Making music

A live orchestra at work, recording the background music for a feature film. This happened at a studio in Vadapalani. From the outside, it looks like any other building on the street, but the inside is very different - multiple spaces for recording music, voice, etc. Had a good time watching the music director and the sound engineer working together on getting the whole thing going. 

Can't say anything more about it for now!

Music under rain trees

The stage is set for an evening of music. It is not often one gets to listen to an eclectic mix of Meera's bhajans, baul singers, a kora performer from The Gambia, devrishes from Turkey and qawwali singers all on one evening. It made sense to get in early and grab the best seats in the house for this performance a couple of weeks ago. 

The 'house' for performances of Ruhaniyat, an annual multi-city music festival, is more often than not an open space rather than an auditorium. The acoustics tend to get a little messy due to that, but the slow darkness enveloping the stage adds to the mysticism of the event. Sounds of nature - parakeets getting back home at twilight - mix with the music. After the first couple of times that aircraft passing overhead distracted us, that buzz disappeared. Ruhaniyat was quite a performance indeed. 

When the organisers started this of this festival in 2001, they were apparently told that it would not be well received in Chennai, probably because of the stereotyped image of the city's fascination for Margazhi season. Thankfully, they were not dissuaded and Ruhaniyat has now become a part of Chennai's annual music calendar; an extension of the Margazhi season, or maybe a counterpoint to it, to savour both better. For me, it was nice to see a programme conceptualised by Banyan Tree Events being held under the rain trees of the Madras Race Club!

Local music

Despite being one of, if not the oldest extant language in the world, Tamizh has been finding acceptance as a 'musical' language only in the past few decades. Despite evidence going back to the 6th-8th century CE indicating a very robust Tamizh music heritage from Silapathikaram, Divyaprabhandam and similar works, even as staunch a Tamizh poet as Bharatiyar wrote of "Sundara Telunginil paatisathu" (composing songs in melodious Telugu). So it is not a surprise that the classical music scene of the 1930s Madras was made up of overwhelmingly Telugu compositions, with Tamizh songs being relegated to the tukkada (sundries) section. 

Some prominent folks of Madras (and other cities) decided to do something about this. They coalesced the call for pure Tamizh music by setting up the Tamil Isai Sangam in 1943. Raja Sir Annamalai  Chettiar had convened the first Tamil Isai conference in Chidambaram in 1941, and backed efforts for similar conferences in other cities as well. Others who joined him in setting up the Sangam were RK Shunmukham Chettiar, Rao Bahadur VS Thyagaraja Mudaliar of Tiruvarur, Dewan Bahadur CS Ruthnasabapathy Mudaliar of Coimbatore and others from other cities of the Madras Presidency. 

The world of classical music was split; there were singers who were ambivalent about it, such as Musiri and Semmangudi; Kalki Krishnamurthy wrote in favour; TT Krishnamachari Iyengar and TL Venkatarama Iyer backed the Music Academy and Telugu compositions. It was the support of the ladies: singers like DK Pattammal, MS Subbulakshmi and KB Sundarambal supported Tamizh. Over time, the vociferous arguments died down and today, it is perfectly okay for Sanjay Subrahmanyan to do an exclusive "Tamizhum Naanum" event; and when he performs at the Raja Annamalai Mandram, these doors will need to be far larger to allow the audience to go through!

Of course, the Raja Annamalai Mandram has other entrances, too. This is just the one at the front!

The more things change...

If Wallace Misquith was to time-travel from 1842 to the current day, he would not give a second glance to this display in the foyer of the Sathguru Gnanananda Hall on TTK Road. His firm, set up in 1842 in Coonoor where he had some good business as a piano tuner, was styled Misquith & Co. The idea was to import 'music saloons, pianos and organs' to supply those who were partial to western music - and there would have been many even in those days. From Coonoor, Misquith branched out to Madras, and then to 14 other locations, including Bangalore, Vishakapatnam, Mandalay and Penang. Wallace died in 1888 and his son Wille took over the business. A spell of ill-health seems to have sent Misquith & Co., into a spiral (it must have been several years after its founding) and we see a Frenchman, (Edgar Allen) Prudhomme buying out the Madras branch sometime in the 1920s.

M. Prudhomme was not a musical person; but he seems to have been a shrewd businessman. His first task was to rebrand the firm as Musée Musical. He then got on board Mrs. Amy de Rozario, a British lady of Spanish origin as a Director. Mrs. de Rozario was the music teacher at Doveton Corries and Church Park at the time. I daresay she had a captive market for the instruments being imported - business boomed and a third partner / Director was brought in - Mr. M.Giridhar Doss, with a diploma in accountancy, was soon taking most of the load of running the business and servicing customers which by now included even the Governor or Madras. 

As we get into the 40s, we see Mrs. de Rozario preparing to go back to England; of M. Prudhomme's clan, there is no news. Musée Musical is now with Mr. Giridhar Doss, who brings in his son Haricharan Das to help him with it. Though trained as a lawyer, Haricharan moved completely into running the business after his father passed away in 1966. The business had also diversified. All kinds of music instruments were available here, and its partnership with the Trinity College dates from the early 1900s. Today, Musée Musical counts Veena Balachandar, L Subramanian, Karikudi Mani, GV Prakash and the Grammy + Academy Award winner A.R.Rahman among its alumni. And so, the only thing that Wallace Misquith might recognise in this display is the city's name - but even that is an anachronism!

Forgotten five face

A percussion instrument is called an 'Avanaddha Vadyam' in India. It seems logical to assume that such instruments, played by the performer striking on a taut membrane stretched over a hollow space, can have at most two sides, or faces, to them. But before we jump to that conclusion, let us gently stretch through the different categories of avanaddha vadyams; played by hand, by sticks, using both hands and sticks, struck on one side and stroked on the other, and those that are self-struck. (Maybe an additional category, for the 'stringed percussion' instrument - the bhapang is sui generis, I believe). 

Even the bhapang is a two-sided instrument, and is not one seen very often. An even rarer sight is the panchamukha vadyam, literally the five-faced instrument. I haven't seen one played, ever. For that, I am told that one has to go to Tiruvarur, where it is played during the Trinity Music Festival. Legend has it that the panchamukha vadyam has its origins in the kudamuzham, which was played at the wedding of Siva and Parvati. Looking very much like a pot, the kudamuzham has a large central, circular opening with 4 smaller such openings around it. Hoary literature also has it being one of the instruments played when Nataraja performed the celestial dance. Sculptures from the Rashtrakuta (8th-10th century CE) and Chalukya (10th-12th century CE)  periods show the kudamuzham being played by Nandi, or one of the other Bhutaganas. 

Over the next couple of centuries, the kudamuzham seems to have evolved into the panchamukha vadyam; the five faces became more or less the same size (the central one a tad larger, sometimes), they were named after Siva's five aspects (faces): sadyojatam, isanam, tatpurusham, aghoram and vamadevam. There is some way of distinguishing which is which, because the performer is supposed to stand on the side of the vamadevam while playing this instrument. One day, I will get to see it being played; until then, watching this exhibit at the Tol Isai Kalanjiyam will have to do!

Thrice-born

It is New Year's Day and I'm going to break with the tradition of posting the 'Photo of the Year'* today; I'm going further, to talk about someone who was not merely a dwijan by heritage, but a trijan (if there is such a term), by having had two re-births his career, one that defined his life. That career was born in 1904-5 when a boy of nine performed at a Srikrishna Temple in Palakkad. As the boy grew to adolescence, the voice that had captivated his listeners must have broken in a way that threatened his singing career; there is little detail on how he got past that setback and was re-born into his singing life. Maybe that was how he developed a resonant voice, so striking that he was on occasion referred to as "bronze-voiced". 

More serious was the second occasion. That bronze voice, now belonging to a seasoned and respected singer, was in full flow at a concert; at the end, its owner realised that he had lost it. And he then had to endure six months of suspense, during which period various remedies were tried; finally, the voice came back - thanks to the intervention of Sri Guruvayoorappan, his favourite deity. That was his third life, the one in which every paisa that he made from his concerts went directly to the Srikrishna Temple at Guruvayoor. It is beyond today's imagination to think of performing the Udayasthamana Puja there (bookings are no longer being taken because the current list runs for about forty years or something) even once, but he was able to do it sixty-one times. 

Much of his recognition came from Madras; it was here, from this house on (then) Palace Road, Santhome, that he taught his disciples. Many of them are famous in their own right - P. Leela, the Jaya-Vijaya twins, TV Gopalakrishnan and KJ Yesudas. It was from the thinnai of this house that their careers began. The house itself was given to him by TG Krishna Iyer, a friend who had composed 155 kritis, collectively known as Lalitha Dasar Krithigal. In October of 1974, he went back to perform at Poozhikunnu Srikrishna Temple at Ottapalam, where he had, 70 years ago, had his debut. After that performance, he just slipped off his mortal coils while performing his sandhyavandanam - going the way he always wished to. Srikrishna was kind to him; and why wouldn't he be, for Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar was as close to a saint as any mortal can ever aspire to be!

*The community of City Daily Photographers celebrates Theme Day every month. Go over to this site to see the best pictures from around the world!

Lining up early

Stepped out of the house at 5:00am today; it is the 89th anniversary of the Music Academy and a few of us were going on a tour of the Academy's many locations before it acquired its own premises - that's the iconic TT Krishnamachari Auditorium on Cathedral Road. That tour had to start from the TTK auditorium and when we got there, we found there was a crowd of about a hundred people waiting. 

Many of them had formed some kind of a line, the chairs lined up from the ticket windows to the entrance doors, and beyond. The rest, about 20, were standing in a group a little apart. We quickly figured out where to go, we were to stand with the group. The rest of the crowd, sitting in line, were waiting for the ticket windows to open so they could try and get tickets for the kacheri of the day. And that was going to be Sanjay Subrahmanyan (we have spoken about him before here and here), the Academy's Sangeeta Kalanidhi of 2015-16.

Of course the line would have gotten longer. Not for the music-loving Chennaiite the long queues formed because of demonetisation. We would rather wait in line for a kacheri ticket, and not be perturbed in the least because we were way behind in the line, and tickets were sold out before we were even close to having our chance. Anyway, the good thing was that there was some 'Academy' coffee being handed out to those waiting for tickets - and I managed to snuck some of that!

Pits!

Any theatre would have a designated location for the control booth - the space for technicians controlling the stage lights and sounds to sit and do their work while the performance is in progress. The ideal location for this is, in some ways, the place where the best seats in the house should be; far enough away from the stage to have a full view of what is happening on it, but close enough to not miss out any of the details.

Chennai's theatres have different approaches to placing the control booth. Many of them - at least among the ones I have seen - have them right up front, just at the edge of the stage. The Museum Theatre has it jammed in the centre aisle, crushing into the seats nearby. Obviously, given the age of that building, it is a much later addition and it gives a definite appearance of having been jerry-rigged, as if it has been placed there just for this performance and no more.

The control booth at the Mutha Venkata Subba Rao Hall is much better organized. I don't recall seeing this space when I have been on the ground floor - and so I guess it blends well with the seating. But when looking down on the balcony, it looks like a fairly comfortable area to sit and work - and the best spot to watch the performance from!

Simple things

No, we haven't had more rains in Chennai. And no, it is not because I have been so traumatized by those rains in December.

It is just that this picture seemed to be just right for today's Theme Day - Simplicity. What can be more simple than this paper boat? And what childhood joy can be more profound than getting wet in a gentle rain, while setting such boats out on their journeys?

Tagore has written about them; Jagajit and Chitra Singh have sung about them - both works highly charged with simple emotions!  

Music and move-ie store

In the middle of the music season in Chennai, it is time to think about a store that brought 'another kind of music' to Madras. It was in 1975 that Harish Samtani decided to set up his shop near the Wallajah Road intersection on Mount Road. The choice of location was possibly influenced by the fact that it was right in the Ritchie Street area; an area that was already known for being the go-to place for the latest in electronic goods. It made sense for a store selling exotic music to open up there.

In the beginning, there were the vinyls, of course. Over the years, Stereovision has kept in sync with changing tastes and technologies. It has ranged beyond music and has become pretty much the leading brand in Chennai for hi-tech audio and video equipment. Along the way, Harish has married his first love of auto-racing into the business of Stereovision - and that you can see in the ads for GoPro dominating the storefront - and its website!

Music everywhere

It is the music season in Chennai. If you thought it meant only concerts in halls, think again. Performances can be seen outside the hall as well. Here is a group gathered outside the Kapaleeshwarar temple, singing paasurams. 

You may be able to see such a group at other times of the year, but that would be a lone swallow. It is during that month of Margazhi that several such groups go around the temple, singing devotional songs - and that's what makes the music season here!

Men at rest

The theme for today - for City Daily Photobloggers around the world - is "Worker". (Somehow, thinking about it reminds me of that song, "Land down under", but that is a different story.) Anyway, turns out I don't have too many pictures of people, let alone people at work. 

And so this one: the dancers and the musicians had been at work, obviously, entertaining visitors to the crafts bazaar at Kalakshetra. Just around the time I got near them, all of them had taken a break - and so gave me a just-past-the-theme picture for today!

Small auditorium

The M.CT.M. Chidambaram Chettyar Matriculation School was established in 1981 in Mylapore. The school has been at the same premises since then. But in 2002, there was an addition to the school buildings. The Smt Sivakami Pethachi Auditorium is a multipurpose performance space, which can house about 500 people. 

It was a few Sundays ago. Nithyasree Mahadevan was performing that evening. It was open to all, so no wonder that the hall was quite full!

Season opener

The Chennai music 'season' is still two months away, but the Navaratri / Dussehra festival is a marker of the change of seasons; here is Sudha Raghunathan on stage at Vani Mahal's Sri Chandrasekarendra Saraswathi Mahaswami Auditorium.

Happy listening!

Music-maker's corner

As a child, he had to support himself from an early age. Barely four when his father died, Viswanathan was a burden to his mother and was forced to fend for himself. No school for him, but as a fetch-and-carry-boy in a cinema theatre somewhere in Kerala lit in him a desire for the silver screen and a love of music. He learnt music - it was the done thing for the lead actor to sing his own songs - thinking of it as the first step to stardom.

It was, but not the kind of stardom he initially dreamt of. He was turned away from his desire of becoming an actor, being advised to focus on his music skills. He was part of a music troupe and then, in combination with a fellow member, went on to become one of the most feted music duo of the 1950s and '60s. Viswanathan-Ramamoorthy was a guarantee of good music, and they delivered several hits, before deciding to go solo.

In that solo phase, Manayangath Subramanian Viswanathan achieved his stardom. In the fashion of the times, when stars were known by their initials rather than names - in the fashion of MGR or NTR - Vishwanathan transformed into MSV; the stardom that he sought was achieved in style. He has become a feature of the south Indian film firmament - and by extension, of popular culture as well. This is his place in the city: Vishwa Keerthi, on Santhome High Road. If you are lucky, you might get to hear a note or few!

Grand old man

Today, the political movement that he was one of the co-founders of is in abject misery after its performance in the recent national elections. But that is no reason to think any less of Subbaiyar Subramania Iyer, a man of many parts, who was the Vice President of the Theosophical Society during the period 1907-11. The reason to mention that part of his life first is because this statue can be found in the Theosophical Society's grounds at Adyar. There was a later falling out with the Society, to the extent that some of his followers went ahead with a Triplicane offshoot. But that cannot take away the work that Sir Mani Iyer did for the TS.

The 'Sir' was indeed a knighthood, granted for his public services, which began at his birthplace, Madurai, as a government clerk, going on to become the Vice Chairman of the Municipality. Mani Iyer moved to Madras in the 1880s, by which time he had become a lawyer and was soon appointed as Public Prosecutor - the first native to be offered the position. In the meantime, he also helped in founding the Indian National Congress in 1885. Keenly interested in the cause of education, he was also a Vice-Chancellor of the University of Madras; that institution chose him to be the first recipient of an honorary doctorate, when it bestowed the Doctor of Law degree on him in 1908. 

Mani Iyer probably followed the tradition of vanaprastham, going into retreat, for a picture showing him in 'later life' does not carry the turban or the flowing gowns. The statue depicts him at the peak of public life, as a lawyer, an educationist and a theosophist. Interestingly, the statue of Subramania Iyer in the Senate House of the University of Madras shows him in exactly the same manner, quill in one hand, a finger marking the page of a book and the left foot half-raised; the only difference is that it is in contrast to this one, being entirely black!

Quiet entrance

That's the rather quiet and unassuming entrance to one of the city's best maintained parks. The Nageswara Rao Park in Mylapore spreads over an area of about four acres. That makes it one of the smaller parks under the Corporation of Chennai, but that doesn't stop it from being put to various uses. Walkers, joggers, tree-watchers, singers, lovers, chess players, all of them can be found here. By the side of the broad walking areas are seats for players wanting a game of chess; there is a stage where you can perform (and do it as a featured programme on the first Sunday of every month is a privilege) and of course, all those little nooks that invite sweethearts to linger a while.

The park is named for Nageswara Rao Pantulu, who was a resident of Sri Bagh, a palatial house near the park. A little to the west of his house was a pond called Arathakuttai; sometime in the late 1930s, when that began to dry up, Nageswara Rao convinced some of his neighbours that it was better to give up the dry lake to the city rather than to expand their residences into it, and so the park was born.

For the past decade or so, the park is being maintained by Sundaram Finance on behalf of the Corporation of Chennai. I cannot think of any other such privately funded public park in the city; but the manner in which the Desodharaka Kasinadhuni Nageswara Rao Pantulu Park (that's its full name) is used in run is surely a strong boost for inviting more corporate bodies to invest in the city's green lungs!

The veena house

The house with the green gate caught my attention because of the nameplate. At first glance it looks like any other similar indicator of who the master of the house is. But a second glance showed that the name is not just letters, but a picture as well. And that picture was of a veena inside which was written 'S. Balachandar'. With such clues, there could only be one guess about whose the house was: Sundaram Balachandar, so closely identified with the instrument that he was always Veena Balachandar. 

Unconventional would only begin to describe the man. Maybe that was inherited from his father, who cast his older children as husband and wife in Seetha Kalyanam. The young Balachandar had a part as well, as a musician in Ravana's court. And a musician he was, indeed. Starting with the kanjeera at the age of 5, he learnt a variety of instruments: tabla, mridangam, shehnai and so on, become a full fledged solo artist on the sitar before his teens. All of those faded into the background when he discovered the veena. Spurning a formal course or guru, he taught himself the veena and mastered it within a couple of years. His energy went into the veena as well as several other maverick causes that he associated himself with: trying to prove that there never had been such a ruler as Swati Tirunaal, the impossibility of inventing new ragas, insisting that the Tamil Nadu state award for dancers should be Natya Kalanidhi rather than Sangeetha Kalanidhi and many other such flavour-of-the-season follies. And then there were his movies.  Anadha Naal, which had no songs at all, Avana Ivan, and a few others, where he was scriptwriter, director, music director and any other role that he took a fancy too.

The controversies, more than his interests, drained him so much that he was called away much earlier than his equally talented, if maybe more restrained elder brother. Balachandar died in 1990, at the age of 63. Wonder what he would have made of all the current trends in Carnatic music - he would as likely have been its cheerleader as its opponent!

The Trust and the Hall

This building, on TTK Road, is so often referred to as the Narada Gana Sabha that it takes a moment for even the insiders to correct themselves: it is the Sathguru Gnanananda Hall. Narada Gana Sabha is of course the Trust which owns this hall, much the same way that Music Academy owns the TT Krishnamachari Auditorium. 

The Music Academy had also provided space for the Narada Gana Sabha in its early days. Actually not in its earliest days: for the first three years since its founding on February 9, 1958, the Narada Gana Sabha operated from 90, V.M. Street, Mylapore. It was only after that the Music Academy premises were used. From 1961 to 1988, the Music Academy was the home of the Sabha's performances. 

It was in 1988 that this Hall was inaugurated. Why it took 13 years from the laying of the foundation stone in 1975 to its opening in 1988 can only be speculated upon. But ever since, this has been the Narada Gana Sabha for the folks of Chennai!

Saint from Baghdad

Just where Mount Road forks off to Dams Road, almost on the corner, is this little shrine set in a corner of a sandy patch. It is quite small and appears even smaller by being close to the Makkah Masjid, with its tall minaret dominating the vicinity. The Dargah-e-Hazrat Syed Moosa Shah Khaderi is much older than the Masjid, having been around since the 17th century, by one account. Syed Moosa Shah was a Khaderi mystic, who came to Madras from Baghdad. In course of time, Shah Baghdadi was sought after for his cures, and, after he died, the Dargah was built over his tomb.

Legends grew around the Dargah. One such tells the tale of a British engineer who wanted to demolish the Dargah to widen Mount Road. The workers refused to do anything more after their initial attempts at digging saw blood spurting from the soil. The engineer insisted and was instantly dead. Since then, there have presumably been no attempts to dig around the Dargah, which could be one reason why the sandy patch remains around it.

Despite its size, this is one of the most popular shrines in Chennai. Being right on the main road, it has attracted several prominent Chennai citizens - the most globally recognizable among them being AR Rahman, who visits this Dargah every Thursday - if he is in Chennai!