Shertalai Ranganatha Sarma@Karthik Fine Arts on Jan 01st,2020

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rajeshnat
Posts: 10120
Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 08:04

Shertalai Ranganatha Sarma@Karthik Fine Arts on Jan 01st,2020

Post by rajeshnat »

Shertalai Ranganatha Sarma@Karthik Fine Arts on Jan 01st,2020
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Vocal : Shertalai Ranganatha Sharma
Violin : M R Gopinath
Mrudangam : K R Ganesh
Kanjira : S Venkataramanan

Concert Type : Nirvana and free
Time/Day : 6:45 pm to 09:00 pm ,Wednesday
Sabha/Hall : Karthik Fine Arts , BVB Mini Hall -1st floor

01. eDayya gati(RS,CS,S) -chAlanattai - KI
02. sAma gAna LOlanE sadA (S)- HindOlam -PSivan
5 mins swaras

03. karpaga maNOharA - malayamArutham -pSivan
04. kA vA vA (R,S)- varAli - pSivan
7 mins alapana and 4 mins violin return
9 mins swaras

05. Edukkittanai mODi - shuruTTi- Marimutha Pillai
06A. sreenivasa tava charanam (R,N,S,T)- kharaharapriya - pSivan
12 mins alapana and 6 mins violin return
neraval in kamalAja manOhara shree for 9 mins
swaras fro 9 mins
06B.tani for 19 mins

07. idhu thANo thillai stalam - behag -GKB
08. muralidhara gOpALA (R)- mAnd -Periasamy thooran
2 mins alapana

rajeshnat
Posts: 10120
Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 08:04

Re: Shertalai Ranganatha Sarma@Karthik Fine Arts on Jan 01st,2020

Post by rajeshnat »

It is year 2020. A new year for the 1.1 crore chennai vAsis but as such for say 10,000 carnatic rasikas who atleast plan to come to concert it is just the fag end of a margazhi 2019 concert series. I preferred to hear shertalai Ranganatha sharma and skip others .Being evening time this suited well for me.

Ranganatha sharma has a very very stentorian voice with maximum Masculinity . SAreeram is strong with an unwavering sruthi and zero fluctuation in delivery. Few years back i used to think the maximum male sAreeram was 3 way close tie of musicians like Ranganatha sharma , Maharajapuram Ramachandran and Sreevalsan Menon . Dr Menon not singing is our loss for entire chennai and I think ramachandran from the booming maharajapuram genre has not sung even a single concert in this series .

The season is slowly turning out to be more pro youngster series .CM Musicians are like IT software professionals so after an age till you become a lucky few where you have a very commanding senior to super senior stature , every vidwan/vidushi falls in the chasm . How not to fall in chasm is governed by presence of active social media marketing AND crowd pulling contextual marketing recurrent campaigns AND surreptitious positioning particularly with Big sabhas and Big media houses . IT is and that is what it is. Let me see how we all march from 2020 to 2030 with rasikas.org , i will get atleast 10 years older for sure,rest i dont know.

Ranganatha Sharma music needs a certain acclimatization , the throw is there with intense masculinity but you have to also bit forgive for his excessive madhyamakAla squat . He started with a lovely chalanattai . What a raga devathai is this chalanattai .Intrinsically the raga makes the musician throw bit more with his/her voice but there is a kind of gradual smoothness without sounding too sharp and chalanattai never pierces any rasikas ears . Thanks to himalayan greats like TRS and SKR who educated me with their brilliant chalanattai to start with and 2 lovely musicians of today who have sung chalanattai. They are Sanjay and ABhishek . He sang a brief alapana and for the first time i got it as chalanattai even before he began eDyaya gati. Ranganatha sharma sang beautifully this KI masterpierce edayya gati , his stentorian voice and a bit of zig zag vivadhi sounded great.

Hindolam was next .Shivan sanskritized krithi which will appear bit confusiing till the end as though sivan is possibly written this krithi as a thamizh krithi . The great Papanasam sivan is not just a full time tamil thyagayyar but he is also a part time sanskrit thyagayyar . It is joy to hear a slightly racy hindOlam. Who in the world will not like Hindolam and i liked his rendition of sAmagANa lOlanE sadAsiva with a great swara dose that came out well

This sabha and hall BVB is a sabha/hall where most musicians have a tunnel vision where they only see kapALi And/Or karpagambAl. Karpaga manOhara came in not as mALay breeze but came in too short with less of breeze . The throw was there but the breeziness was bit missing, and the krithi was just a krithi with neither swaras, neraval or raga alapana.

Varali was detailed but sharma did not cover extensive rugged varali nyasa rasa undulations . Blame it on me , i am so used to semmangudi and varAli and that grinding roughness of varAli that supernova semmangudi gave in the past continues as one significant frame of reference.Sharma was not taking that much risk in varALi excessive gradual smoothening did not yield the best of varali. He detailed out with out much abrasive sangathis and sancharas that i expect from varali and kA va VA. There was a slight caution being thrown out in swaras but not enough to get that rugged varAli rasa. In short varali even though detailed in time was not a detailed varali for me.

Thamizh moovar marimutha pillai came in as a shuruTTI number . Shurutti is a Difficult raga to impress , i felt ranganatha sharma could have done better justice to this krithi and raga. Lovely kharaharapriya as main came in next . COmplete madhyamakala squat for most time but voice was deep, resonant and the krithi sreenivas tava charana suited him so much. Ranganatha sharma approach is never take any sudden octave shift risk , all were tailored appropriately as per his premeditated plan . All said this krithi was well done by sharma and i enjoyed his kharaharapriya.

Both the tukkadas were systemic and neat.The voleti voice typecast was very much there in the behag and the very hindustanized mAnd alapana gave max voleti effect . It is so many years since i heard muralidhara gopala , i recollect that i even heard this number from the tigress MLV in a live concert before she moved on. MAnd was well done and sharma ended with me WAnd ing more , but it was sharp 9pm. No risk of not even extending by another 1 minute for a nee nama roopamulaku

Ranganatha sharma had 2 disciples supporting him at discrete intervals . THe one who sang for kharaharapriya swaras did well and the other in tambura sang few alapana work in progress sangathis . Kumbakonam M R gopinath played very well and since the whole concert was near madhyamakAlam squat he showed his class for most part . Late KUmbakonam rajappa iyer is the GURU doyen of mrudangam in the last millenium, most of his students are playing right now in concert circuit, we owe him a lot . Rajappa Iyer's son K R ganesh did manage well, he had nice understanding of the krithi and he went with the right RIGHT rolls to most of the songs suiting the song . S Venkataramanan is perhaps a very under rated high performance kanjira star. He blinks most of the time , passes most of the first half giving more space to mrudangam , but when situation demands he gives flurry of strokes which happened more in the second half. Tani was detailed to eat away a portion of the concert but there was lot of sowkhyam , one never felt running away at any point in time .

All said , this lovely musician Ranganatha Sharma with his deep masculine voice can bring in bit more yEtham irakkam in his delivery. HE is a brilliant musician to showcase his deep God Given sAreeram, but rasikas needs bit more acclimitization to understand his deep classicism . That perhaps explained a bit of challenge in him drawing crowds, it was Jan 01st in prime attention deficit syndromized mylapore (ADSM) , ranganatha sharma was in his yEn palli kondeer ayya srirangam mood of delivery, the mylapore ADSM ears needs a bit more hear tearing combination of say an abhang and/or a little more foot rhythmmic tapping thamizh tukkadA to hum back home - no chance to do that when he ended with muralidhara gOpALa.

Overall a very good to excellent concert for 2 hours and 15 mins.

Sivaramakrishnan
Posts: 1582
Joined: 02 Jan 2010, 08:29

Re: Shertalai Ranganatha Sarma@Karthik Fine Arts on Jan 01st,2020

Post by Sivaramakrishnan »

rajesh,
Refer to your concluding remarks:
"the mylapore ADSM ears needs a bit more hear tearing combination of say an abhang and/or a little more foot rhythmmic tapping thamizh tukkadA to hum back home"...

Let Ranganatha sarma continue with his present well-received fine formula.
Rasikas might not expect any foot tapping numbers from him.

arasi
Posts: 16873
Joined: 22 Jun 2006, 09:30

Re: Shertalai Ranganatha Sarma@Karthik Fine Arts on Jan 01st,2020

Post by arasi »

Sivaramakrishnan,
If I were you, I'd call that segment Rajesh's recurring refrain and dismiss it with a chuckle and read just the rest of the review... ;)

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