Random Notes
By V Ramnarayan
A musician’s musician. This has been the universal verdict among the cognoscenti of Carnatic music whenever the name of Ramanathapuram or Ramnad Krishnan comes up for discussion. Writing in Sruti, vocalist Savita Narasimhan, someone who never heard him live, but grew to love his music making through listening to his records, once said: “In an age when the nagaswara-inspired, robust, masculine, forceful music of G.N. Balasubramaniam, Alathur Brothers and Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer held sway, Ramnad Krishnan’s choice of the veena-like, delicately modulated style of singing was a decisive deviation from the general trend.”
A recent event to kickstart Ramnad Krishnan’s year-long centenary celebrations at the Dakshinamurthi Auditorium at PS Higher Secondary School, Mylapore, featured three speakers, one an authority on Krishnan’s music, and his close friend and associate, the second, one of his disciples and a renowned musicologist, and the last one a leading contemporary vocalist who has studied and analysed Krishnan’s music and revelled in it.
Spencer Venugopal is a consummate orator who brings poetry and erudition to his chaste Tamil without any of the harshness typical of some of its best known public speakers. Having listened to him on numerous occasions over the years, I cannot escape the feeling that you can wake him up while he is fast asleep and he will effortlessly launch into the most cogent analysis of his topic, especially if it has to do with the music of the Dhanammal school.
Expectedly Venugopal waxed lyrical about Krishnan’s exceptional mastery of the nuanced brand of raga music he imbibed by osmosis from the likes of T Brinda. Venugopal did not fail to stress the two-way admiration between Brinda and Krishnan as tellingly proved by the fact of Brinda entrusting Krishnan with the task of mentoring her daughter Vegavahini. He also repeated a story Krishnan’s son RK Ramanathan told earlier that evening about how the vidwan paid no heed to a close friend's advice to add spice to his singing in order to make it more popular among the lay audience and benefit him commercially. “If such a compromise would be my passport to worldly success, I do not need or want such wealth.” Highlighting the innate rhythm and balance in Krishnan’s music, be it in swara or tala, Venugopal confessed his partiality for the maestro’s exquisite raga elaboration. “His contribution to music in a short span was enormous, his musical journey a grand one, ” he said, though his early death was a great loss, still felt by the world.
Dr Ritha Rajan spoke of Krishnan’s sterling qualities as a teacher. He was as concerned about his students as they were devoted to him, taking great pains to cater to the specific requirements of each of them based on aptitude, strengths and limitations. She mentioned the names of Nagamani Srinath, Vegavahini Vijayaraghavan, Neyyatinkara Vasudevan, Nirmala Sundararajan and Janaki Sunderarajan among others. Their growth, development and concert readiness were all important to him and they could approach him for guidance at any time. Ritha Rajan recalled an occasion when he spent over an hour guiding her telephonically through a ragam-tanam-pallavi in an unfamiliar raga that she had to conjure up during an audition. He encouraged his disciples to absorb the best from other artists and wholeheartedly praised musicians from all quarters.
Few musicians could have deconstructed a great musician’s art and craft better than the way TM Krishna analysed Ramnad Krishnan’s music during the centenary opener. Referring to the unique sound of Krishnan’s voice, he said his voice was inseparable from his music. Taking the example of Sahana, one of Krishnan’s signature ragas, he marvelled at the transformational flow from one syllable to another, with the quintessence of the raga reflected in the three swaras ma, pa, and dha. Like every other aspirant, TMK too had tried to imitate Krishnan but did not succeed in his attempt, he said. Amazed as he was by the precision of length of his swaras, he would not conjecture if the vidwan achieved his special aesthetics by design or if it all came naturally to him. Dispelling the notion that the vidwan’s music was slow paced, Krishna stressed the poise and measured gait that made even his brisk madhyama kalam seem slower. He also asserted that it was ‘dangerous’ to attempt to reproduce Krishnan’s vocalisation, because what seemed effortless for Ramnad Krishnan could damage your voice when you tried it. Pooh-poohing the theory that aggressive ‘male’ music guaranteed the success of a concert, Krishna described the perfect fusion of the masculine and the feminine in Ramnad Krishnan’s music. Krishna closed on a note of regret, regret that we—both musicians and rasikas—failed such a great musician by not recognising his greatness during his lifetime. He questioned the very idea of janaranjakam, the very need to yield to so-called popular demand.
The whole programme was webcast live by Swathi Soft Solutions, and its recording can be seen right from Apoorva-Anahita’s invocation song to the DVD Musician’s Musician by SB Khanthan, who also anchored the programme. It can be watched on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boncCXKfPxY.