chalanATa - 36th sampUrna mElakarta

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SrinathK
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Joined: 13 Jan 2013, 16:10

chalanATa - 36th sampUrna mElakarta

Post by SrinathK »

Or chalanATTai as we tamizhs love to ai-fy it. :D (this is to aid searchability). I have to again differentiate this from the asampUrna school because their 36th mElakarta is actually the rAga we know as nATa, using D3 as well and they also called it chalanATa. The asampUrna chalanATa was the original nATa (or nATTai as we call it in tamizh). The sampUrna raga is linear in both ascent and descent and differs completely in the descent.

Nevertheless you will see a lot of nATa phrases coming in compositions in chalanATa because of this original confusion. Not only that, nATa has since then gone on to abandon the D3 in many versions, so that makes a total of 3 ragas now.

So mahA vaidyanatha iyer had explored this briefly in this 72 mEla rAgamAlika (sampUrna). I was able to find a recording of MS Amma exploring the final set of shuddha madhyama ragas here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvyNgeyq9II (recording quality not so good, too flat).

Koteeswara Iyer and M Balamuralikrishna were among the first to compose in the sampUrna chalanATa IIRC. It was only due to efforts by musicians like S Rajam (who's 100th year is running) that the 72 sampUrna ragas started growing out of the theory.

So here's Koteeswara Iyer's composition Edayya gati in chalanATa - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsCiUgX9u1E - by Sandeep Narayan (from his Youtube channel)

And played by MSG : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5nkB4RBmpg
MLV's rendition : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XoJCvdIjHI

As a bonus, here's a tirukkuraL (tuned by Ravikiran in that world record attempt) in chalanATa : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYwtlamxU3k

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