gAnasAmavarALi - Venkatamakhi / Dikshitar - Old & Modern

[SrinathK]

gAna-sAma-varALi - the 3rd asampUrna mEla. And part of the original 19 of Venkatamakhi - it was in fact the 2nd of those 19 mElas. A very old rAgA, the name is a very meaningful one -- apparently it goes all the way back to sAma vEda, so old that according to Subbarama Dikshitar everyone from Bharata Muni to Venkatamakhi have spoken of it and the link to sAma vEda.

One thing about this rAgA to differentiate it from gAnamUrti is that the G1 is absent (varjya) in the ascent. So S R1 M1 it is.

Now Muthuswami Dikshitar has composed brhadeeshwarO rakshatu mAm in it - unfortunately the version of the SSP is right now only on paper and everyone signs a modern dEshAdi "Thyagaraja-fied" version of it. So just to illustrate, here is the modern form of this song :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIUbVPtmzDs - anyone who's been following the raga threads so far would know that this isn't Dikshitar's style.

To think that the original song is in tisra Ekam and starts from the lower octave -- wait till it comes out. - if there's one thing I take away from this all, it is the importance of musicology to stop rampant change to tradition.

So far, as I've read the notation, the original gAnasAmavarALi uses S-M as often as it uses SRM (a musical pun on its name and origin??) and to add to this, Dikshitar has even used swarAksharam at the line "sahaja gAna sAma varALi" combining it with the rAga mudra.

Overall, apart from these 2 key differences, gAnasAmavarALi is otherwise linear.

PS : Subbarama Dikshitar began work on the Sangeetha Sampradaya Pradarshini at the age of 60 and finished it after 4 years of hard work (just how much work was involved can only be understood when you realize it is over 2000 pages long). In the introduction of the SSP, Subbarama Dikshitar expresses his desire to bring out books on Thyagaraja and Syama Sastri kritis along with Kshetrayya's padams in a manner similar to the kritis of the Dikshitar sampradaya.

Unfortunately Subbarama Dikshitar did not live long enough to see this goal fulfilled and passed away shortly afterwards - and in my opinion, the entire world of CM suffered its greatest loss ever in history - on what could have been an extremely vast and authentic source of the music of the Trinity.

And now to wait...in the meantime, let me see if I can find it in sAma vEda renditions, as I found rEvati in the rg vEda.