By Savita Narasimhan
Birthdays & Anniversaries
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| 14.9.1918 |
Krishnan was born on 14 September 1918 in Alappuzha in Kerala, to Vaidyanatha Iyer and Brihannayaki, hailing from Kooniyur in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu. When Krishnan was four months old, his father shifted from Alappuzha to Ramanathapuram (anglicised to Ramnad) district in Tamil Nadu to join the service of the Maharaja of Ramnad. Krishnan was one of eight siblings. Since the family spent many years in Ramnad, all of them prefixed Ramnad to their names. Krishnan began his first vocal lessons in Carnatic music under the tutelage of his elder brother Lakshminarayana and his guru C.S. Sankarasivam (a disciple of Harikesanallur Muthiah Bhagavatar). Among the brothers, Lakshminarayana and Venkatachalam learnt the violin, while Raghavan and Eswaran were trained to play the mridanga. By the age of seven, Krishnan had mastered Arunachala Kavi’s entire opera – the Ramanataka kriti-s. His singing prowess earned him opportunities in theatre while at school in Ramnad. Even at a young age, Krishnan had an inbuilt sense of rhythm. His guru Sankarasivam, who sang the complex Tiruppugazh in difficult tala cycles, accompanied by Pudukottai Dakshinamurthy Pillai, enjoyed making Krishnan keep the beat with his impeccable sense of rhythm.
In 1936, Krishnan moved from Ramnad to Madras, where he started performing and gaining exposure to the music of the veterans of the time. GNB was his favourite musician and Krishnan was a regular at his concerts, seen almost always in the front row. He was quoted saying, “Just as Hanuman is present wherever there is nama sankeertanam, so also will I be seen wherever there is good music.”