Sumanesa Ranjini dazzles in Ustad-Bhagavathar's melting tones

Wah Ustaad !

Isn't this how we usually greet our Tamilian Bhajan singer O S Arun?

There was a time when some friends and I would let our eyes lightly flit over O S Arun's name in programme sheets, dismissing him as a kind of a Vittal-Vittal-Panduranga bhajan-wala, who is good at what he does, but not necessarily worthy of intellectual note. Such foolish arrogance on our part was lowered into its grave a few years ago, when we listened to the creamy imagination of pure carnatic notes even while singing bhajans with a strong North Indian fragrance.

When he sings the Marathi ‘Ha Raghava!’ it is not some channa masala Bhoopali that splashes against our ears, but the dazzling notes of the old-familiar, the Mohanam—and how! Strings and strings of notes in newer and newer cocktails.

Or when he sings a tender Malayamarutam (Karpaga Monohara) or Valaji (Koovi Azhaithal) in his own loud-and-hard style, like the running of a herd of wild buffaloes on the face of a large tabla. Dum-dhum-dhama-dhum-dhum.

Respect for Arun goes up.

Namaskaram, Ustaad !!

Several concerts—both bhajans and carnatic kutcheri’s—later, the image of O S Arun is still that of a Hindustani ghazal singer, who can also sing carnatic. The don of the kurta and the Jeetandra hair-style (though parted on the right side) underscores and highlights the Ustaad aspect of Arun.

We had to wait until the curtains were up on his Narada Gana Sabha concert of December 2012 season. It was one bloody good concert, so powerfully carnatic in style and the Karaharapriya (Thyagaraja’s Idu Bhagyamu) that we were treated to was perhaps the best I have heard in the last 30 years. We, the lovers of carnatic music, expect the vocalist not to lightly flit over the notes, like a hovercraft, but dwell hard on them, like a road-laying machine.

‘Azhutham’ we call it in Tamil—the ‘pressing’. No Azhutham, no carnatic, and it is any slip-up on this singular aspect that sometimes even geniuses like Jesudas lose their sway over the audience.

But of Arun’s sooooperrrb Karaharapriya, which can march with its chin up alongside with T M Krishna’s or Sanjay’s, we shall say nothing further in this blog post. Suffice to say that it was a great one.

The space belongs to the melancholy rare that Arun melted the heart of his audience with.

Sumanesa Ranjini. Wow, what a raga!

It is (I later learnt) what you get if you replace the lower madhyama in Suddha Dhanyasi to the upper madhyama. Then, the raga could also be remembered as Amritavarshini with the lower ‘ga’. However, when you hear it, you neither think of Suddha Dhanyasi nor Amritavarshini. You see the resemblance more with Chandrakauns. Clearly, the emphasis is on the lower ‘ga’, which gives the raga a melancholy touch, and the sharp ring of the upper ‘ni’.

A quick ‘review of existing literature’ shows that Sumanesa Ranjini has had to contend with a ‘minor raga’ tag. Arun changed it. It was quite an elaborate alapana that brought a melancholy pall. After Mullaivasal Chandramouli’s commendable reply (the violinist is playing extremely beautifully these days), Arun rendered a Tamil composition, ‘Tamadamaen’—a composition of Dr Rukmini Ramani, the daughter of Papanasanam Sivan (and not to be confused with the Sivan’s famous Todi piece beginning with the same word.) It was a heart-rending composition on Goddess Saraswathi. The only pity was that Arun did not sing swaras.

Sumanesa Ranjini appears to have been used pretty well in Tamil film of those days. The Susheela Smash-hit ‘malai pozhudin mayakkatile naan’ of the film Bhagyalakshmi is in this raga. So is the other hit, Oru Naal Iravu Pagal Pol Iravu, from the movie Kaviya Talaivi.

Superb raga, this Sumanesa Ranjini. I’d recommend rasikas prevail upon O S Arun at every opportunity to make him sing this.

After this tear-jerker, the vocalist did the smart thing by bringing in a thundering Atana alapana, followed by Thyagaraja’s effervescent composition Chate Buddhimaanura, with swaras on the pallavi line. The mood of the hall was by then well annealed to receive the muscularly carnatic Karaharapriya.

Wah, Bhagavathar! What a concert !