Rasika Ranjani Sabha Mylapore celebrated Purandaradasa Jayanti honouring the works of the 15^th century saint poet-composer, considered as the “Pitamaha” of Carnatic music, on the 29 January 2025. R R Sabha has a tradition of celebrating only the Jayanti-s of various Vaggeyakaras and musicians of the yesteryears. On this occasion, the sabha also honoured veteran musician, composer and teacher Prof. B. Ramamurthy Rao with the title “Kala Sagara Ratna”.

Nonagenarian Prof. Rao is the son of vidwan Krishnamurthy Rao, who was his first guru. He originally hails from Udupi, and was a disciple of Bhimsen Joshi. After moving to Chennai in the 1960’s, he learnt Carnatic music from the likes of Palghat K.V. Narayanaswamy and Prof. S Ramanathan. He has been instrumental in tuning and propagating the compositions of Purandaradasa, and is currently the repository of 40,000 Dasa compositions. All the Dasa compositions presented on this evening were tuned by Prof. Rao himself.

The evening began with a recital of Dasa compositions by a group of young and singers, who trained under Prof. Rao. The singers, Divya Yanmantra, Snigdha Desiraju, E Tejaswini, Shri Sisters, Aparajitha Aruna Giridhar and Arya V Nagarajan, presented the compositions with much care given to the correct diction of the sahitya. Some of the songs presented included Vandisuvu dadiyali” in Nata, Palisamma Muddu Sharade in Bhimplas, Siva darushana in Kedar (Hamir Kalyani in Carnatic system), Guruvina gulaama in Yaman Kalyan. This was followed by a short, mellifluous concert by Shruthi Bhatt. Smarane onde salade in Mohanam, Daya maado Ranga in Reetigaula, Dooru maaduvarene in Khamas and Narayananu emba in Bageshri were the songs chosen. Shruthi, having the added advantage of singing in her mother tongue, brought out the bhava and power of the words of Purandaradasa admirably. She explained the meaning of each song in English before presenting, adding to the audience involvement.

The concert was followed by the felicitation ceremony of Prof. Rao. The citation presented was read out by Aruna Prabha Ranganathan, Vice President, Rasika Ranjani Sabha. Srinivasan K Swamy, Director, Rasika Ranjani Sabha Foundation, and Sudha Srinivasan, Director, VimRa Infra Pvt. Ltd., presented the award of “Kala Sagara Ratna” on Prof. Rao. The Chief Guest for the evening, Deepa Ganesh, Artistic Director, Upasana, UK, who has also learnt music under Prof. Rao, spoke eloquently about the art and artistic contributions of Prof. Rao.

The final programme of the evening was a rendition of a few more select Dasa compositions by senior musicians Rajeswari Sankar and Radha Parthasarathy, along with Kavitha Rao, daughter and disciple of Prof. Rao. The compositions chosen were Sharanu Siddhi Vinayaka in Nata, Kodubega divyamati in Vasanta, Ninna nodi dhanyanaadeno in Desh and finally Enu dhanyalo Lakumi in Madhyamavati. Violin and mridangam accompaniment for all the programmes was presented by Srilakshmi Bhatt and Ajeet Sridhar respectively.  

By

V Navaneet Krishnan