Five Songs for the Week — 13
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ML Vasanthakumari, Nemmara Brothers (with Akkarai Sornalatha), Mohammad Hussain Saharang, TM Krishna
The theme for this edition of Five Songs is unfamiliarity. Much of the joy of listening to Carnatic music comes from the act of recognition. Listening to an alapana or a new composition and recognizing the raga. The epiphany of listening to a familiar phrase in a new context or a familiar song in a new style. The recognition of the familiar. In recent weeks and months I have been reminded of the other, more fundamental joy of music. Listening to music and responding to the sound, and enjoying those responses. The way we all began listening to the music we fell in love with. Here are five pieces that in different ways reminded me of this different, more natural way of listening to music.
One: Chalamela (Varnam) — Shankarabharanam — Swati Tirunal; Sanjay Subrahmanyam
This is a piece from an AIR broadcast of the Navaratri concerts in Tiruvananthapuram in 2024. The concert was a bit of an event in itself, as it was the first time in a long time that a full-length concert of Sanjay Subrahhmanyam’s has been freely available on YouTube! [Since then, he has made all of his ‘Sanjay Sabha’ concerts, recorded largely during the CoVID period and available to subscribers, freely available on his Youtube channel].
I was taken a little by surprise by the short alapana that preceded the varnam. Its dips into the lower octave, its multiple glides and ‘phrase’ — based approach to the alapana, which is fairly uncharacteristic for Shankarabharanam (which, as a ‘main’ raga, is usually given the classical alapana handling of moving through the lower end of the octave steadily up to the upper end) and in-between length (neither perfunctory nor elaborate) all added to its slightly enigmatic and fresh feel. The rendition of the varnam is itself superb.
I have to admit that I didn’t quite fully enjoy the rest of the concert. I was distracted by the strange vocalisation technique he seems to have incorporated over time, where he seems to be artificially constricting his windpipe to force the air out, making the note come out sort of in a strangulated burst. Clearly intentional, whether for aesthetic or other reasons, but I personally haven’t got my ear around it yet. Maybe it is a matter of getting used to.
The piece begins at the 00:00:00 mark.
Two: Vijayambike — Raga Vijayambike — Harikesanallur Muthiah Bhagavathar ; ML Vasanthakumari
I was playing this Navaratri curation of Devi krithis rendered by ML Vasanthakumari in my car, while on my way to work. This alapana began, and for the first few minutes, I was racking my brain to try and identify the raga. Given I was driving, I could not pause to look up the details. After a little while, I realized the futility of the exercise, while some snatches sounded vaguely familiar (perhaps Hemavati?), this was clearly a scale-based raga that I was not intimate with. And I am glad I saw the futility of the exercise, because now relaxed, I let myself simply listen and be enveloped by what I was listening to, and thoroughly enjoyed both the alapana and the rendition that follows. From the lyrics, it was clear that it was a composition of Harikesanallur Muthiah Bhagavatar. I had a suspicion that it was in a raga of his own creation, which indeed turned out to be the case.
The rendition begins at the 00:35:01 mark.
Three: Paritaapamu— Raga Manohari — Thyagaraja; Nemmara Brothers with Akkarai Sornalatha
The genesis of this post is largely down to a piece I heard as part of this concert by the Nemmara Brothers on the nadaswaram, with Akkarai Sornalatha on the violin. After the very familiar opening piece (varnam in the raga Nattakurinji), the second piece starts with a leisurely alapana of about eight minutes on the nadaswaram and a further six minutes or so on the violin. And it was the first time in a long time that I felt that feeling of landing at a new place — I had no idea at all where I was, even though elements of the landscape may have looked and felt familiar — the assortment of fauna and how they stretched outward rather than up, the unassuming right-angled concrete architecture, the moistness of the air, the roadside chatter, the two-wheelers zipping by. Quite like being brought up in Chennai and airdropped to any town in Southeast Asia, and feeling instinctively at home, but not knowing in which town or which country.
In other words, while some movements of the alapana sounded familiar, I had no clue as to what the raga, or the following composition was. Which forced me to relax and open my mind and my ears and listen to it for what it was, which was an outstanding piece of music. It is only much later, when paying close attention to the chat transcript that I discovered the name and raga of the composition.
The piece begins at the 00:26:10 mark:
(1) Madhuradhwani Nemmara Brothers-Nadaswaram — YouTube
Sornalatha adds immensely to the experience, the full but not strident tones of her violin providing a distinct substratum to the artistry of the nadaswarams. Her playing reminded me much of the bowing of L Subramaniam. Subramaniam is sometimes derided for producing technically correct but mechanical alapanas, especially in scale-based ragas. I remember an online assertion many moons ago, well before the advent of AI, that a computer could generate his alapanas. To some extent, this is a fair comment and extends to his style of varnam-playing as well, which over-indexes on precision speed play, often at the expense of the raga-ness of the raga. But I will never forget a CD of his that I came across in the Middlebury College library. Titled Three Ragas for Solo Violin, it consists of three unaccompanied solo alapanas of about 20–25 minutes each. The ragas were obscure scalar ragas that I have not heard of since, (Saraswatipriya, Vasantapriya, Sivapriya), perhaps conjured up by Subramaniam himself. But I remember the enveloping feeling of those alapanas, the tanpura and the beautiful sound of his violin coming together to fill the space in my head and like good dose WD-40 working its de-greasing magic, cleansing its crevices to set things right again.
The sound of Sornalatha’s violin reminded of that of that L Subramaniam.
Four: Mohammed Hussain ‘Sarahang’ — Raag Nand
I came across this artiste quite by chance, if I recall right, because of an ad touting a platform for “Classical music from South Asia”. Sarahang was a musician from Afghanistan and belonged to the Patiala gharana of khyal singing made famous by Bade Ghulam Ali Khan. There are quite a few similarities between the two — their voices, their style of singing, their moustaches and even corpulence. Apparently, he bested Bade Ghulam Ali Khan at a music competition in Kabul in 1949, aged 25! I thoroughly enjoyed this flowing, leisurely, and going by the noises picked up from the mics, informal mehfil type performance. He sounds like someone on top of their game, with nothing to prove to anyone. I could not pinpoint the raag, guessing that it was perhaps Bihag. It turned out (according to the uploader of this piece on YouTube) to be the raag Nand.
Five: Thande Neenu, Thayee Neenu— Raga Hamsadhwani — lyrics by Basavanna; TM Krishna
Kerala seems to bring out the best in TM Krishna, and I always look forward to recordings of his concerts held there. He looks and sounds at ease there, knowing that he is loved, and presumably open enough to take his experiments with composition curation and delivery as just that — experiments in search of authenticity. He therefore neither needs to straitjacket himself or prove a point, as he might in a more conservative locale (depending on whether he feels like playing by the rules or needling the audience), or overtly pander to the elite liberal fan crowds whose only exposure to Carnatic music is his, as he might do in Delhi or Bandra (though to be fair, I don’t think he is doing that all that much these days).
This whole concert is an example. It is unusual in some senses, but Carnatic in every way. And it came to a delightful end with this vachana of Basavanna. And this is exactly what I mean — we are so used to Hamsadhwani being featured as the first piece of a concert, usually a song on the propitious god Ganesha. But here it is the very last piece — and why not? It works so well! Like a cheerful palate cleansing sorbet at the end of a good meal, to take you home on a high! The simple lyrics and classic sentiment of the vachana (you are my father, you are my mother…addressed to Shiva as Kudalasangamadeva — the Lord of the Meeting Rivers) add to that feeling of uplift.
The whole concert is superlative, with superb violin accompaniment by Dr. R. Hemalatha and equally brilliant and apt mridangam support by Aswini Srinivasan.
The song begins at the 02:07:30 mark
