Senior North American Students of Kalaimamani A. Kanyakumari

[suma]

Senior North American Students of Kalaimamani A. Kanyakumari gave a concert in San Francisco on Nov 13, 2011.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pwtUAaMEv8

[suma]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edp8FcZm6YY

SrI Viswanatham Bhajeham in fourteen Ragas, set to Adi Tala. The sequence of fourteen Ragas that appear in this Ragamalika are Sriragam, Arabhi, Gowri, Nata, Gowla, Mohanam, followed by viloma swaras (rendering of swaras in the reverse order of Ragas). The second half contains Sama, Lalita, Bhairavam, Saranga, Sankarabharanam, Kambhoji, Devakriya, Bhoopalam, followed again by viloma swaras, and finally ending in the commencing Raga, Sriragam. This composition is in praise of Lord Viswanatha, of the temple located in the village kuzhikkarai, near Tiruvarur, Tamilnadu.

[rshankar]

kuzhikkarai (not kulikkarai) right!

Yes - on the banks of the garta (the waters of which are famed to cure even leprosy), reside annapUrNa and viSvanAtha - the sAma kRti, annapUrNE viSAlAkshi is also on the devi at kuzhikkarai (unnata gartA tIra vihAriNI).
SrI viSvanAtham bhajEham - the best version I have heard is from Ms. Kanyakumari's guru, Smt. MLV.

[suma]

Thanks rshankar, fixed it.
MLV sings this very well

[ramakriya]

The program was part of Vivrti festival, held in Ohlone College, Fremont, CA.

[vasanthakokilam]

I listened to Chakkani Raja and Chaturdasa Ragamalika. They sounded great, playing together so well.

[davalangi]

Kalaimamani A.Kanyakumari rendered the caturdasa ragamalika in her Sruti concert recently. It should be pointed out that the arabhi lines are part of the pallavi of the ragamalika. Singing gowri immediately after arabhi without reverting back to sri ragam (and thus making it implicitly a part of the anupallavi) is plain wrong. Unfortunately this practice seems to be getting perpetuated

[appu]

Davalangi,

So what else is new??? No one to question them.

[suma]

http://www.karnatik.com/c1419.shtml

This notation also shows that we dont go back to pallavi. According to this notation, there is no anupallavi. It is just pallavi and charanams.
Just for my curiosity, can u post 2 recordings of top tier artists that have gone back to Sri Ragam after arabhi before going into Gowlai? Atleast this way we know that there may be 2 schools of thoughts here with regards to this song.

[appu]

Wow, Mods,

So much censorship. What happened to the post by Mri_Fan. I think his/her question was completely valid. Especially when Suma is asking for 2 Sangita Kalanidhis to prove her point.

You guys don't play fair.

[vasanthakokilam]

appu, no censorship. The edits are to keep the focus on the topic of the thread and not get into personal conflicts and nit-picking. There is no more a SK reference, changed to 'top-tier'. Let the focus be on debating and figuring out the structure of that ragamalika ( since this was done to keep the focus on the topic, let us not discuss the mod action here in this thread since that will defeat the purpose of the mod action )

[ShrutiLaya]

I'm curious though .. is there no authoritative reference version of this krithi? It is a MD krithi, not something from some ancient or obscure composer. Why do we have to go by how many people, SK or not, sang it one way or the other?

- Sreenadh

[venkatpv]

I'm curious though .. is there no authoritative reference version of this krithi? It is a MD krithi, not something from some ancient or obscure composer. Why do we have to go by how many people, SK or not, sang it one way or the other?

- Sreenadh

Of course there is! Shri Vishwanatham is the first ragamalika listed in the Anubandham of the Sangeetha Sampradaya Pradarshini. The English translation is available here http://www.ibiblio.org/guruguha/ssp_append.pdf. It says clearly at the end of the Pallavi to go back to "Sri Visva". Then comes the Anupallavi with 4 ragams, and then the 1/2 avarthanam each of all 6 ragams in the reverse order joining back to the Shri ragam portion of the pallavi. Then the charanam with 8 ragams, and then 1/2 avarthanam each of all 14 ragams and back to Shri ragam. The idea is that each successive portion of the ragamalika has double the number of ragams as the previous portion.

[suma]

venkatpv - Thank you so much for the clarification and link to the text.

[narayan]

It should be pointed out that the arabhi lines are part of the pallavi of the ragamalika.

davalangi and venkatpv,

The sahitya pages on
http://guruguha.org/?page_id=8
do not indicate that the arabhi lines are part of the pallavi.

For people like me, finding sources is a problem and we tend to go by what our teachers tell us, in the first instance. Later, some views change, depending on what one reads and is convinced by.

[davalangi]

Narayan - The original telugu version of the SSP has arabhi as part of the pallavi. There are recordings of Dr.S.Ramanathan and Musiri where they sing arabhi as part of the pallavi. SRJ, who learnt it from Tiruppamburam Swaminatha Pillai at the Govt. College of Music sings arabhi as part of the pallavi. More recently, I have also heard TMKrishna and RKShriramkumar sing the krithi along the same lines.

On guruguha.org, Dr.PPN had originally compiled Sanskrit and English sahitya in PDF format from various sources - that is the link you have provided in your post. The link that venkatpv has provided is the English translation of the SSP compiled by Dr.PPN and Vidya Jayaraman.

[keerthi]

1. The people that learnt it from Sri tiruppamburam swAminAtha pillai, who can trace the pAThAntara back to SAtanUr panju bhagavatar AND suddhamaddalam tambiyappa, students of MD, can endorse that he sang it with the pallavi anupallavi caranam structure with a winsome symmetry of 2 + 6 + 8 rAga-s, that is not seen in this other MLV version.

My teacher Smt. Sakuntala Narasimhan, and Prof. SRJ would fall in this category.


2. The kolkata school, whose teacher anantakRSNayyar learnt from ambi dIkSitar, and taught worthies like Kalpagam Swaminathan of late lamented memory, also sings it this way.

3. Musiri and his students [Mani Krishnaswamy, the two sugunas] go a step further, and sing the pallavi with srI and Arabhi, and then sing the Arabhi and srIrAga bits from the ending cascade - smaraharam paramashivam.. in ArabhI and sarasa-sadayhRdayanilayam.. in srIrAgam.

Incidentally all three threads don't sing the swara passages for the second half each rAga. That is after shritajana-samsara-bhItyapaham, they don't go p,m,grrs.. they go straight into AdhyAtmikAdi..

4.MLV and Prof. S. Ramanathan both sing the swara passages as well as continue from ArabhI into gaurI.


5. Internal evidence for the pallavi anupallavi structure is found from the dvitIyAksara-prAsa concord of srIviswanAtha and srIvisAlAkSI.

[suma]

Thanks everyone for the valuable feedback. So the consensus is that this song does have the pallavi, anupallavi and charanam structure and the arabhi part belongs to pallavi.

However, since seniors like MLV have song in one way while other leading seniors have sung it in another way, a student either follows how he/she was taught or learns what he/she was taught and then modifies to follow the scriptures (written text) for this song.

[venkatpv]

There is one more difference between the MLV version and the SSP version. The Gaula, Mohanam portions in the Anupallavi are 1.5 avarthanams each in the SSP, but MLV stretches each of them to 2 avarthanams. Similarly in the charanam, Shankarabharanam, Kambhoji, Devakriya and Bhupalam are 1.5 each, but the MLV version stretches them to 2 each.

Singing it the SSP way keeps the Anupallavi to 2 + 2 + 1.5 + 1.5 = 7 avarthanams, and the Charanam to 4*2 + 4*1.5 = 14 avarthanams, thereby maintaining the theme of 14. It is, after all, a Caturdasha ragamalika.