A russet haired woman in her sixties seated next to me exclaimed, “What a crowd!” She sounded happy. It was 10 o’clock on a hot week-day

and the pandal of Parthasarathy Swami Sabha at Vidya Bharathi, Bheemasena Gardens, Mylapore, was packed to capacity. Youngsters, old men and women, and young musicians were still coming in and trying to find seats or take chairs from the stack and place them in the aisles.

After the Varali Pancharatnam the musician had launched into a leisurely Surati alapana. The woman next to me was enjoying the music, her face suffused with quiet joy. Towards the end of the concert she suggested that I stay and listen to the next concert too as the young singer was very good, with a great voice.

I found out that she lived in Villivakkam, nearly ten kilometers from Mylapore and travelled by bus to attend the concerts. “I don’t get to hear much Carnatic music at home. I love to attend concerts. I normally take a straight bus. Today I had to take two buses and walk some distance to get here on time.” I noticed that she was wearing an abdominal belt for back support. I learnt that her mother Pattammal had been a violinist and that she had also learnt music while young.

While I left after the concert, she was there waiting for the next one to begin.

The main song that morning was Dasarathi in Todi by Tyagaraja, where he extols Rama as the ‘rasika siromani’, who had spread the fame of Tyagaraja into distant lands. The morning had brought me the quiet, lingering joy of the music I had just heard and of my meeting a sahridaya, a rasikamani, no less.

I was reminded of an old woman, who, decades ago, sat next to me during one of the afternoon concerts at the Music Academy. Wrapped in a faded nine yards cotton madisar, she seemed to be snatching time between her household chores to listen to the promising youngster. Her hand kept perfect time with the talam. Towards the end she turned to me and said, “They said that he was good. But he is also enamoured of speed and showmanship. Needs to mature. Let us see,” and walked out with the exiting crowd and I lost sight of her.

During the season that just got over, there was this gentleman who sat through the afternoon concert of a young female singer. At the end he came up to the dais and congratulated her on giving the best concert he had heard during the season. He further introduced himself as a rasika from Washington DC, U.S.A. and hoped that the singer would perform there. Thanking

him for his appreciation, the singer must have forgotten his face. The next week when she was attending another young musician’s concert herself, the very knowledgeable gentleman seated in the row before her, turned and reminded her of where he had met her. It was the NRI. She was surprised when she found him again among the audience at her next concert a few days later.

Once upon a time it used to be said that if he won the approbation of the Tanjavur rasika, a musician could be assured that he had arrived. The Tanjavur Rasika mutated into the Mylapore Rasika, who became the touchstone of good classical music. Now the hardcore rasika bank is global, extending from Washington to Villivakkam and further east to Sydney and so forth. The season is for these hungry souls seeking out the best of Carnatic music and they go after it not just in the prestigious venues offering airconditioned comfort, cushioned seats and state of the art sound systems, but also in pandals with thatched roofs, hard plastic chairs and basic sound systems. They are not bothered about being seen at the concerts of the stars of today. Their eyes are scanning the horizon for promising talent regardless of who the guru is.

In this city – of thousands of concerts in December and concerts every day of the year – talent and classicism are recognised, cherished and acclaimed by the everyday rasika like R.K. Laxman’s uncommon common man. The awards, birudus, titles and purses follow much later.

Two vidwans and one ustadI had heard about him in the last couple of years. By some odd coincidence I never got to listen to him, always missing his concert by a day or two. Determined to make it this time, I heard him at the Parthasarathy Swami Sabha’s pandal on a hot morning. As the opening Varali Pancharatnam unfolded it was apparent that a very sage head sat on young shoulders. By the time the concert was over, I was overwhelmed as the inhabitants of Oliver Goldsmith’s Village Schoolmaster.

“And still they gaz’d and still the wonder grew, That one small head could carry all he knew.”

The packed hall sat in rapt attention till the final song, not a single member left the hall. The appreciation was palpable in the meditative tranquility and the periodic applause at the right places. A sense of fulfilment prevailed at the end of it and a quiet joy enveloped me. This, I realised, was what every rasika seeks through the music season, concert after concert.

The rain and flood of music Sujatha Vijayaraghavan

21 l SRUTI February 2016

22 l SRUTI February 2016

And I did something that I had not done in decades – attending in one seasonin one season two concerts of the same musician – Ramakrishnan Murthy. I looked for his next concert and attended it at Brahma Gana Sabha a couple of days later one afternoon. There was a lurking worry that I might be disappointed or worse, get surfeited. Neither happened. There was a repeat of the same joyous experience.

Ruminating on the two concerts to unravel the magic, I mentally put down some of the features that could account for the rare phenomenon. His gnanam stood at a high level of maturity, with no casual or clichéd phrase anywhere. Every note came with the weight and authority of what is normally referred to as “weighty classicism”. The pathantara of the kritis and songs was of sterling quality. His concert planning, while keeping an eye on the Ariyakudi format, yet struck out boldly with unexpected choices and juxtapositions. Above all, he made the Trinity compositions the core strength of his rich and varied selection for each concert.

Ramakrishnan Murthy’s voice showed traces of fatigue and some rough patches. But that did not affect the renditions in any manner. The voice glided

through the octaves with practised, surefooted ease, every note rounded and rich in overtones. He knew where to place a chaukakala kriti like Chetasree in Dwijavanti or Devi brova samayamide in Chintamani, which carried the listener into a trance. Speed and precision ruled where required and raga bhava was replete in the niraval and swara explorations. Was it bhakti that captivated the listener? Nay! Music, pure and sincere at its most potent manifestation enthralled the rasika. Totally devoid of airs, exhibitionism, self-projection, drama and mannerisms, its appeal lay in the grandeur of its deceptive simplicity.

The concert of Gurucharan at the Music Academy was another joyous experience in a

significantly different way. Many listeners came out wondering why such ease is elusive to some who belabour and agonise over achieving what they aspire to express through their music. Brilliant concert planning appears to be a legacy of the Sikkil family, if you remember the sumptuous and satisfying fare that the Sikkil Sisters served concert after concert. Mixing the familiar with the rare, the fast with the measured tempo, Gurucharan wove a many hued tapestry of ragas and lyrics. Endowed with a musically felicitous voice with natural modulation, he could soar, dive, somersault and hang in mid-air with breathtaking control. He revelled in the contours of the four-raga pallavi – a Ranjanimala creation of vidwan S. Kalyanaraman. “Relaxed and relaxing” was this concert experience.

It may be an anticlimax to talk of another young musician, who began well and proceeded to give a promising concert until he launched on that bugbear,

the acid test of Carnatic musicians – the Todi raga. Jolted out of their somnambulance, a section of the audience did not know what hit them and bolted out of the door as though the hall was on fire.

Maybe the mischievous imp in me wanted to get it out for comic relief.

Venkatesh Kumar, the Hindustani vocalist from Dharwar comes with no fanfare or fuss. There is no media hype or hysteria when he is in town. Walk in to his concert and there he is with his music, solid as a rock, awesome as a mountain. With practically no pause between the items, he presented ragas such as Sankara which might have been chosen to strike a chord in a south Indian music buff. It was apparent very soon that here is unpretentious, unostentatious, nevertheless uncompromisingly classical music. He brought memories of Voleti Venkateswarlu from whose unmoving presence great music poured forth in abundance and with abandon, the kind of music that none would dare to echo or attempt to emulate.

Venkatesh Kumar, on that late evening, gave off generously from his treasures that left the listener asking for more. Thankfully we can have more these days. Returning home I went to the Cyber Sabha of You Tube and went on listening to him till the wee hours of the morning. (The author is a writer, musician and dance scholar)

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Ramakrishnan Murthy

Gurucharan

Venkatesh Kumar