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Laya LaavanyA , the trust started by doyen shri UKS , one of the greatest mrudangam artist has been doing a fanta fabulous job of bringing more and more mrudangam artists to the kutcheri pandal. Few years back I have witnessed where 2 sishyas of UKS ,ammangudi ??narayanan(little old in 20's
) and sudarsan (perhaps a 9th or 10th std then), yesterday it was shreyas who is perhaps a year or two younger than sudarsan, he was more a 14 year old complan boy.mannargudi V shreyas in mrudangam was accompanied by suryaprakash in vocal, MA sundareswaran in violin and EM Subramaniam in ghatam
Having said that ,there was an intense collaboration by all to bring the best of this shreyas. The collaboration and little assistance was only given at few touch points to shreyas certainly this boy swam most of the time on his own.
1. Each of the other 3 artists had their share of attention to shreyas. The vocalist and violinist played a shade slower (usually both of them pass the baton as quickly as a 4 X 100 m olympic relay) , but never cut short any sangathis so that shreyas plays less.
2. There was a right spacing of songs giving young shreyas the right rest . The ruggedness of varnam in kalyani, minimal alApanai of nAttai with a round of lots of full toss swaras in aadi thAlam. The UKS school's perhaps most favourite krithi in mmgowlai where only neraval was sung giving an ample rounds of quick strokes being rupaka talam, wow I get goose pimples when I hear "jAtharoopa nibhaCelA "neraval and more importantly the rigorous onslaught of strokes just after neraval in that brilliant line "ditijALi vidaLana dInabandhO" . A quick well rounded athanA(dont know that tAlam) gave shreyas an oppurtunity to excel in very fast tempo. Then a first round of rest for shreyas
3. The submain was made more closer to main ,the MV krithi in simm madhyamam gave the mridangist to excel in mishra chApu which I think UKS is the greatest mridangist to play mishra chApu. Shreyas sparkled in both the krithi and swaras. Bringing submain closer to main was a nice move as it gives right spacing.
4. The fast sprint to main was sarasa sAma DhAnA clearly a darling krithi for any one ,shreyas played beautifully incidentally it was a smart move of the vocalist not to sing fast swaras , particularly stopped at few sangathis like hatamu jEsitivi.... that spacing gave an oppurtunity for shreyas to steal more strokes. Then a second round of rest.
5. The main was a big uphill climb, may be the tAlam is just easy as it is aadhibut the krithi is very difficult .This SS krithi and infact all song selections were chosen by UKS and Suryaprakash. This SS krithi starts in samam and shreyas had to watch for lakshyam with both vocalist and violinist ,having mastered for years in lakshanam with UKS. The neraval and swaras were beautifully structured giving lots of oppurtunities for the man of the match shreyas to dazzle. Infact MAS gave sweet returns and EMS decided to jump only at few places but it was mostly shreyas. The krithi post alApana was sung for 25 full minutes.
6. What a thunderous tani it was , this boy played for full 30 minutes ,the first round itself was for 5 minutes , like that it went for atleast 6 rounds, ems kept it very short and then the usual finish back to the krithi, the tani and main was for 55 minutes and there was very sound sound.
7. 40 minutes speech and garlanding , UKS took half of the time to speak and then psn spoke . The garlanding by PSN (for suryaprakash),M Chandrasekaran (for MAS),Srinivasan (mridangist sishya of PMI who is a teacher , he is 80 +, for shreyas) , to top it all MS anantharaman blessed the 4th garland and handed over to PSN who in turn garlanded EMS. In short elders above 75 + blessed this kid a lot and appreciated all the artists.
8. THere was just a 15 to 20 minute tukkada covering the evergreen sindhubhairavi and dhanashri tillana.
. For the first time I felt I was old :rolleyes:
