Srikanth Mangalam wrote:
>T. K. Rangachari was a disciple of Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer. He was a
>great musician in his own right, very adventurous. Unfortunately he died
>young.
T K Rangachari *never* learnt from Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer to the best
of my knowledge. He was almost a contemporary of Srinivasa Iyer.
(1912-1979)
Rangachari started his training under Namakkal Narasimha Iyengar.
Then he learnt under a relatively not-so-famous vidwan, whose name
escapes me at the moment. Then he was in the first batch of students
in the Sangita Bhushanam course at Annamalai university. Among his
teachers were illustrious musicians like Ponniah Pillai (a descendant
of the Tanjore Quartette) and Sabesa Iyer, both of whom, TKR used
to consider his gurus. He then taught at Annamalai university for
several years.
I don't think one can say that he died young since he lived for about 70
years. But it is true he was somewhat overshadowed by his contemporaries
like Mani Iyer and GNB.
Vairamangalam Lakshminarayanan is one of his prominent disciples. During
the later years of TKR's life, Lakshminarayanan used to sing with him
a lot - including things like neraval and swarams.
He was one of those musicians who was highly underestimated
>because of being in the shadows of some of the other musicians in his
>era. Reminds me of some one like S. Kalyanaraman or Manakkal Rangarajan.
>The most popular concert floating around is one with MSG and Raghu in
>which he has sung a very good Thodi and a fab. Vagadeeswari. In the
>Vagadeeswari alapanai he dwells into Harikamboji for almost ten minutes
>before presenting the rishabham, amazing stuff.
>
The question is, until the identity of the rishabham is revealed, how
can you conclude that it is Harikamboji???
Ramana
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