Talk at Kalakshetra

[sweetsong]

A talk about the music of Maharaja Swati Tirunal by Prince Rama Varma

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d1eDvAIKUk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2yf9EfzUsg

[Rsachi]

The prince has indeed a great communication style, and makes so many interesting points. Thanks for sharing.

I do have a small counterpoint to his criticism of the use of raga Mohana at a particular point by Semmangudi in Bhavayami. He makes the point that the raga is totally unsuitable to sing the words AtiGhoraShurpanakhaa..

However allow me to give the entire stanza sung in Mohana below:
vitatadaNDakAraNyagatavirAdhadaLanaM
sucaritaghaTajadattAnupamitavaiSNavAstram
patagavarajaTAyunutaM pa~ncavaTIvihitAvAsaM
atighOrashUrpaNakhAvacanAgatakharAdiharam ||

Meaning:
Free Translation: who killed the demon virAdha, who was residing in the vast daNDaka forest; who received the unparalleled and divine weapon belonging to viSNu, presented to him by the illustrious sage agastya; who was worshiped by jaTAyu, the king of birds; and who, dwelling in pa~ncavaTI, killed the demons led by the fierce khara, instigated by the bad words of shUrpaNakha, the sister of rAVaNa. (From carnatica.net)
We can therefore see that the stanza covers many episodes. Principally, this stanza shows how after banishment to the forest, Rama & co. are coming to terms with the life in the forest, filled as it is with encounters and blessings. Therefore Mohana is perhaps an apt raga to show how the story moves on. Mohana gives a connectivity to the narrative.
And what about the reference to ati ghora!? In that episode, we see the humorous aspect of the story, wherein the demoness comes in a comely disguise to win the love of Rama. The way the dialogue proceeds and finally how her nose is cut off by Lakshmana is a stock scene in Ramayana presentations to show "HAASYA" rasa. Mohana is eminently suited to that!

And the compound word AtiGhoraShurpanakhaa is a reference to her appearance bleeding and all to Khara's court to instigate him to revenge.

I won't even go into the musical aspect as this song is one of the masterpieces of tuning by Semmangudi.

Let me leave it at that.

Now I am happy to share a wonderful presentation of the classic Bhavayami by Amrutha Venkatesh, the prince's protégé!

http://youtu.be/OeFAfGyG260

The second part shows up as you finish the first.

20+ minutes of pure bliss and I thank the prince for so kindly sharing it on the Internet.

[kvchellappa]

A nice writing.
I have heard the song so many times, just because MS has sung it, and I was listening to it oblivious of everything but Rama and MS. I never got any feeling of something jarring. Music is itself a language and we understand it without knowing any syllable of it in an academic sense. I remember my mother, who knows only Tamil, communicating effectively with a neighbour lady, who knew nothing but Bengali, in London where the lingua franca is quite different. SSI has said in Mr. Verma's presence, 'I have done according to my capacity.' I am sure Mr. Verma will not question SSI's musical capacity.
I must admit to being a layman in music.

[rshankar]

RSachi - thank you for the link.

Other than Smt. MSS', I really like Smt. Gayathri Girish's rendering of this masterpiece...with her absolutely spot-on sanskRt diction, it's a pleasure. But even she falls prey to the inappropriate splitting between nAbhOmaNi and tanuja (pampA tIrE saMgata AnjanEya nAbhOmaNi tanuja sakhya karam) and it feels like sugrIva is being cut in two (nAbhOmaNi tanuja - son of the Sun - while it was actually vAli who was, right??). Only Sri MDR sings it without this break, and his version is pure bliss, but even he struggles a bit to keep sugrIva intact!!

So, my only issue with Sri SSI's re-tuning this (I agree with RSachi - it is a masterpiece of tuning indeed!!) is with the choice of rUpaka as the tALam. IIRC, Keerthi once showed me how if the tALa was different, the words would fall very naturally without the need for these strange splits, but being the ignoramus I am, I do not remember the details.

[Rsachi]

Ravi,
It is REALLY a tongue twister and I wonder if Maharaja indeed intended it to be sung in the standard CM format.

My research some time ago showed that almost NONE of the singers or us listeners got all the word splits right. I remember a big vidwan advising someone to stay away from this song!
I like this very much: http://www.carnatica.net/special/bhavayami-ppn.htm

If it were not rupakam, I think it would have to be Dhrupad Dhamar (12 beats) that Swami Vivekananda composed the aaratrika to Ramakrishna in!

[Sreeni Rajarao]

This thread has motivated me to upload a recording I have been meaning to share with all of you for a long time.
(I had shared this back in 2007 or 2008 on Rapidshare) I hope you will not mind!

An instrumental version of this beautiful song performed by Veena Kinhal
http://youtu.be/L8fy-XLTSBA

You can also download this here:
https://archive.org/details/BhAvayAmiraghurAmam

[keerthi]

So, my only issue with Sri SSI's re-tuning this (I agree with RSachi - it is a masterpiece of tuning indeed!!) is with the choice of rUpaka as the tALam.

Ravi,
It is REALLY a tongue twister and I wonder if Maharaja indeed intended it to be sung in the standard CM format.

If by 'Standard carnatic' format we mean the 1 1/2 eduppu snappy compositions of Patnam Subrahmanyayyar and his disciple Mysore Vasudevacarya, or the equally snappy scooter-speed [if not motorcycle speed] renditions by Ariyakudi, Semmangudi etc; I would wonder along with you, sachi.

There was a strongly original, distinct aesthetic to the music of Kerala - the music of KathakaLi and kUDiyATTam and their other countless forms that are clearly within the nATya-shAstra's framework. The music of the sOpAna singers, as well as the music embodied by the pitifully few compositions of Swati tirunal gotten from older sources, people's whose pAThAntarams predate SemmanguDi's, Mutthayya bhagavatar's and to a lesser degree the Musiri-Alathur-KVN contribution to the 'revival' of Swati Tirunal; is indeed quite different from your standard carnatic format.


The langorous beauty of Devadeva kalayAmi in the sOpAnam style, in a misra chApu [or better tripuTa tAla] gait; wherein the structure of the song is at its natural best, conforming to the positions of the yati perfectly; the scope it offers for bringing out the bhAva , while one does a neraval-vinyAsa at the caranam along the lines of -
mamAkhila-pAtaka-sancayam iha vAraya!
janmArjitam mamAkhila- pAtaka-sancayam iha vAraya!
karuNayA pAtaka-sancayam iha vAraya! etc

is impossible in the standard carnatic format, especially in the prevalent foxtrot tisram gait of the song. As long as we can all very loudly agree that the lyric is insignificant, and the universal appeal of the music is what matters, we needn't care if dEva deva is sung in tisram , misram or even khaNDa cApu!

The unsuitability of rUpaka for dEvadEva kalayAmi is evident, if one tries to sing the other caranams of the song. Some of my personal yardsticks to test the authenticity/ suitability of a certain pAtham, is to see if the yati and prAsAkSaras are in place, if the Avarta symmetry is in place, if the tune is in synchrony with any yamakanuprasa patterns, if the sAhitya syllables are distributed logically and felicitously, and if all caranams fit into the same harmonious flow.

Similarly the rUpaka tAla version of bhAvayAmi is a blinding example for a song retuned in a straitjacketed fashion. The document you give a link to, written by Prof. PPN, gives the original tAla as rUpaka. However, I remember reading it to have been jhampa [Will recollect my source soon]. This too, I have a problem with. The song in no way fits into a jhampa tAla structure, and I suspect the original text may have said jhOmpaTa, which translates to Adi tAla.

In my experience, I have found a misra chApu (h)Asu to be the most suitable gait for bhAvayAmi raghurAma, keeping in mind the criteria I list above. Your grouse about it being a tongue-twister/ wordy will all disappear if you hear/ sing this version. It flows as smoothly as Jayadeva's honey or Ksetrayya's moonlight.

It is similar insensitivities of musician-performers-tunesmiths that has mutilated smarajanaka shubhacarita to have a 5 Avarta pallavi, the fifth Avarta is like an unsightly extra limb. There are perfectly sensible pAThas of the song that use four and 8 Avarta cycles for the song.

By extending this insensitivity towards the structural and lyrical elements of the song to the melodic domain, we have genius musicians from our times, who choose to tune Swati tirunal's malahari piece in Ranjani, and a ghaNTa piece in vAgadhIswari.

They only follow in the glorious footsteps of their intellectual predecessors who tuned Swati tirunal's songs in the incongruous kuntalavarAli, hamsAnandi, mOhanakalyANi (lovely tune, no doubt), navarasakannada. I am surprised that no one thought of kathanakutuhalam. But wait, justice has been done, kathanakutuhalam has been used to tune annamacarya's songs!


I am sure many of these songs have very captivating tunes. But why impute them onto a song from a different age? Please compose your own lyrics in whichever language, on which ever theme, and feel free to tune them willy-nilly in the best 22th century ragas of your choice.

I sincerely hope at least some of us notice the historical violence of such anachronistic tunes and rAga choices.

[CRama]

Has Prince or his Guru Balamuraligaru retuned Bhavayami and sung by any of his disciples. If not done already, that day may not be far off.

[Rsachi]

Keerthi, you're so right. In God's own country, they have a different scale for time. Look at Mohiniattom.
Mishra for Bhavayami!? I thought it fits best a 4+4+4 cycle.

[keerthi]

4 + 4 + 4 is a threefold symmetry. This song has two fold symmetry about the yati axis.

[Rsachi]

Sorry I don't know enough to map it here. So I will go with what you say. I would surely be very keen on listening to the song presented in Mishram