Aruna Sairam - Chembur Fine Arts 20 Feb 2011

[narayan]

Aruna Sairam (vocal)
Raghavendra Rao (violin)
J. Vaidyanathan (mridangam)
S. V. Ramani (ghatam) - 20 Feb 2011

The list as far as I could note, was
sAdhichene - Arabhi
bAgAyanayya - candrajyOti
sabhApati - Abhogi (preceded by viruttam) - starting with kripAnidhi, nerval at caranam and swaram at pallavi
kadanakutUhala rAgapriyE - kadanakutUhalam (pallavi venkatraman is what she announced)
subrahmanyEna - suddha dhanyasi - with raga alapana
kamalAmbika - Anandabhairavai (preceded by slokam)
ranga bAro - Arabhi
RTP in shanmukhapriya - Khanda Eka talam - 2 cycles (ragamalika swarams in bowli, nilambari and revati)
Post pallavi items (chosen from a sea of requests she received)

Listening to AS after a long time. Quite an experience. She was clearly fluish (slight runny nose and so forth) on the day, but delivered. Strong voice and an audience connect that was nothing short of electric. Home town singer (Mumbai origins) made good and glad to be back home and the audience was just lapping it all up.

Very neat and convincing song renderings, but in words of one syllable most of the time (i.e. very little to read between the lines). Booming voice that filled the hall and with modulations in volume and vibrattos at key points, clear enunciation of lyrics, emotive presentation and the works. The audience broke out into claps at various unexpected points. The mass participation was indeed something.

Raga alapanas were carefully done, and at that volume, no slip ups possible and none noticed, but nothing to write home about either. Pretty safe performance. Rather like scoring 330 runs on a flat track.

Kadanakutuhalam song was new to me (it's a raghuvamsasudha clone, for those who have not heard it). Not much to say, except that the cittaswaram had sahityam also. Otherwise seemed pretty standard lyrics to me, without adding much to the corpus in this raga. AS sang SR,MPD,M,G,MGGR as the second sangati in the pallavi like most do, and which annoys me slightly. Shouldn't it be SR,MDN,G,P,MGGR in keeping with the aarohanam?

But I really appreciated her rapport with the audience and she announced almost all items either before or after and made sure that everyone was with her. This is one thing where I believe a lot of goodwill can be earned with many in the audience and I fully support her.

In my nostalgic mood, I remember being individually struck by the music of AS in the good old days, and used to be in a haze for a while, wondering about the beauty of some things. This was a different experience, inducing people-watching from my side, wondering about the raw emotional power and mass sentiment that some are able to generate and also why I myself am detached from this, to some extent. There is, of course, the overt religious content of some of the items and the explicitness of it all, which is a matter of taste, I guess.

[priyashekar]

I am not a big AS fan but that day she was at her best despite her cough and cold.She had the audience with her .She sang her standard bhakta jana vatsale ,bhagyada lakshmibharamma as a tribute to Pandit Bhimsen joshi,Yenna kavi,and Vishamakaara kannan on audience request and mangalam.Surprisingly no cow song or snake song(Harimau thanks) .She was the best out of the 3 followed by Sowmya and Sudha.