Gayathri Venkataraghavan

Sep 30, 2007
Shiva Vishnu Temple of South Florida

Navarathri season is to begin in less than two weeks. There will be music and divinity in the air. In South Florida, Navarathri is celebrated in a very grand manner. Jayanthi joins me in wishing you all a Joyous Navarathri season.

While growing up, I used to be amazed how our elders are able to identify ragams after listening for a short time. When you ask how, the answer is always you have to listen to a lot of Carnatic music. It is good advice for those who already have some music training but for most that is only a partial answer. If you do not have the basic knowledge you have nothing to build on. I thought a primer from an amateur will help.

Music can be viewed as a multi-dimensional space with each ragam following a specific path within this space. Be it Indian or Western the dimensions are Sa Ri Ga Ma Pa Da Ni or CDEFGAB plus 5-half notes to make a total of 12 notes to an octave. The half notes (the black keys on the piano keyboard) are called sharps/flats in the western system.

Similar to sharps/flats, in Carnatic, there are two representations each for Ri Ga Ma Da Ni in simplistic terms. For example, for Ma is represented by Shuddha Madhyamam and Prathi Madhyamam and there are special names for each note. Sa & Pa are pure notes without sharps/flats. Arohanam (ascend) and Avarohanam (descend) are how you go up and down the raga’s music scale with strict rules. Sankarabharanam is a sampoorna ragam with seven notes up and the same seven notes down. Hindolam has five notes with only Sa Ga Ma Da Ni. Bilahari has five notes up and seven down. Within a ragam Arohanam and Avarohanam can have same or different notes giving opportunities for some beautiful patterns as we travel through the musical space. For more theory on Carnatic music I leave it to the experts. In simple terms, pattern matching and some basic understanding of music scales will help us identify the ragams making a concert much more enjoyable. The blessed ones identify them heuristically, not I. Let us get practical:

Select one of your favorite artists, preferably vocalist, and a set of songs. Know the ragams of each song ahead of time, in other words “cheat” – it’s ok. Pay close attention to how the artist travels the music scale in the alapana and kalpana swarams. Memorize the songs and their ragams.
Repeat the above until you immerse yourselves in this set of songs. Use the “random” option in your CD player to pick songs randomly and be comfortable that you can identify all the ragams from the limited set.
Expand your horizon by listening to different ragams, preferably from the same artist. The reason being different artists sing in different pitch, shruthi or kattai and the same ragam will sound different to throw you off. This is especially true when you switch from male singers, who sing at a lower pitch, to female singers.
Expand further by adding more artists to your collection of songs you routinely listen to and pretty soon you will be able to talk intelligently about music.
It is very important that you listen to a lot of live concerts at every opportunity you get. The energy you get from a live concert, even with poor music system, you cannot get from even the best recording in the world.
When you listen to a song try to match the pattern to the songs that you already memorized.
Like everything else in life, a little organization will go a long way. Our Cultural Committee should organize a music/dance appreciation course. How about it?

Sometimes you will have an off-day with respect to identifying ragams. Even the popular ones may baffle you, like it happened to me in this concert. May be it is just me but I have difficulty in identifying ragams for female singers. Sri ragam sounded like Madhyamavathi to begin with, then I knew it was not, but could not figure out exact ragam. But as soon as an expert says what it is the light bulb goes on in your head and the bell rings. Don’t be discouraged, pick up and try again – we’ll get there.

Let us get to Smt. Gayathri Venkataraghavan’s (Mrs. GV) concert.

Overall my impression of the concert was “blah”. It was a type of concert that is thoroughly enjoyed by the musicians in the audience but not by the general public. To me the first half of the concert was more like music practice and the second half picked up quite a bit. However, the tempo was missing in the entire concert. In spite of the apparent rapport between the artists they took the entire first half to come together. The singer did not connect well with the audience. I hope our Cultural Committee will have worked the bugs out of the sound system before next concert by Malladi brothers. Let us take a bit more care in pronouncing the names and places during introduction.

There is no question on the technical abilities of Mrs. GV. Her voice was deep, well trained and rich. In some instances the voice became a bit flat but overall it was very pleasant. Let me quickly run down the songs – Sarasi Jana (Varnam in Natai), Thulasi Dala (Mayamalava Gowla), Vande Vasudevan (Sri), Hari hara putra (Vasanta), a murugan song in Suddha Saveri and a song in Ahiri. The main piece was the popular Etha Unaka in Kalyani followed by Yadava Ni Ba in Kapi. RTP was in Keeravani with a ragamalika section. Then a Nadanamakriya song followed by a signature Ragamalika song with names of ragams embedded. Finally a Bhageshwari song, a peppy “Aadum Chidambaram” in Behag followed by Thillana in Surutti and Mangalam.

The only fast numbers were Suddha Saveri, Behag and the Thillana. But the concert needed more resuscitation. Kalyani alapana was excellent to my ears but when Akkarai Subbalakshmi, the violinist, picked up the alapana we could not hear much. One listener – let’s call him Mr. Sarcasm – said that the violinist was playing “effortlessly” meaning sometimes there was “no effort”. When the violinist played the high pitch strings all we could hear was the loud electronic tambura. I have heard the violinist before and she certainly is more capable but this was not her day, I guess. There certainly were moments of glory and even the singer was intently listening to learn from the violinist. I must say that the singer had excellent training from a list of gurus and it showed especially her kalpana swarams, as the name implies, were highly imaginative.

Sri Manoj Siva was on the mridangam. The way he kept the mridangam squarely in front of him (not over his leg) was different. Dr. Ramakrishnan explained to me that it was Palghat Raghu’s style who was the guru of Sri Manoj. He provided adequate support. But mridangam accompaniment should be an inspiration to the musicians and it was lacking. I may be biased from a past bad experience with him.

Keeravani alapana in the RTP again was excellent. The “thaanam” part of the RTP was done with mridangam accompaniment. I have seen this done a long time ago by Smt. Sudha Raghunathan. It was refreshing. Thillana was another peppy song with a good raga selection, Surutti.

I received some feedback from my daughter on my writing. Deepa is a final year Journalism student from Northwestern so I guess she is qualified. She said I used a lot of exclamation marks in my writing and good writers use it only once in a lifetime. She also said that I should use verbs instead of adjectives. Deepa, you should be proud that I took the feedback and have not used a single exclamation mark in this article so far. I guess the use of exclamation marks in writing is like laughing for your own jokes when your children are looking at you with a stone face! So there! I could not resist! Being a rebellious parent I had to use it and get it out of my system!

Let me close with a discussion on my previous commentary.

Maharajapuram Ramachandran commentary (discussion continues): I received a strong push back from my cousins and friends from India for even referring to Sri Ramachandran and his father Sri Santhanam in the same sentence. These are high flying business executives during the week and carrom-playing music critiques by the weekend – called the Carrom-Club. I grant that they have a lot more experience in critiquing but none of them have listened to Sri Ramachandran in about 3-years. They have written him off – damn accountants. Let me make two points – 1) I heard Sri Ramachandran a couple of years ago and was less than impressed. But now he has changed his style of singing to match closer to that of his father. Also, his shruthi has dropped a notch or two making his voice match that of his father. 2) My father who was an ardent fan of Sri Vishwanatha Iyer refused to listen to Sri Santhanam for a long time and slowly transformed to become one of his best fans. History repeats itself.

I am glad that at least some of the Carrom-Club members agreed to listen to Sri Ramachandran in the upcoming season and let me know their thoughts. I will wait.
See you all at the next concert
MALLADI BROTHERS Sri. Ravikumar & Sri. Sreeram Prasad
Vocal
Sri. Embar Kannan
Violin
Sri. Neyveli Narayanan
Mridangam
On Sunday, October 21, 2007, at 4:00 PM
B. Seetharaman
Oct 1, 2007