Surabhi Post - 15 Music Season Special - Lec-Dems at Music Academy - 2
The second lec-dem that I had attended at the Music Academy was on 'Raga - Scope and Elaboration' by Shri Nedanuri Krishnamurthy. Sangeetha Kalanidhi Shri. Nedanuri Krishnamurthy is the disciple of Sangeetha Kalanidhi Dr. Sripada Pinakapani. He is one of the senior top ranking musicians in the carnatic music world today. His music is known to combine aesthetic grace and technical excellence and appeals to both the classical as well as modern rasikas.
Since Nedanuri was more in a kutcheri mood that morning, the lec-dem turned out to be more of a kutcheri and less of a lec-dem. In fact, he had remarked towards the end that he had deviated from the topic almost in the beginning itself and went in to a kutcheri mood because he had been singing in the Academy for the last 55 years. He laid stress on the fact that students must spend more time on understanding ghana ragas like thodi, shankarabharanam, bhairavi etc. and not keep looking for new, fancy ragas. He jocularly remarked that Semmegudi was singing for atleast 75 years and we were all happy to listen to his shankarabaranam again and again all those 75 years and even if he were still alive we would only be happily listening to his shankarabaranam. He mentioned how all the yesteryear stalwarts were recognized for singing some specific ragas to the extent that their names got tagged on with specific ragas. Ariyakudi was known for his Thodi and Kalyani while Maharajapuram Viswanatha Iyer was known for his Arabhi, Mohanam and Shanmukhapriya. He demonstrated how to render alapana in a mellifluous bhava laden manner in kharaharapriya, thodi and kambodhi. I was completely overwhelmed when he said that even after all these years he still feels there is much more to kambodhi or thodi than what he knows and it still continues to be his wish to sing like those stalwarts whom he had heard when he was young! Thats probably the take home message for all the budding carnatic musicians. He was supported by his disciples, the Malladi Brothers through out the session. The lec-dem was concluded with the famous Annamacharya composition, 'Mudugare yashoda'.
Thats for now, until I catch up later….
Musically yours,
Uma.
