An evening on Padams and Javalis popularised by T Brinda

[eesha]

Gaanapriya Foundation & Brhaddhvani

Cordially invite you all to attend

An evening of Padams and Javalis popularised by T Brinda

Delivered by
Smt. Geetha Raja

On

Saturday November 27th 2010, 6:00 PM
At Mahalaksmi Hall, 11, Park View Road, off Kamaraj Salai, R.A Puram, Chennai
(opp Sangeetha Restaurant on C P Ramaswamy Road)

ALL ARE WELCOME

[mankuthimma]

It was a wonderful evening.
If she had continued singing for another 24 hours I would not have moved an inch.

One of the top Ten concerts I have attended in three decades in Chennai .
Full marks to yessel and his team .
And the best tribute that came forth this evening , could have been my thoughts !!!
When Umayalpuram Mali was given a hint that the last song was coming up , so that he could play his Thani , he only muttered :
My ears are full of sweetness . I do not wish to upset this equillibrium with a Thani .I will skip it .
.
Two hours of blissful singing left me comforted , that a precious heritage is in safe hands . My mind is full of questions , wondering about the secrets behind the majesty and beauty , of this form of singing . But for tonight I will not exercise my brain . I will try and collect my thoughts tomorrow .
Absolutely rivetting stuff .

[eesha]

cooljii/mankuthimma,

This is like getting brahma rishi from Vasishta !

We , organisers , are honoured and pleased to hear such a positive feedback

Gaanapriya will be doing more such special programmes, with the support of rasikas like you

- Sridharan

[narayan]

Looking forward to an account of the evening, in addition to mt's reaction (which I can empathise with, from my experiences on a couple of earlier occasions of such music).

[mankuthimma]

I was lost in work when Divyanand reminded me of the concert in the evening . I was so engrossed that I had to ask if it indeed was the 27th .
And then I started a dash from a corner of Ambattur to RA Puram . Not finding a place to park my car , I wondered if it was worth the risk to park in the main road . As things turned out , the concert was worth much more.The volunteer at the gate asked me to leave my new footwear at the door ( another risk that I had to take ) . The door opened , quite inconveniently into a spot where I was standing between a packed podium and eager rasikas , and so I sank to me knees , bang in front of the artist and made myself comfortable .
Veena Pusthaka was being embarked upon .
The pitch was a delightful low one , and so the Mridangam strokes of Umayalpuram Mali were in my joyous zone . ( I cant bear the music at higher pitches where the Mridangam sound like tapping on a table )

On the stage were the artist and her 6 disciples , who could have just walked out of a Kalaksetra dance performace . Or a Kalakeshetra boutique which had its theme for the day as " light pastel shade '
As it turned out , the music in store had more to offer and erase all these distractions.
.
Coming into the concert , I was armed with a few specfic impressions .
TRS , explaining at length , on a lazy afternoon , how, and why , he and other musicians would flock to Brinda Mukthas concerts .
What we heard there in one concert , we could employ in ten concerts - he had said on that day .

Another friend of mine , at the other end of the spectrum would often label it as the Old and feeble musician's Music

Since I depend on a lot of others perceptions to make my own way through this maze , tried shutting out all those voices .

There is not much I can write about the list of songs sung . all the famous ones were there - There were two which were new to me - in Bilahari and Sauratstra .. Enthati kuluke looked a bit different from the way Voleti sang it , but equally sweet.

Six voices !!! But still did not look like choral music . The sum total looked like two singers singing . With one of them sporadically shifting the pitch to give a neat contrast .

And Yes I was looking for those secrets , wasn't I ?
My mind raced to an evening when I drove my Bajaj Chetak with Tanjore Sankara Iyer on the pillion for a concert of his at one such residence in the early 80s .The audience was such a small group of all famous musicians of the day that I did not dare to join them in the post concert dinner . That day was a similar kind of music . If it was the pace of singing that hit you first , there would be another realisation growing slowly .
The singer would manage to ensure that absolutely no focus is on the singer himself
Every single gram of attention would be sucked by the music on display - The mridangam playing softly , yet intricately . The violin just filling in the gaps .
It was an ego less concert . Nothing about the singer himself could be fathomed .
It was the same here , yesterday. Song after song , the raga danced in front of us . Talk of sangthis ? I could discern a raga in the utterance of a single word or two word combinations .
No wonder Love has been used as the fulcrum for all these stuff .
Has'nt one felt the power of a beautiful glance , while in Love ?
And that counterpart...the Krithi... Did God ever descend to save , console , teach ... over a glance ? That segment of Music needs wild ( By the padam standards ) wailing , rolling over , beseeching , complaining .. And sometimes a stunned acceptance of an awesone sight .

Mukhari , Huseni , Kalyani , Atana ( another beauty there ) Kamas ( that quaint raga ) all danced in front of us for two hours .
Somewhere in the sound stream I could a discern a male voice , and I kept looking for the disciple singing at a different pitch.
Only at the end I learned that It was my neighbour humming throughout - a grandson of the Vidushi .
It was that kind of experience - absolutely seamless music . With a mystery at its heart , yet very very elegant and chaste.

Back in my car , I rang up Keerthi to tell him that I felt like driving down to Dharmapuri
Now I know Why it is so calm and serene in the eye of a thunderstorm.
The concert concluded with karuna jooda of Syama Sastri. In such a setting even this krithi had a different flavour.
Such was the delicate nature of the vibrations around.
Thanks, Yessel , Sridharan , Ragjay , Divyanand and the rest of the team at Ganapriya .
It was an absolutley tasteful experience. Sincerely hope that this concert recording reaches a wider audience through internet.

[narayan]

Thanks. This is what it is all about.

[cienu]

That was lovely Thimma. Made me feel I was there.

[rajeshnat]

Writer Sujatha talks about Screenplay where he says in a simple sentence "screenplay is not about story but telling the gaps between story touch points so that it is really keeping all of us engrossed" . You have written a great review, it just flows and flows . I am just wondering now as to what had happened to 's footwear :^)

[vgovindan]

:footwear

pOnAl pOgaTTum pODA

[eesha]

It was an absolutley tasteful experience. Sincerely hope that this concert recording reaches a wider audience through internet.

Sure , that is the intention. This will be made available through sangeethapriya within a week.

[Sreeni Rajarao]

Eagerly looking forward to listen to the recording - Thanks!
Mankuthimma, that was very well written - Thanks!

[PUNARVASU]

Mankuthimma, you transported us there! A great review of a great concert!
Thank u! Waiting for the upload of the concert.

[bilahari]

Thimma, thank you for that lovely account, and of course, a big thanks to the dedicated organisers!

[rshankar]

Kji - I was sure the evening would be melody personified from the announcement, but, after your report, I can't wait to hear the recording. Thanks to the organizers, Gaanapriya and Bhrahaddhvani.

[mankuthimma]

I hope that Divyanand will put up a few minutes of video that I saw him capturing , to make the experience richer.

[Nick H]

Well, I obviously wasn't there, but after reading Mankuthimma's amazing posts, I certainly wish I had been!

[mahavishnu]

wonderful review, thimma-ji. Sounds like an amazing concert.
Can't wait to hear the recording.

[mankuthimma]

One of the beautiful things she said during the course was that it was fascinating ( to her ) that the art of padam and javali singing would be within reach of a singer - performer only after a lot of maturity had been reached .
But Yet at the same time , when it came to the listener , it would be the first thing to strike him . Not necessarily after he reaches a mature level in understanding .
In my case it was true . As a young tot , I had fallen for Voleti's Enthathi kuluke - in fact it is still a gateway for my understanding of Kalyani ..
She explained this in the context of her belief in not tinkering with what had been achieved by the Dhanammal family , in terms of keeping it crisp and short.And not treat it with neravals etc.

[rajeshnat]

Review of the concert in The Hindu
http://www.hindu.com/fr/2010/12/03/stor ... 910200.htm

[eesha]

The audio recording is now available:

Album ID 00-L0022 under "Concerts Catalog" section of http://sangeethapriya.org

[KSJaishankar]

Review of the concert in The Hindu
http://www.hindu.com/fr/2010/12/03/stor ... 910200.htm

Sadly, one of the most pathetic reviews I have read. Changes context from padams to javalis within a paragraph without taking the reader along. Talks about extra long spaces in the lyrics (a characteristic of Padams) and says Khamas has 10 of them (Javalis!) in the following sentence, without providing a change of context. Also, since when did we start calling Khamas a Rakthi raga? I thought it was a definition Desya raga, borrowed from the hindustani tradition? Somewhere in the middle, you have a statement "Sringara rasa dominates" hanging by itself in splendid isolation, with no punctuation at all. Was this intended to be a sub-heading?

One possible explanation that I can think of for the "quality" of the review - it was mercilessly chopped up by a particularly musically illiterate editorial pen to suit the compulsions of space. I cannot imagine a reviewer being this bad.

[MaheshS]

Hmm I was under the impression that *any* raga can become a rakthi raga. Khamas may be a Desya a raga, but it can also be a rakthi raga IMO.

And, I think the "Sringara rasa dominates" line was a sub-heading that wasn't highlighted in bold like they do usually.

[arunk]

I could be wrong but I also do not think deSya ragas *cannot* be rakthi (it was dEsi vs. mArga but that is a very old classification which applied to grama music and we do not know how exactly that correlates to the music of the last 600 years).

I am not even sure a proper definition of "rakthi" is given in the texts. It of course is usually associated with old/ripe gamaka-laden ragas - where contextual gamakas are abound etc. (so merely knowing which swaras and order wont help form the picture).

But IMO, if a raga's gamakas enhance "bhava/feeling" to accentuate the associated rasa, then the raga is rakthi. And thus any raga has this potential but it takes time for that potential to come out via people practicing and shaping it.

Arun

[bilahari]

I have always wondered if there was a technical definition for rakthi ragas, or any specific classification offered in earlier texts. It seems not? I would certainly like to think that ragas like khamAs and dwijAvanti that migrated southwards are rakthi ragas!

[KSJaishankar]

But IMO, if a raga's gamakas enhance "bhava/feeling" to accentuate the associated rasa, then the raga is rakthi. And thus any raga has this potential but it takes time for that potential to come out via people practicing and shaping it.

I completely agree. In that sense, even Dharmavathi and Neethimathi can be considered Rakthi, in the hands of a maestro.

[mankuthimma]

in the hands of a maestro.

That is the Key .
Ajoy Chakraborthy once gave a concert ( and its released commercially ) where he sang Khayal in Bhairavi andd Kafi and Thumris , In Malkauns , Bhopali , Yaman . The sleeve notes had details on how time, and plain mimicking of past practices , put ragas in pigeonholes .

[KSJaishankar]

...plain mimicking of past practices , put ragas in pigeonholes .

Touche! Any evolution means a departure from the current norm, however little. With people holding onto rigid views on what constitutes "correct" music, it does require an artiste to be somewhat of a maverick to grow the art!