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PKM 100 curated by Baby Sreeram

Puducode Krishnamurthy (1923-1985) was a popular musician from Kerala and a direct disciple of Palghat Rama Bhagavatar. He joined the Chembai Memorial Music College, Palakkad, in 1958 as a professor of music and later transferred to Swati Tirunal College of Music, Tiruvananthapuram, in 1970. In 1976 he became the principal of Chembai Memorial Music College and retired in 1978. A vidwan par excellence, he had a large fan following. Blessed with a resonating voice, with authentic pathantaram of kritis of various vaggeyakaras, he was respected by the musicians and was a regular performer in the prestigious Navaratri Mandapam, where he popularised many kritis of Swati Tirunal. But the fact that he was a versatile composer too is not known to the public.

  1. Puducode Krishnamurthy has more than 200 compositions to his credit. The songs are on various deities like Devi, Guruvayoorappan, Ganapati, Vishnu, Hanuman, Narasimhar of Sholingar, Perumal, written in Malayalam, Tamil, Sanskrit and Manipravalam. He has composed songs on Arupadai Veedu and also on the navagrahas. There is a song on Dhanvantri of Nelluvaya temple and also on Tyagaraja.

Baby Sreeram is a senior musician, teacher, composer and disciple of Ananthalakshmi Venkatraman of Tiruvananthapuram, Sangita Kalanidhi T.M.Thyagarajan and P.S. Narayanaswamy. Baby Sreeram who got the handwritten book containing the songs from Ram Jayaram and Pallassana Narayanaswamy—relatives of the composer, has curated this project PKM 100 with the aim of popularising 100 compositions of Puducode Krishnamurthy within a year.

A couple of years ago, Baby Sreeram sang the kriti Vara Vaaranavadanam composed in praise of Ganesa in the raga Pantuvarali at the Madras Music Academy. A set of kritis titled Devi Pancharatnam, composed in the five ghana ragas following the format of Tyagaraja Pancharatna kritis, was a delectable treat by Baby Sreeram last year, sung by different musicians.

Puducode Krishnamurthy was an ardent Devi upasaka, and his compositions glimmer with lyrical beauty, bhakti bhava and laya richness. Like Syama Sastry, most of his songs seek the blessings of the Goddess. Krishnamurthy included several of his compositions—Sree Hare Janardhana in Revati, Kaniyumo in Sreeranjani, Arul puriya innum tamasama Narasimha in Kapi, Varuga varuga Saravanabhava in Jonpuri, in his concerts.

Little did we know that he had such a vast repertoire of compositions under his sleeve until Baby Sreeram started this project of PKM 100 through social media. The videos are posted on Facebook at 7 pm on every Sunday and also uploaded to her YouTube channel along with the lyrics. Baby Sreeram is also willing to share on request the notations with any musician willing to learn these compositions. During Navaratri, she uploaded a song a day on Facebook from Krishnamurthy’s Puducode Devi compositions.

Krishnamurthy had written all the songs in a notebook with only skeletal notations. Baby Sreeram took on the task of setting the multitude of sangatis and writing the full notation for the songs. The most appreciable feature of this project is that Baby Sreeram roped in talented musicians from various states and involved them in this project. She sent the notations to them, and they recorded the songs and sent the videos to Baby. The videos were uploaded on social media along with a brief introduction about the composer, song and the musicians. All the musicians have taken particular interest to be a part of the project; they internalised the songs and have sung following the notations given by Baby Sreeram. Technical and editorial support was provided by her son Bharat Narayanan and daughter Anagha.

The rasikas enjoyed a veritable treat presented by a plethora of musicians like K.N. Renganatha Sarma, K. Gayathri, Salem Gayathri Venkatesan, Aishwarya Sankar, Vasudha Ravi, Swathi Srikrishna, N.J. Nandini, H. Rathnaprabha, A.S. Murali, C.R. Vaidyanathan, K.S. Vishnudev, Venkatnagarajan, Vivek Muzhikulam, and not-so-often heard musicians like Jayamangala Krishnamoni from Bengaluru, Chandana Bala Kalyan from Mumbai, Balamurali

from Kottarakara (direct disciple of Puducode Krishnamurthy from Kalakshetra), Sharmila Jayakumar from Kerala and Mohana Sarma from Chennai. All the musicians sang very well with bhava and involvement which inspired several musicians and music lovers. One musician based in California—Geetha Venkat, listens to the song on social media every Sunday evening. On the following day, she would send her recording of the same song with utmost perfection. The aim of this project is to ensure that the compositions should get wider attention and enter the mainstream concert repertoire. This has been already achieved. Vidwans A.S. Murali, K.N. Renganatha Sarma, K.S. Vishnudev and Vivek Muzhikulam have rendered the compositions of Puducode Krishnamurthy in their concerts in Guruvayoor and other places.

Uma Parvathy, daughter of Puducode Krishnamurthy, presently settled in Chennai became emotional after watching the episodes of PKM 100 and congratulated Baby Sreeram for her mission. She recorded in her video message, “Appa was a highly divine person. The songs came to him spontaneously. He never wanted to record the songs or commercialise them. Often he wrote songs for specific persons. My mother-in-law was a great devotee of Narasimhar. One day while Appa was casually chatting with her, he wrote the kriti on Sholingar Narasimhar. All the musicians involved will receive the blessings of Appa and reach a higher status in their career and life.”

C. RAMAKRISHNAN

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