Veena Vidwan C K Shankara Narayana Rao of Mumbai

[Sreeni Rajarao]

My intentions of starting this thread are two fold:
1. To introduce Veena Vidwan C K Shanakra Narayana Rao (born Nov 18th, 1920) to the rasikas here.

2. To request Mumbai based rasikas to contact the 88 year old Vidwan who lives in Bhiwandi, to see if there is any opportunity to get his recordings and upload them.

Born in Nanjanagud, near Mysore, Shankara Narayana Rao, even as a child, had developed great passion for music. Owing to circumstances, he had to wait until he was about 21 years old to formally learn music! He trained for ten years under Veena Vidwan A S Chandrashekarayya, a direct disciple of the maestro Veena Sheshanna. Vidwan A S Chandra Shekarayya also happened to be a relative of Sri. Sheshanna (Subbamma, his paternal grandmother was Sheshanna's sister). Veena Raja Rao was his other guru.

Along with his Guru Chandrashekarayya, Shankara Narayana Rao had performed not only in the Mysore province, but also in Madras, Hyderabad, Poona, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Ajmer and Delhi.

In the year 1950, he established Tarangini Music Academy in Mumbai. Over the years, he has trained several students in this academy.

C K Shankara Narayana Rao was one of the key organizers of Veena Sheshanna's 125th birth anniversary celebration in Mumbai (November 1978). Mr. Rao had coordinated hosting a big delegation of musicians from Mysore and Bangalore who had traveled to Mumbai. This group had included his Gurus Chandra Shekarayya and Raja Rao, vainikas Swaramurthy V N Rao (Veena Sheshanna's grand son) and Doreswami Iyengar.

In the year 1995, his students published a book written by him. "Veena - the instrument par excellence" is a valuable book that deals with the history, evolution, science and art of veena. This book contains some rare pictures depicting the veena in sculptures of ancient South Indian temples.
In the year 1999, the book was translated into kannada and published by the Karnataka Sangita Nritya Academy. (This book was available as recently as 2006 December at Ankita book house in Gandhi Bazar, Bangalore)

Vidwan Shankara Narayana Rao has also composed many kritis in kannada and samskruta language, some in rare rAgas like sunAda and manOhari.

I had communicated by mail with the senior vainika about two years ago.
I hope some Mumbai based rasika will come forward to connect the other rasikas on this forum with the senior vainika.

Please contact me by email so I can share his address with you.