[email protected] () wrote: >M. V. Ramana ([email protected]) wrote: >... >[SVK's article deleted] >----- >While I agree with most of what SVK has said (on this occasion!), esp >the bits about long MOrAs, accelerating kAlapramANA etc., let me point >out the other side of the story. >If Kalpana Sangitha has taken a back seat today in an average concert >it is only but natural that the main artiste seeks the percussionist's >help in keeping a concert "alive". The percussionist is hardly to be >blamed. Let me put it this way. If SVK says all percussionists should >learn from Palghat Mani Iyer/Palani Subramania Pillai, it wont take long >for the percussionists to point the vocalists to GNB/MMI.On a related note, I would like to point out the rather dramatic increase in the use of long kOrvais/tIrmAnams in swaraprastAra by vocalists and (melodic) instrumentalists in recent years. This seems to have become a necessity in order to get any sort of positive response from the audience. This practice of putting too much emphasis on kaNakkus and so on only seems to egg on the percussionists to come up with even longer kOrvais and other displays of their virtuosity. I don't think you could accuse of GNB or M. Mani Iyer of ever doing that.
A different point I would like to point out is that in many of the older concerts that I have heard, there were two tani Avartanams - one after the main kriti and one after the RTP. With the decreasing number of RTP's sung, especially in Madras/India, and the reduced time allotted to a typical concert, there is less of a chance for a percussionist to show off his wares. This may be one other reason for lengthier tani's.
Ramana
Cl: Arts
Mridangam accompaniment techniques in carnatic music concerts have gone through a sea change since the days of Palghat Mani Iyer. Sitting through a concert today a die hard listener may wonder whether the pattern set up by Palghat Mani Iyer is ever followed. In the past 15 years, robustness has taken the place of responsive percussive support to the vocalist, the hallmark of Palghat Mani Iyer's contribution to the role of laya in a concert.
In tracing the changes that have come about in mridangam accompaniment in general, we have to keep in mind how over the years the vocalist has lost his primacy. After the disappearance of the tallest veterans, the successor to their place failed to preserve the dominance of the vocal tradition. In the few years immediately after the departure of great vidwans, the violinists gained importance with preference being given by them for solo programmes than in the role of accompanists. If reputed violinists sat as accompanists, the vocalists felt subservient to their eminence and tailored their recital even the selection of songs and their order too to their dictates. Without much reliance on their own vidwat, reputation was sought to be built up by riding piggy back on the violinists, mainly.
That was just an intermediary stage and later the vocalists shifted their attention to the mridangist. It is as a result of this shift in dependance that we find today the tyranny of swaraprastharas packed with nothing but computerised calculations. Looking into a book for sahitya is familiar in today's carnatic music concert scene. Now, we have paper placed before them by some artistes in which is noted the starting place for swara kanakkus like third akshara from the little finger or the fifth akshara after the first dritham. Like the electronic tambura in front, the day is not far off when an electronic metre before the vocalist shows where to begin his korvai for a six or eight avartana kanakku!
That much for the accommodative spirit of the vocalist to the percussion artiste. How do the mridangists respond? Having strayed away from the healthy and wholesome sampradaya of a Palghat Mani Iyer or a Palani Subramanya Pillai, the more noisy and boisterous the beats, the more startling the laya support to the vidwan. To tickle the mridangist to reel off more of his fireworks, the vidwan hastens the Kalapramana of a Kirtana, adds fast-paced sangatis to Kirtanas according to his whims and fancies, lets loose a deluge of Kanakku swaras and the vocal- mridangam ensemble rules the concert.
Can there be a greater recognition of the prominence that a vocalist gives to a mridangist in a concert than what is seen p73 today? So after the close of every song the tirmanam is on a mini scale thani, taking five to six avartana rounds and the vocalist at the end in gratitude conveys his appreciation through a grin. The regular thani avartanam extends to 15 or 20 minutes of high decibel, continuous beat production with no niceties of lekkas, gumkis, half and full chapus and spells of thick and thin in percussive sound effect.
The remembrance day of Palghat Mani Iyer got up by the Guru Smaranam organisation is welcome if it can induce introspection among our present day percussionists. The Palghat Mani Iyer's specific pattern for Kirtanas, for Pancharatnas of Tyagaraja, for ragam, tanam, pallavi and more than all his beauteous brevity of the tani, are values that have disappeared from the concert platform today. The way he fixed the Kalapramana for the Kirtanas as the vocalist began a song, the uncanny instinct as to where to throw about his weight to make the vocalist rendering sparkling and his economy in rhythmic embellishments to songs and savva laghu swaras were a tradition he set up even as Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar regularised the cutcheri pantha. When thinking of Palghat Mani Iyer's genius, listeners cannot but link his greatness to that of Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar. Their concerts have become legends in the history of the exposition of carnatic music. They were made for each other. One hopes that Palghat Mani Iyer is remembered not on the Remembrance Day alone, but mridangists would see to it that the image of the mridangam maestro was too is brought on the dais in every concert in the present scheme of Carnatic music performances.
Following the function K. V. Narayanaswamy gave a concert, which began rather briskly with the songs ``Gurulekha'' (Gowrimanohari) ``Sogasuga Mridanga Talamu'' (Sriranjani) ``Ninne Nera Nammi'' (Pantuvarali). The Kirtanas were sung in plain, matter-of-fact way. Obviously the selection of songs had something to do with Guru Smaranam of Palghat Mani Iyer. Next cause ``Mauasa Guruguba'' (Anandabhairavi) and from this item the pace of the performance started sliding in tempo. The Sankarabharanam raga alapana and the Kirtana ``Akshaya Linga Vibho'' actually crawled. There was very little of colour and variety in the slovenly rendering. It was not such as to enthuse V. V. Subramaniam on the violin, who normally responds with vitality. His Sankarabharanam version was more articulate and the shortness of the alapana made it enchanting. T. R. Rajamani, the son of Palghat Mani Iyer handled the mridangam aided by the other percussionists Hari Shankar (kanjira) and Ravichandran (ghatam). To make some amends K. V. Narayanaswamy sang Todi with the kirtana ``Karthigeya''.
The broad spectrum of fingering virtuosity expressed through speed passages in the violin duet of M. A. Sundareswaran and M. Krishnaswamy laid bare where their interest in music lies. It is not as if they are incapable of serious, sensitive music as was evidence by the alapana of Mukkari by Sundareswaran followed by the song ``Enatanive''. There was melodic modulation which p73 transformed the alapana sancharas and the kirtana into glowing expressions of mellowness. But, this idealistic approach was lacking in the other items Mahaganapathim (Nattai), Anupamagunaambudlu (Atana) Janaki Ramana (Suddha Seemanathini) where their penchant for the Parur style fingering and bowing expertise got the better of their melodic sensitivity. There was immense exhibition of competence but very little of composure except in the Mee Kuari suite. The Kirtans was overloaded with swara bursts. In the accompaniment of Mannargudi Easwaran (mridangam) and Vaikom Gopalakrishnan (ghatam) there was full- stream breathtaking percussive proliferation. The penchant of the two violinists for spectacular display on the strings was undisguisedly exploited by Mannargudi Easwaran.
S.V.K.
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