Abheri ragam

vijay · Post by **vijay** » 12 Jul 2008, 19:19

Sanjay's latest post presents his take on the Abheri muddle...

http://sanjaysub.blogspot.com/

vgvindan · Post by **vgvindan** » 12 Jul 2008, 22:53

Notwithstanding the fact that 'great' musicians indulged in changing the rAgas of Thyagaraja Kritis, just for the sake of cheap popularity and to show their vidvat, there are musicians singing the Kriti 'Nagumomu' in the same Abheri Raga with due reverence to the Bhava and purport of the Kriti. One such rendering is that of Srivatsan Menon which I am right now listening at Worldspace. I am awed by the diction and diligence of the artist in rendering the kriti in the right spirit. In fact, all other kritis have been rendered by the Artist with such a bhAva which is rarely seen.

Thyagaraja chose Ragas corresponding to the mood - rasa and bhAva. Someone had raised a point as to why 'SObhillu sapta svara' is in JaganmOhini rAga (which does not have all the swaras) as against a rAga which has all the seven svaras. Given the trend of musicians changing the rAgas I would not be surprised if the rAga of this kriti is changed to one such rAga also.

arunk · Post by **arunk** » 26 Mar 2009, 07:10

I have a blog post that summarizes much of the info about AbhEri (w.r.t nagumOmu ganalEni and vINAbhEri) in this thread and other threads:

http://sunson.wordpress.com/2009/03/25/ ... conundrum/

Comments and feedback are appreciated.

Arun

arunk · Post by **arunk** » 28 Mar 2009, 03:17

So nobody has any comments? I would at least like to know if the information presented is not flawed.

Thanks
Arun

uday_shankar · Post by **uday_shankar** » 28 Mar 2009, 14:41

Arun, good article but I am not very well "tuned" into this controversy. I can enjoy abheri with either dhaivata and don't have any strong feelings about it.

arunk · Post by **arunk** » 28 Mar 2009, 18:30

Thanks Uday. I too can enjoy it both ways - in fact like the D2 version much better

! Now this could be pre-conditioning but then I generally like kharaharapriya's janya a lot and so even without conditioning I would have preferred the D2 version. Although if there was no D2 version, I guess I would have liked the D1 version as much as say I now like the naTabhairavi janyas - means "has charm in a limited way compared to my more favorite ragas". Of course this is all my preferences - doesn't mean anything more. As we saw in the favorite raga polls, tastes vary a lot among all of us.

In any case, in that article, I wasn't trying to focus much about the controversy itself. Rather I was trying to compare/contrast the melodic flavors of both versions of nagumOmu, and the dikshitar D1 abhEri (which i think is informally and incorrectly clubbed with the D1 abheri of original nagumomu).

Arun