had a freewheeling conversation with Sangita Kalanidhi designate Valayapatti. The following account highlights his accomplishments, his views on matters vital to the art form and his ideas on how to promote it.
His beginnings were humble. His father, Arumugam Pillai, a nagaswara vidwan with a good understanding of sahitya, lived in a village near Pudukottai. A stickler for discipline, he made his son learn talam for a year before initiating him into the nagaswaram. Subramaniam was fascinated by the artistry displayed by some tavil players accompanying his father or visiting the village for concert engagements. In this context, he specially mentions the names of Iluppur Nallakumar, Perichikovil Arumugam Pillai, Poorthukovil Muthiah Pillai, and Kudumiyanmalai Shanmukham Pillai, Thirumayam Ramiah.
Lalitha Ram in his book Isaiyulaga Ilavarasar GNB bemoans the fact that G.N. Balasubramaniam (GNB) was often sarcastically referred to as the ‘Graduate in Music’. This, the author feels, is unfair since two other musicians, senior to GNB, namely, Tiger K. Varadachariar and Musiri Subramania Iyer too had been graduates with B.A. degrees and wonders why GNB alone should have been targeted. However we do see that, even if the music world was not conscious of it, GNB, despite his truly artistic
approach to music, seems to have applied a great deal of academic thinking to the musical practices prevailing in Carnatic music then. This, in turn, is reflected in his musical presentations. The same cannot be said of either Varadachariar or Musiri Subramania Iyer. Musiri was, at best, overenthusiastic about preserving the sahitya formation and avoiding pada chheda, which has been an obsession with most performing artists to this day. And this trait cannot be attributed to their being literate or non-literate. This article attempts to focus the intellectual approach of GNB visible in the performance of manodharma aspect of music. One area regarded as the speciality of GNB is raga alapana and the other is that of kalpana swara-s, especially with regard to the selection of eduppu and the device called ‘poruttam’.
Raga alapana
The period 1920-30 is generally referred to as one marking the revival of music. Before that Harikatha appears to have been a popular form of entertainment. Music concerts were dominated by the ragam-tanam-pallavi. The pallavi itself does not seem to have had a very honourable ancestry. Although, in principle, devoted to a high form of art music, it seems to have been used by patrons to stage musical contests for their entertainment, as we learn from anecdotes about Bobbili Kesavayya and Syama Sastry and others. The form seems to have degraded to one dominated by rhythmic complexities subordinating the importance of melody. A similar development is seen to have taken place in the Hindustani arena where dhrupad performances had descended to one-upmanship between the singer and the pakhawaj player.
My interview with GNB
(Or was it the other way round?)
- V.S. SUNDARA RAJAN
I met GNB in 1945 to try to interview him for the annual number of the Tamil monthly Navashakti.
I was thrilled to meet GNB, whose music I adored. When I went to meet him, he was teaching a few students in the main hall of his house in Nadu Street, and asked me to wait in the next room. He came in after a few minutes.
"So you have come to interview me? But you don’t look like a journalist. You look more like a student – what are you?"
"Yes sir. I am a student in Loyola College, doing my B.A. Honours. I work part time for Navashakti."
"B.A. Honours? What are your subjects?”"
"Economics and politics."
"Do you know I’m a B.A. Honours graduate myself?"
"Yes sir. In Literature."
"How do you know that?"
"Sri A.K. Ramachandra Iyer told me a lot about you during a wedding reception at which you sang."
Vijay Kichlu
"I am a rasika first, then a musician" -
MEENA BANERJEE
The Bhuwalka Award, one of the highest cultural awards of eastern India, was bestowed on Pandit Vijay Kichlu recently. On the occasion, Saurabh, the Academy of Performing Arts, organised a majestic musical evening at Uttam Mancha, with Ustad Rashid Khan’s vocal recital as its grand finale. The who’s who of Kolkata’s music world and West Bengal Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi, were on stage during the award ceremony.
Usually this award is given to performing artists, but Kichlu, under whose care two generations of vocalists led by Ajoy Chakrabarty, Rashid Khan and young Kaushiki Desikan, Arshad Ali Khan and a host of others emerged with incredible virtuosity, is respected as the force behind the successful revival of the age-old oral tradition rather than as a performer. He is a musician-maker by choice though he is equally adept at alluring his listeners with the old world charm of the Agra gharana. This was proved once again by his thrilling recital under the aegis of Sangeet Piyasi recently.
Was it an astute masterstroke on the part of the Music Academy? An attempt to broadbase the demography of Carnatic music practitioners? Delayed recognition that Carnatic music was essentially temple music before it acquired temporal colours over the last century? A genuine case of honouring an icon? These were some of the varied responses to the awarding of the Sangita Kalanidhi honour to senior tavil vidwan Valayapatti AR. Subramaniam, though no one doubted the merit of the decision.
Whatever the motivations behind the decision – following last year’s award to A.K.C. Natarajan – tavil vidwan Valayapatti Subramaniam was a picture of confidence besides displaying considerable wisdom at every stage of the festival. Proud of his tradition, he has been properly respectful of the many past masters of the great art of Carnatic music, of which his art played but a minor role on the proscenium stage until he and his ilk introduced innovative programmes. The affection with which the Sangita Kalanidhi recalled memories of his association with several peers and seniors indicated the solidarity in the music fraternity regardless of caste or community that must have existed in days past.
Three people in the music fraternity I always thought of with warmth passed away recently.
My first impression of Ramnad Raghavan, brother of the late Ramnad Krishnan and a respectable mridanga vidwan in his own right, was that he was very unlike a formidable musician or the brother of one. The music was formidable, not the musician! There were absolutely no airs about him, and he put the people around him at ease. I first met him at Cleveland in 2002, in the company of the late T. Muktha of Brinda-Muktha fame. Their age-old friendship was evident in the camaraderie they shared. I had the privilege of providing vocal support to Mukthamma at her Cleveland concert that year. Just as we were ascending the stage, Raghavan sir whispered a request to me to ask her to sing Dikshitar’s beautiful navavarana mangala kriti, Sreekamalambike in Sree raga. As a close friend and connoisseur of that family, he knew exactly what to ask of her. Muktha, immediately obliged and presented this lovely masterpiece in her concert, much to his delight.
Padma Varadan, my ‘manaseeka guru’- K.G. VIJAYAKRISHNAN
My earliest vision of musical perfection was the image of Padma Varadan’s (Pappa Akka as I used to call her when I was a child) slender fingers gliding effortlessly over the black and bronze fretting of the veena to produce seamless musical phrases of exquisite brilliance. That vision has been an enduring one, responsible for making me an Ekalavya of her musicianship and accepting her as my ‘manaseeka guru’, much to the amusement/irritation/disapproval of my real guru-s. While my mother and my foremost guru, Karpagavalli Gopalakrishnan, accepted my preference with good grace, my mother’s guru and Padma Akka’s father, the late Ranga Ramanuja Ayyangar, who tutored me on and off over the years, was not amused when I often questioned his authority in favour of his daughter’s. For me, Padma Varadan was the ultimate arbiter, at least in my impressionable childhood and teen years.
Apart from her music which had enthralled me, I was fascinated by how Padma Akka held her ground against her father, the stern, uncompromising Ranga Ramanuja Ayyangar, for whom the one and only truth was his own guru, the legendary Veena Dhanam’s music. That she dared to gild the lily, create her own style distinct from that of Veena Dhanam whose music, preserved in a small set of 78 rpm records, should have been our sole Bible, troubled him quite a bit. He would never discuss Padma Akka’s playing with any of us saying in a dismissive way, “She does keep strumming the instrument”. Underlying the rough, dismissive tone, of course, was lurking an admiration for Padma’s musicianship, which he would never openly admit.
Indira Menon passed away peacefully in the early hours of the morning of 27th November 2009.
I got to know her around 1999 when I read her first book, The Madras Quartet. While its principal focus was on the lives of T. Brinda, M.S. Subbulakshmi, D.K. Pattammal and M.L. Vasanthakumari, its exhaustive section on the careers of women in Carnatic music in the early years of the 20th century was fascinating. We then met when Indira came down from Delhi on a short visit. She autographed my copy of her book on 7th November 2001.
Indira came from a family of achievers. Her maternal grandfather Sir K. Ramunni Menon, a zoologist, served as Vice-Chancellor of the Madras University. Her father V.R.K. Menon was an ICS officer, sister Narayani Gupta a respected historian, and nephew Ramu Damodaran of the Indian Foreign Service, was also a familiar face as a newscaster and in Doordarshan. Indira was an achiever too. She contracted polio in 1947.
sruti.com
Tavil maestro Valayapatti AR. Subramaniam has become a legend in his own lifetime with his introduction of new dimensions to the art of percussion, scoring several firsts as a performing artist and bringing laurels to the traditional temple drum. His accomplishments include the performance of more than 3000 concerts with violin virtuoso Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan, and a solo tavil record brought out by HMV. His awards and honours include the title of Isai Perarignar from the Tamil Isai Sangam in 1990; the Rajaratnam memorial award from Muthamizh Peravai in 1998; the central Sangeet Natak Akademi award in 1989; the Puttu Rao memorial Palghat Mani Iyer award from the Academy of Music, Bangalore in 1995; and his appointment as Asthana Vidwan of the Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham in 2002. The latest milestone of his life has been the conferment of the award of Sangita Kalanidhi by the Music Academy in 2009.
Lalitha Ram in his book Isaiyulaga Ilavarasar GNB bemoans the fact that G.N. Balasubramaniam (GNB) was often sarcastically referred to as the ‘Graduate in Music’. This, the author feels, is unfair since two other musicians, senior to GNB, namely, Tiger K. Varadachariar and Musiri Subramania Iyer too had been graduates with B.A. degrees and wonders why GNB alone should have been targeted. However we do see that, even if the music world was not conscious of it, GNB, despite his truly artistic
approach to music, seems to have applied a great deal of academic thinking to the musical practices prevailing in Carnatic music then. This, in turn, is reflected in his musical presentations. The same cannot be said of either Varadachariar or Musiri Subramania Iyer. Musiri was, at best, overenthusiastic about preserving the sahitya formation and avoiding pada chheda, which has been an obsession with most performing artists to this day. And this trait cannot be attributed to their being literate or non-literate. This article attempts to focus the intellectual approach of GNB visible in the performance of manodharma aspect of music. One area regarded as the speciality of GNB is raga alapana and the other is that of kalpana swara-s, especially with regard to the selection of eduppu and the device called ‘poruttam’.
The Bhuwalka Award, one of the highest cultural awards of eastern India, was bestowed on Pandit Vijay Kichlu recently. On the occasion, Saurabh, the Academy of Performing Arts, organised a majestic musical evening at Uttam Mancha, with Ustad Rashid Khan’s vocal recital as its grand finale. The who’s who of Kolkata’s music world and West Bengal Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi, were on stage during the award ceremony.
Three people in the music fraternity I always thought of with warmth passed away recently.
My earliest vision of musical perfection was the image of Padma Varadan’s (Pappa Akka as I used to call her when I was a child) slender fingers gliding effortlessly over the black and bronze fretting of the veena to produce seamless musical phrases of exquisite brilliance. That vision has been an enduring one, responsible for making me an Ekalavya of her musicianship and accepting her as my ‘manaseeka guru’, much to the amusement/irritation/disapproval of my real guru-s. While my mother and my foremost guru, Karpagavalli Gopalakrishnan, accepted my preference with good grace, my mother’s guru and Padma Akka’s father, the late Ranga Ramanuja Ayyangar, who tutored me on and off over the years, was not amused when I often questioned his authority in favour of his daughter’s. For me, Padma Varadan was the ultimate arbiter, at least in my impressionable childhood and teen years.
Indira Menon passed away peacefully in the early hours of the morning of 27th November 2009.