T M Krishna and the Sangeetha Kalanidhi award

 A week back,  the Madras Music Academy announced that the 2024 Sangeetha Kalanidhi award was being conferred on T M Krishna. I was happy for him. There is no question that his musical talent and vidwat more than deserves this. I remember thinking that if he could have just spent the past many years singing instead of making various ridiculous pronouncements, he might have won it earlier. And that was that. I did not think about it till Wednesday the 20th when Ranjani Gayathri announced that they would not be participating in this year's conference and their reasons for doing so.

Before I go any further, I need to set a certain context. I am totally apolitical. I have zero interest in the shenanigans of various politicians either in India or worldwide. I am not a social justice warrior. Irrespective of whether it sounds callous or uncaring, I do not jump up to defend the disenfranchised or the underprivileged. I do not subscribe to most of the current woke ideologies and since I do not want to waste my time arguing about these things, I keep quiet and go my own way.

After a lifetime in the corporate world, I want to be left alone in my urban cave. Where I do my various Isha practices, practice my music, practice my konnakol, deep dive into Dikshithar krithis, and  Sanskrit and Hindu dharma so as to understand the various references, visit his favourite sthalas and blog about them. 

However, I was forced to emerge from my cave this last week, when something this momentous that is central to my being was happening in the world.

I have been this huge fan of TMK's music. There are things that he sings that can move me to tears. I have heard many concerts repeatedly and know every nuance that he will bring out. Given that, I ignored most of his other statements. Maybe I was blind. Or I was naive. However, the quality of his music eclipsed everything else for me. I wished that he would just shut up and sing. But I forgave him. I told himself that maybe he was just bored and needed to amuse himself by singing with transgenders or in a fishing village somewhere. And again, before I am accused of being a transphobe, I have nothing against transgenders. But the quality of that music was abysmal.

I have also always believed that one should separate the art from the artist. This gave rise to a hugely vituperative discussion some time back when the popular opinion was that one cannot assist an artist in monetising his art when it is being used to propagate a criminal unjust agenda. I was asked where I would draw my line. I had said then that I did not know . But I would inform that person when that line was imminent for me.

I have spent that last 72 plus hours reading and watching everything I can on this issue. I am no expert. This is research in progress. Starting with TMK's full length 2015 essay in Caravan, which many believe is one of his first salvos. A very cunning piece of writing which belittles her in many ways under the guise of an informed article. I believe this is the main source for the anti MS propaganda that  artists refer to. The politics of Tamil Nadu and the anti Brahmin movement starting with Periyar's pronouncements. Now this is a vast subject. I need to read Periyar's directives for myself. What I have is various people's comments on his statements and views.

And again here, my whole life, I have believed that I am not religious. I am a Hindu. I am a Brahmin. But it was just something that was always so. Like the colour of my skin. Or the shape of my eyes. Nothing to be proud about. Nothing to be ashamed about. I believed, and continue to believe , that all that matters is a person's thoughts, words and deeds in this world. I have never known or tried to know the caste or community of co workers or employees or friends. I do not celebrate festivals except when I feel like it and visit a temple only when it is a Dikshithar sthala or a visiting relative wants to visit Sidhi Vinayak. I was your typical laissez faire Hindu willing to allow and include all manners of views on a variety of issues. To each his own as I phrased it. Or as Shakespeare said " To thy ownself be true. And it shall follow as the night the day. Thou canst not then be false to any man".

But today this has forced me to rethink who I am. And accept that the way I have defined myself is based on who I was in a different time under different circumstances. And my "remembered history" is no more valid in defining my current experienced experience. I need time for that.

But getting back to TMK. He has once more done me a huge favour. For forcing me to examine my core beliefs and values.

The simple fact is that Carnatic music has Bhakthi as a core component. The Trinity , as well as various other vaggeyakaras did not sit down to compose for fame or fortune. Their compositions were an outpouring of their love and adoration of the Divine. Many of them were mystics. The sahithya and the music poured out as one wonderful homogenous entity. They did not bother to even write it down. Their shishyas did so that it would not be lost to posterity. They did not care about caste or community or politics. Many would not compose on any king except their ishta devta even when they were in deep penury. That was the extent of their vairagya and their devotion to a higher cause.

Those are some of the songs we sing today. How do you exclude bhakthi from such a piece. Even if you do not feel the same fervour in your heart( understandable), how do you say bhakthi has no place here? 

And what is this Brahminical hegemony that is being referred to? Some of the greatest musicians whether Veena Dhannamal and her progeny or Purandaradasa or Yesudas are not Brahmins. Nobody gives a damn. Nobody whether it be a Dalit or a tribal is prevented from learning Carnatic music and performing.

And why is TMK accepting an award from the Academy when he has distanced himself from performing in the Chennai season? And why does his award citation refer to him using music for social reform while the reply by Mr Murali to Ranjani Gayathri says that he has been selected only for his musical abilities and not his political views?

And is there any merit in Dr Gautam Desiraju who calls him an useful idiot and implies that the Music Academy might have been arm twisted into giving him this award for political reasons. And goes on to his inclusion in various associations that have anti national interests. Honestly I do not know.

But yes, too many loose ends. Too many unanswered questions. 

ChatGPT in CM

 So a few days back, I sat down to explore if I could create krithis in carnatic music. In Tamil and Telugu and Sanskrit. Just for fun. I was bored and there was nothing interesting on any of the OTT channels.

My prompts were for a Tamil composition( with a pallavi, anupallavi and charanam) in praise of Lord Muruga. Additional prompts were provided in the iterations to refer to his valour, his compassion and his consorts Valli and Deivanayaki and use the Ramadasan mudra( attempt to create in the style of Papanasam Sivan). I stopped after a couple of revisions . But the output is given below.

This is truly horrific at so many levels. The first thing that bothers me is the superficial mimicking of something truly profound. I am not getting into the content of the krithi at this point which is garbage since one could improve that with some more tweaks. But the basic source code. All of our krithis have been the outpourings from a deep wellspring of devotion . All of the alliteration, the prasa , the references to events in mythology happened on their own without any particular planning or manipulation. Most practitioners would believe that singing Dikshithar's navavarnas is akin to doing Srividhya puja of the Devi. All of them are deeply emotional . They evolved out of an altered state and a singer can still experience that magic when listening or singing some of these. 

I stopped after maybe a few revisions because I could feel my skin crawling. You know those horror movies where a mad scientist creates this perfect looking baby in a laboratory with an advanced IQ. But totally devoid of everything that makes it human: empathy, compassion, simple kindness. And that very lack goes on to unleashing a truly evil being on the world. Something like that.

But there is more. We have today the ability to generate videos both from text and also for alteration. We can create audios or videos of a fake composition sung in the style of a music legend by anybody. In fact many years back Kavita Krishnamoorthy has spoken about how all that is needed for playback singers today is attitude. Both pitch alignment and tempo are being corrected in the studio. 

So there will be a time when there will be a fake AI generated composition in a AI generated video in the style of some old time master  previewing on Youtube and garnering hundreds of likes and comments😢😡😠😟

Margazhi in Chennai

 It has been more than a week since I have been back from Chennai and I have been meaning to do a detailed review of the fifteen plus concerts I attended. But getting very lazy in my old age.

Beginning with the excellent Vignesh Ishwar concert at Arkay today. When I was there, heard  a lot of buzz about his super crowded Brahma Gana Sabha concert early in the season. But could not catch any of his concerts. Did so today. Thanks to Arkay's live feeds

While I will not bore my few readers with detailed song lists...let me make special mention of the Begada( Shankari Neeve) and the Varali( Maamava Meenakshi).. lovely voice, lovely bhava, lovely swaras, lovely everything..what can I say..specially liked the sort of seamless move from neraval to swaram and back in Varali. And a young violinist called Sivateja Mallajosyula, who I had never heard before. Fully matched Vignesh in his bhava. And in fact, Vignesh himself acknowledged Sivateja at the end. Apparently the great Kanyakumari's student.

Will now do a detailed review of all my concerts. Watch this space.

Rama Varma, MDR and Gowlipantu

 I heard a lecdem By Rama Varma at the Music Academy recently. Not surprisingly on MDR. Easily the very first love of his life. I have to admit that I am not really a MDR fan. And not for lack of trying. Almost twenty years back RV tried to get me enthused about MDR's music. And I tried. But it did not take. I went back and in my brutally honest way informed him that he just sounded drunk. Since I have always felt that there is nothing more hypocritical than pretending to love something in any art form unless it is real for you. What can I say? MDR, like the greatest single malts, is an acquired taste. Though I absolutely loved all the MDR compositions we learnt from him like Gajavadana( Hamsadhwani), Sagarashayana, Manasa( Bowli)  and of course Hariyum Haranum.

But something happened this last week when I listened to Tera tIyaga rAda. Of course, there is this incredibly sonorous baritone which is quite distinctive. But there was something else. It was as if his singing was timeless and not in the way the word is normally used. It was outside of time. He bent time to accommodate his concept of the composition. And as I heard it again and again over the past few days I realised my mind was getting quieter and maybe my breathing was becoming slower. And that brings us to the receptivity of the listener. Ultimately every performance is a one-to-one dialogue between two individuals. What a listener will get depends totally on his mind set, his receptivity, his world view at any point in time. And I sat and thought " I have read and heard so much about banis and the music of a Dhannamal and a Ramnad Krishnan or even a MMI?" So what is it? What is the characteristic of this? What draws aficionados to  MDR? And somehow, the answer that kept coming back to me was that firstly he seemed to encapsulate a total conviction in his world view on what music was. And what was this world view? As I see it firstly everything is there in the composition. There is no need for any extraneous gimmicks, ornamentation etc. There can be incredible beauty in the deceptively simple rendering of a phrase. There is no hurry. Nowhere to go, nothing to get. The singing of a composition is a simple dialogue between you and the composer or the Divine. That is all it has to be. Nothing more. Nothing less. And if one does that authentically for one composition once in your lifetime that is enough. But that is what I got. But I know I have to listen to way more MDR. Also never knew about his Navagraha chittaswarams , which I need to now track down.

But ofcourse this lecdem also raised a query in my mind? What was this prati madhyamam doing here? Wasn't this a janya of 15? So what was going on? And of course I went to Ramya Narsimhan, my go-to on anything musical. And I learnt about many Madhyamas. Ofcourse I knew about sudha madhyama and prati madhyama and the varali madhyama which is almost panchamam. I will eventually upload her demoing the various madhyamams . But to quote her. There are actually four madhyamams: the sudha madhyamam, the tivra sudha madhyamam, the prati madhyamam and the Chyuta Panchama( or Varali) madhyamam in that order. Apparently there is no sudha madhyamam in Gowlipantu. It uses only the tivra sudha and the prati madhyamam. Thyagaraja has used both the tivra sudha and the prati whereas Dikshithar has used only the tivra sudha. Of course that makes me wonder why it is classified under 15 and not 51( Kamavardhini)?

Shri Subrahmanyo Maam Rakshathu

 Easily one of his masterpieces, Thodi, Adi( 2 kalai). Composed sometime in the last 15 years or so of his life. 

We all know the relationship between Lord Subramanya and Dikshithar. It was Chidambaranatha Yogi who had early on told him that Subramanya was his natural guru. Leading to his early visit to Tiruttani, the composition of his very first krithi, Shri Nathaadi in Mayamalavagoula and his second Manasa Guruguha in Ananda Bhairavi and the full set of eight Guru Guha Vibhakthi krithis.  The other six comprising this set are Shri Guruna (paadi), Guruguhaaya( Saama), Guruguhadanyam( Balahamsa), Guruguhasya( Purvi), Guruguha Swamini( Bhanumati) and Shri Guruguha( Udayaravichandrika). As also to his vaggeyakara mudra.

The shore temple of Tiruchendur is one of the biggest for Lord Subramanya and is one of the six main sthalas for this deity( Padai Veedu) and the second abode. The others being Thiruparikundram, Thiruttani, Palani, Swamimalai and Pazhamudircholai. It is believed that Adi Shankara composed his Subramanya Bhujangam here. This 2000 plus years old temple with a tower of over 140 feet is the only Murugan temple on a shore, the others all being in forests or mountainous areas. The anupallavi refers to patra vibhoothi which is a prasadam at Trichendur. 

It  also refers to the destroying of Taraka. That is another great story. Taraka was an asura and he wanted to fight the Gods. He did severe penance and Brahma appeared before him asking him what he wanted. He said make me immortal. Brahma said I cannot do that but you can set a very high bar for your demise. So he asked that he should only be killed by a child of Shivas who was seven years old. At that time after the demise of Shakthi, Shiva was in deep meditation in the Himalayas and Taraka was very confident that Shiva would not marry again or produce a child.

So he was granted that boon and started terrorising the Devas. But already Parvathy had been born and was doing deep tapas to marry Shiva. Now the Gods had to get Shiva to notice Parvathy. And in came Manmatha who was burnt by Shiva and it was these six sparks of fire( netragni) from Shiva's Third eye  which were ultimately deposited in the Ganges because the earth, the mountains etc could not withstand that heat.  And it was those vital elements from Shiva which went into the formation of Kartikeya who killed Taraka when he was seven years old. 

In the charanam there is reference to Shankabhishekadyupachaarah.. Honoured with Shankabhisheka( ie abhisheka with the Shanka or conch). It also references the Shadakshara mantra, which is what Dikshithar was repeating at Tiruttani when he had the vision on the 40th day which offered him the sugarcandy. It also references the nava veera nanda ( nine heroes) surrounding him. This is also referenced in his Kasiramakriya krithi. The nava veeras are the nine sons of Navashakthis and brothers of Subramanya. They are Veera Bahu, Veera Kesari, Veera Soora, Veera Mahendra, Veera Maheshwara, Veera Purandhara, Veera Marthanda, Veeranthaka and Veera Dheera. They assist him in battle

Loking at the musicality and the sahithya, we will see that it is filled with swaraksharas and prasa. Offhand, the anupallavi Bha( p), sa ma( ma), na( n) springs to mind. Both the anupallavi and the charanam are full of antim akshara prasa. In the anupallavi we have devaseno, bodhano, subhacharano and nipuno. In the charanam we have bhaskara, sobhakarah, sivakarah, hata dhira, shadakshara, mandarah, upacharah, divyambarah, guruguhah..the list is endless

Going into individual words

Shri Subramanyo Maam Rakshathu is straight forward.. Shri Subramanya protect me.

Shanmukhavatara Shakthiroopa Shanmukha( Shad + mukha) the six faced who is a manifestation of power

Bhasamana ( Radiant) Valli Devasenao. One who is radiant with Valli and Devasena

Bharatishadi( Bharatisha + adi i.e Brahma and others) Tatva( self)  bodhino. He who expounds about the Self to Brahma and others

Vasavadi ( Vasava is Indra, Vasavadi is Indra and others) Vandita ( adoring) Shubha( sacred) Charano( feet). Whose sacred feet are worshipped by Indra and others

Patra Vibhoothi pradana( gives) nipuno( famous for). Now this patra or leaf is that of the Paneer tree which is believed to have curative properties in Ayurveda, especially in curing diabetes. There are innumerable stories of the power of Trichendur's patra Vibhoothi and their curative properties, including Sage Vishwamitra and Adi Shankara himself.

Shata( Hundred) Kothi( Crores) Bhaskara( Sun) Shobhakarah. He who shines with the effulgence of a hundred crore suns.

Shishta(Good) Shiti(Peacock) Kantha( neck) atmaja( son, born of).. He who is born of the Blue necked one( or Shiva) Shivakarah( auspicious)

Pratapa( Courageous Brave etc) Tarakaadi( Taraka and others) Hata( killed) Dheera( Wise).. the wise , and hero who killed Taraka and others

Prabala( bala is strength , prabala extreme strength) Ganesh anuja( comes after or younger brother) i.e Ganesh's younger brother. Now Shadakshara is the six akshara mantra( Sa ra va na bha va).. know by this 

Shata +ayush( 100 years of life) prada( can give) Bhaktha Mandara.. Gives long life to his devotees.

 Shanka + abhisheka + upacharah worshipped with abhishekam through a conch.

Kshitish( Lords of the earth or Kings) poojitha( worshipped by) Divya + ambarah( sacred attire). Surrounded by the Nava veera Nanda and revered by Guruguha

Let us look at Dikshithar's krithis in Thodi. He has composed eight . Dakshayani Abhayambike, Kamalambike( Navavarna Dhyana krithi), Mahaganapathim Vande, Palayamam Brihadeeshwari, Ramachandraya Namasthe, Shri Krishnam Bhaja, Shri Subramanyo, and Vedaranyeshwara. I have intentionally left out the varnam Rupama Joochi because some accounts say it was composed by Dikshithar for Kamalam's( his disciple) arangetram and the Tanjore quartet became his disciples after attending this arangetram. Other accounts say that this was composed by the Tanjore quartet. Personally I find it a bit strange because there is absolutely no other varnam by Dikshithar. One will also immediately remember the other Thodi krithi on Subramanya, Kartikeya Gaangeya ( by Papanasam Sivan). Also in 2 kalai Adi. Also both start in similar ways at the Gandharam, move up to the Panchamam and come to a prolonged rest at the Shadjam at the arudi point.

Let us look at the krithis on Subramanya. These would be Balasubramanyam( Surutti ) which is sung before the Navavarnas, Dandayuthapaanim( Anandabhairavi), Kumaraswaminam( Asaveri),  Shri Subramanyaya ( Khambhoji), Shri Swaminathaya( Kamas), Senapate Palayamam( Kasiramakriya), Shadanane( Kamas),Subramanyam( Shankarabharanam), Subramanyena( Sudha Dhanyasi), Swaminatha( nata), Swaminathena( Brindavani), Saravanabhava( revagupti), Shri Balasubramanya( Bilahari) in addition to this one. So a total of 14. In addition, we have the eight composed at Tirutani and comprise the Guru Vibhakthi Krithis giving rise to a grand total of 22 on this deity.

Samukhana nilva

 I first wrote about this almost a year back. I had just heard TKG in a Musiri Chamber concert and been blown away. Surprisingly I am not able to find that same recording today. But I heard another version of TKG's Samukhana.  There is something about this composition in TKG's voice which reduces me to tears. It is as if in a few minutes he shows me an alternate reality of Carnatic music. Shorn of everything unnecessary, and reduced to what it must have been in the Trinity's lifetimes.. just an outcome of their adoration of the Divine. Just think. Today's singers all have great voices, great breath control, great stage presence, incredible range, everything.. and still TKG the sheer emotion in this is beyond words.

Kalavati

 Have just finished learning Kalavati Kamalasana yuvathi. And have a lot of queries in my head.

Of course, I am talking about the vivadi Kalavati( in the Dikshithar sampradaya) and not the Chakravaham janya in which Thyagaraja has composed.

First, what should be the exact arohana and avarohana? I am not able to find any other songs or too much info.

One reliable site lists it as SR3G3M1 PD1N1S SN1D1P MG3R3S

TKG is listing it as janya of 31, which is fine. But then he is referring to the Dhaivatam and Nishadam as D2 and N2 which does not even make it vivadi. And I am hearing the vivaadi swaroopa of this raga clearly in every version.. so far heard Ramprasad, Soumya and TMK. Also, is it a sampoorna raga? When TMK is teaching, I am clearly hearing a PD,,S,,...a clear avoidance of Nishadam in ascent.. though there are a number of PDND phases, which is understandable. TKG's notations also clearly eschew the PDNS phrase.. so any kind souls out there who happen to stumble on this post, can please enlighten in the comments section