vEgavAhini - Thyagaraja, Dikshitar and others

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SrinathK
Posts: 2477
Joined: 13 Jan 2013, 16:10

vEgavAhini - Thyagaraja, Dikshitar and others

Post by SrinathK »

First an introduction to the raga vEgavAhini, the 16 asampUrna mElakarta raga, from Acharyanet : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trSZI2ZboFE

Bringing up this raga makes you raise a question because both Thyagaraja and Dikshitar have compositions in it (Thyagaraja has quite a few compositions in the Dikshitar school of ragas, so that's another sign that the divergence between their schools began to get significant only post Trinity and a lot of changes happened to the tunes and raga names far beyond the ragas and compositions that Thyagaraja himself created).

That and a few other compositions in vEgavAhini (vinAyaka vighna nAshaka and gajAnanayutam) are under dispute (more doubts exist on gajAnanayutam as it is far more chakravAkam than vEgavAhini. vinAyaka vighna nAshaka uses both SRGM and SMGM). There has been some discussion on that here before.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=8295&p=106001&hilit ... ni#p106001

So anyway, for Thyagaraja and vEgavAhini
challaga nAtO :- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4oUzgJS5i0

ETulabrOvu is right now sung in chakravAkam, but let's hope there's an original version out there somewhere that might come out one day and settle history.

So the definitive kriti in vEgavAhini is Dikshitar's veeNA pustaka dhArini, which has been a masterpiece of Brinda Mukta and MS Amma -

So here's Smt. Rama Ravi (disciple of T Brinda) singing it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr60VPdWoLQ - from First Edition Fine Arts Channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpCDPShdgVM - MS Amma

Notice how the Thyagaraja kriti is more chakravAkam than anything else.

Anyway, to wrap it up, the GNB school was the one who popularized vinAyaka vighna nAshaka - so here we are
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXklwDjBKKQ - GNB
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeej06-Yqzc - MLV from 1955 (You can see the swaras are all chakravAkam) - Still, it's a scorching rendition.

SrinathK
Posts: 2477
Joined: 13 Jan 2013, 16:10

Re: vEgavAhini - Thyagaraja, Dikshitar and others

Post by SrinathK »

This being S Rajam's centenary year :- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVSYYyCPnUE

SrinathK
Posts: 2477
Joined: 13 Jan 2013, 16:10

Re: vEgavAhini - Thyagaraja, Dikshitar and others

Post by SrinathK »

Ramaswamy Dikshitar has also composed a song on Lord Venkateshwara for restoring the eyesight of his son. As it turns out there is a rendition of it out there by Sumitra Vasudevan : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E-xPRQyeSY - this is the SSP version through and through.

There is one more kriti of Dikshitar out there - vArAheem vaishnaveem. Of which I found an old style recording here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3o5eaSXugU

While a chakravaham-ised version also exists. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WenmzO2v17Q

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