Wah! gadeeswari !!!!!

Or should it be ‘wow-gadeeswari’? No matter by whatever name you call it, Neyveli Santhanagopalan’s Vagadheeswari alapana (at the Tanjavur Kalyanaraman memorial concert in Chennai) was stunning. Its predecessor in the concert was an out-of-the-world Chandrajyoti, and for the 100-odd people assembled in the hall, it was a great treat. The Vagadheeswari alapana was marked by an absence of the ‘Naattai kind of emphasis on the ri, but that is perhaps the raga is to be sung. This time too, I went to the concert with my two expert co-rasikas, Sivaramakrishnan and Govindarajan, and a week after the concert Sivaramakrishnan remarked to me that the Vagadheeswari was still ringing in his ears.

I request readers of this blog to condone my arrogance. Neyveli Santhanagopalan is singing really well these days and I would like to arrogate to myself the credit of his good singing. As elaborately mentioned elsewhere in this blog, Santhanagopalan has been bitterly stung by my critical review in The Hindu last December, the basis of which was a concert that appeared to be apathetically approached by the musician. Ever since, the vocalist appears to have turned (back) into a serious musician. A couple of months back I attended another of his concerts, at Bharatiya Vidhya Bhavan, where he sang a fine Jaganmohini and a very innovative Purvi Kalyani.

Getting Santhanagopalan refocused is my singular contribution to carnatic music!

Coming back to the concert under reportage, well, it was a brilliant Vagadheeswari, but…………..

What’s with these musicians, I do not know. They are squanderers. Like the Bushman who picked up a 48-karat diamond and flung it into the bushes.

When everyone was expecting Paramathmudu or some such number, Santhanagopalan announced a ‘tisra jati jampa sankeerna nadai’ pallavi (which began with the words ‘Sri Ramam Ravikulabdhi Somam’). Now, taking up a pallavi in itself is not bad. But the performance had none of the features of an RTP. There were no tala exercises, no multi-raga forays. What a brilliant alapana and what a contrasting follow-through! Like the first sip was vintage scotch and the rest of the glass was distilled water.

Chalo! The scotch taste was so great that, dear Santhanagopalan, all is forgiven. With the alapana and the Chandrajyoti piece (Baagayanayya of Saint Thyagaraja), Neyveli Santhanagopalan again proved his mettle. The Chandrajyoti alapana was particularly innovative. A few more concerts like this, he will hopefully become a crowd puller, again. For a long time Santhanagopalan-fan like me, it is something devoutly to be desired.

Between the two vivadis, Chandrajyoti and Vagadheeswari, were two fillers, Ananda Bhairavi (Marivere) and Sama (Annapoorni). The latter had some brief but brilliant swaras at the traditional point, Payasanna.

The ‘tani’ piece, which followed the pallavi, was a brief kapi (Kanmaniye Keladi).

For this concert, Santhanagopalan was accompanied by Vittal Ramamurthy on the violin, Chennai Thyagarajan on the mridangam and Trichy K Murali on the ghatam.

A week later Santhanagopalan sang again, for Naadhabrahmam, this time with much accomplished accompanists – Nagai Muralidharan, Tiruvarur Bhaktavatsalam and E M Subramanian. Despite the big ticket accompaniments the concert lacked the ‘kick’. For sure, the Saveri was very nice, as was the main piece, Mohanam. The Mohanam was very ‘Madurai Mani’ish and was easily the better of the two substantial elements of the concert, indeed best of the three, if you include the sprightly Begada that came earlier. A feature observed in the alapanas of both Saveri and Mohanam was the very quick descent, which created an asymmetry between the ascent and the descent. The slow rise creates an expectation of an equally measured decline which the sudden drop belies. Santhanagopalan must correct this minor, but consequential, oversight.

The Saveri piece was Shyama Shastri’s Sankari Samkuru, rendered well. The kalpana swaras that followed were replete with tala exercises. One can only wonder at the singer’s caprice. He takes up a pallavi and sings it in straight rhythmic proportions. But in a regular piece he indulges in tala acrobatics. There is nothing wrong in this – just strange.

The Mohanam began with a whiff of Kalyani. It was meant to be a racy piece, because when Santhanagopalan started with it the clocked showed 8.22. “I’ll end the concert by 9 pm,” he promised. The alapana was indeed very good. When the vocalist began the concert, with the Sri raga varnam (saami nine), the voice was obviously strained and was barely audible, and the the poor acoustics at the Dakshinamurthy auditorium, Mylapore, did nothing to help. However, by the Mohanam’s time, the voice matured and shot through the notes with a punch (as opposed to flitting through them lightly). This is a defining aspect of carnatic music and Santhanagopalan did well to provide the necessary ‘azhuthum’. The composition taken up for rendition began with ‘Jagadeeswari’. I’m told it is of a composer called Vedamuni Dasar.

Tailpiece: I have noticed that to get the best out of Santhanagopal, you have to put him in a bad, and therefore aggressive, mood. Bruise the singer’s ego and you get a sterling performance from him. With apologies to my friend Santhanagopalan, I commend this method to my readers.