A giant of an artiste and a lovable man: T V Gopalakrishnan

(Another (edited) version of this article appeard in The Hindu on February 17, 2012, and can be accessed at http://www.thehindu.com/arts/music/article2874905.ece )

“This,” said Tirupanithura Viswanatha Gopalakrishnan, pointing to a tall, ornate kuthuvilakku standing conspicuously in a corner, “was given to me in Bombay by Shanmukhananda Sabha,” and it was impossible to miss the metaphor. The object at which our attention was directed so remarkably resembled the man directing the attention in a metaphoric sense: tall in every meaning of the word, shining, swanky and pleasing to the eye. The Sabha had just given him a lifetime achievement award, instituted in the name of Sankaracharya. “It arrived here yesterday; and today I got the Padma.”

You can’t separate sentiment and a carnatic musician. The ‘Padma’ alluded to was the Padma Bhushan award, and TVG’s linking of the ‘blessing’ with the award was not just understandable—it was inevitable. As he waved me a seat, the parallelism between the lamp and the man became almost tangible. There stood the blessed lamp, a harbinger of national recognition, so flashy but so pure in its unlit virginity and TVG, flamboyance dripping from his garb and gait, yet affable and down-to-earth to a fault.

TVG—a Carnatic and Hindustani vocalist, mridangist, violinist, an everything-ist when it comes to music, a highly revered guru to a shipload of budding and blossomed musicians, both classical and filmy—stands tall among his peers as much for his musical prowess as for his legendary large-heartedness. A man at peace with himself, at ease with others.

TVG begins the conversation with a remark on how another journalist, who had managed to steal an earlier moment of his attention just a little while ago, asked him for the most memorable anecdotes from his life. “I am almost 80 years old; how could I possibly pick up any memorable events of my life. There are so many of them,” he said, pouring a bucket of cold water on my first question.

“Sir, I wanted to ask you the same question myself,” I said, fearing that in a spirit of candidness, TVG might be prompted to mouth the adage that ‘fools never differ’, but fortunately, he only smiled and obligingly took me on a tour down the memory lane, deep into the past, leapfrogging a full century and landing in 1896, the year in which his guru, the redoubtable Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavathar was born. Juicy anecdotes, plucked out of history like juicy cherries, fell all around in bunches.

I volunteer to prompt him with the mention of a concert. “Sir, do you remember the concert of Dindugal S P Natarajan, some time in 1985—with MSG on the violin and you on the mridangam?” I ask. At the mention of S P Natarajan TVG’s eyes light up. “Yes,” he says with some force. “You should speak about that.” That concert, he says, was one of the very best.

“I would rate Natarajan a notch higher than Mali,” he says. Poor Natarajan—he was not lucky. “After the concert that you mention (Bhairavi was the main piece), I arranged for him to play at Music Academy,” says TVG. “They gave him only 2.30 pm concert.”

“And he refused?”

“No. He agreed to play. But the day he was to play there, he fell off his scooter and fetched up at the concert badly bruised.” Consequently, the concert did not click.

Not many years after, Dindugal S P Natarajan died.

Anecdotes, memories burst forth. Kutcheries, ragas….politics.

But my job was more than chronicling TVG’s fond memories. The task on hand was to peer into the personality of the man who had so recently become a Padma Bhusan. He makes it easy for me, giving telling hints. “I have always been very flamboyant,” he says with disarming openness, in a strong Mallu accent, with an air of cheer and satisfaction but not a trace of conceit. He always had two cars, he said, while recalling his job of having to drop back his Hindustani guru Krishnanand home after each class. That was a part of the deal. Krishnanand first refused to teach TVG, putting it bluntly that he never taught carnatic musicians, who would only discontinue after the first six months. When TVG persisted, Krishnanand’s terms were “Rs 10 per class, six months’ fees paid in advance, and a drop-back home after each class.” This was back in 1969. When the word reached Chembai about his disciples Hindustani foray and the guru was first very disapproving, but later not only approved, but also predicted that TVG would become an accomplished Hindustani musician.

TVG’s ancestry of musicians gave him a genetic leg-up. His grandfather was a violinist (a fact that TVG would recall years later when challenged by Dwaram Venkatasamy Naidu’s son, Sathyanarayana, that he (TVG) couldn’t possibly become a violinist). His father was a musician in the Royal Court of Cochin and Chembai, therefore, knew their family quite well. In one of his visits to Thirupanithura, Chembai asked TVG, then a stripling of a boy, if he was up to playing the mridangam for him. An aghast father protested, a la King Dasharatha to Valmiki, at such a daunting task, but the young Gopalakrishnan was almost insouciantly at ease. After the concert, Chembai told TVG’s father, “dai Viswanatha, send your son along with me to Chennai. There aren’t many to play the mridangam and those who are in the field, are old.”

But the father would have none of it. TVG was the eldest of their nine children and he was keen that his son studied well, and got himself a government job. (That TVG did. He got his B.Com degree and then worked in the Accountant General’s office for a few years.) It was only after he completed his studies that Viswanatha Bhagavathar gave his consent for TVG to join Chembai in Chennai.

When TVG met Chembai in Chennai in 1951, the old man said: “You have come now, when I have lost my voice.” Chembai had lost his voice while singing in a concert on January 2, 1951 (accompanying Chowdaiah continued the concert as ‘solo’ violin, with C S Murugabhoopathy on the mridangam) and it was not until eight years later, Chembai would regain his voice, in the Guruvayur temple.

Those where tough days. In a field ridden with competition and politics, it was Dwaram Venkataswamy Naidu who lent him a helping hand. The first opportunity came when a scheduled mridangist could not come and someone suggested TVG’s name to Dwaram. Could T V Gopalakrishnan be auditioned? “No. Never do that” said Dwaram. “Never test an artiste. Ask him if he has heard me play. If he has, he can accompany me.”

TVG remembers Dwaram as a violinist who played with a “bell clear tone” whose musical extravaganza contrasted with his parsimony when it came to paying an accompanist. Though a man of no small means, Dwaram compulsively saved up for his later years, recalls TVG. But after the first concert that TVG played for him, Dwaram played the young mridangist a memorable compliment: “Mani, Palani and you”, he said, bracketing TVG with the other two all-time-great percussionist.

TVG recalls another memorable encomium, this from the legendary music critic, Subbudu. “You have a perfect hand, you will go a long way,” Subbudu told him very early on in his career. Of course, TVG’s guru, Chembai, had a lot of praise for his principal disciple. These compliments were the inspiration, “telling me that I was son the right track”, that helped TVG shaped his career.

Shifting to Madras was a right move, or else TVG might have ended up like his father, Viswanatha Bhagavathar. “My father never left our village,” recalls TVG. Viswanatha Bhagavathar always performed along with his father, violinist Gopalakrishna Bhagavathar, and after Gopalakrishna Bhagavathar died, Viswanatha Bhagavathar practically gave up singing. “Who will play fiddle?” he would say and I would tell him “let somebody play, what is your problem. Don’t you want to hear yourself sing?” but to no avail.

For a boy whose musical career began at an age of six when he played on the mridangam in the Cochin palace in the presence of Viceroy Linlithgow (in 1938), making a mark for himself was no big deal. Interestingly, TVG began his career on the twin tracks of vocal and mridangam—his first vocal concert was when he was about 14.

For six decades from the early 1950s, TVG has sung, played, conducted orchestras, taught, spoken music. Today, upon the receipt of Padma Bhusan, one can detect a slight, almost indiscernible rankle that the award took its time to come. But then, my guru also got the recognition very late, rationalizes TVG.

While any national recognition is something desirable, TVG perhaps cherishes his status as a guru more than anything else, for it is from that platform that he has served the art the most. His disciple list, including those who consult him from time to time, reads like a who’s who of carnatic music—interestingly, right across the spectrum. For instance, he has given his moulding touches to Yesudas and Unnikrishnan (to name just two) in vocal, Kadri Gopalnath (Sax), Varadarajan (violin), V Suresh (ghatam). Vidyabhooshana, the ex-pontiff of Subramanya Mutt, too is a disciple of TVG. “I helped him come out of sanyas,” says TVG, obviously pleased with having done so. Presently, a Caucasian walks in. “This is Sieg, he is learning mridangam from me,” says TVG. Siegmund Kutterer is a percussionist from Switzerland.

Inevitably, the conversation veers around the state of carnatic music. Why don’t we see vivadi’s taking a major space? Why is it that some ragas are the darling of musicians, some consigned to oblivion? Music, says TVG, is all about nostalgia. What evokes nostalgia is what people want, but he agrees that musicians must not lose the spirit of experimentation. He recalls Madurai Mani Iyer once telling him that in his (Mani Iyer’s) early days he was singing many rare vivadis. Musri Subramani Iyer advised him not to do that if he wanted to make a name for himself. “Still people come to my concert to listen to my Kaapali and Kaana Kan Kodi Vendum,” said Mani Iyer, a man whose name has been inextricably associated with Jyotiswaroopini, Umabharanam, Kannadagowlai and a host of other rare’s, to TVG.

TVG stresses on the need for keeping the purity of notes. Yes, gamakas are the hallmark of carnatic music, but they should be kept to the point. Needless swirls whereby one note encroaches upon its neighbour’s territory is abhorrent to TVG. He sings a clutch of ragas—Nattakurinji, Hindolam, Todi, Sudha Dhanyasi and Nasika Bhushani—in “the manner in which they should be sung” and in the way they are sometimes sung today, to demonstrate the difference. “Why do people still remember M D Ramanathan”, TVG poses a rhetoric, and loses himself into a MDR’ish Kedaram. To a lay listener, the limited-gamaka “pure note-way” is clearly more pleasing to the ear.

“The survival of carnatic music depends upon whether or not musicians keep the purity of notes,” he says, pointing out that if light music is so popular today, it is because the notes are in their pure forms.

Pure notes not only gives longevity to the art itself, but also to the singer. “Today, if (R K ) Srikantan (who is 86 years old) is still able to sing, it is because he sings pure notes,” says TVG with the force of an evangelist. “Why, take me, for instance. I am 80 years old and can still sing,” he says.

Bio sketch of TVG

Tirupanithurai Viswanatha Gopalakrishnan (born 11 June 1932 in Thripunithura, Kerala) is a Carnatic and Hindustani musician fromChennai.
Gopalakrishnan hails from a family of musicians, spanning over two centuries; his father was a court musician for the Cochin Royal Family. He is a vocalist, plays the violin and is also an exponent of the mridangam. Gopalakrishnan started playing the mridangam at the age of four and had his arangetram at the Cochin palace at the age of six. He is a disciple of Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavathar.
His students include , Ilayaraja, A.R.Rahman, Sivamani, Kadri Gopalnath, Vidyabhushana. He has also collaborated with drummer/composer Franklin Kiermyer on live performances.
Gopalakrishnan was given the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1990. He has been awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India in the year 2012.