Srimushnam Raja Rao – Lec-dem, OVK academy trust, Oct 12

[hamsaa]

Lec-dem by Srimushnam Raja Rao
Vocal support: R Raghavendra
Violin: Rahul
Mrdangam: Shankaranarayanan and Venkata Subramaniam


A different role donned by Srimushnam Raja Rao was a treat to the audience and it was refreshing to see him take centre stage as vocalist and share invaluable insights about Oottukkadu Venkata Kavi and his compositions and cover some of the rhythmic perspectives in these compositions.
Srimushnam Raja Rao started his lec-dem with the song in Gowla – set to Adi talam - sEnApatE namOstutE, that starts after six units and has a lovely samashti charanam and madhyamakalam.

He then demonstrated how Venkata Kavi has filled the rhythmic spaces in a song starting after 2 units from samam with intelligent usage of lyrics in the composition – maNi noopura dhAri (Neelambari – Adi) where the following has been used as a prefix to mani noopura dhari to arrive at the finish of the 2 unit space from samam.

Mani Noopura dhari
(gana) Mani noopura….
(kinkini gana) Mani noopura….
(kankana kinkini gana) Mani noopura….

Similarly he also demonstrated the usage of the 18 units starting from half point of the Adi tala finishing 2 units away from samam in pAl vaDiyum mukham (Nattaikkuranj – Adi) where the lyrical syllables themselves add upto the three 6’s used – tadheengiNatom

Kaninduruha varam taruha param karuNai … (pAl vaDiyum)

He also spoke briefly about Venkata Kavi’s birth and the story of how he got Lord Krshna’s grace and started composing. Some of the other beautiful compositions presented included brndAvana nilayE (Reetigowla) – where Krshna’s dance on Kaleeya is described in the charanam madhyama kalam interspersed with lovely jatis and svarams; nAda murali gAna vilOla (Hameer kalyani) – a composition in Adi tishra gati that changes to chaturashra gati in the charanam and again had interesting jatis and svarams and another song with gati change - ati nirupama sundarAkara. Shri Raja Rao also displayed his laya skills through interesting svarams and korvais for this song that was followed by a short tani avartanam.

He also spoke about Venkata Kavi’s contributions through different genres of compositions handled that include viruttams, shlokams, eulogies on various personalities such as Anjaneya, Nrsimha, Jayadeva etc, Kamakshi Navavarana Kritis and Saptaratna Kritis. He also mentioned about the ragams used by Venkata Kavi such as Takkeshi pan, Paras, Dvijavanti, Umabharanam, even in the pre-trinity period.

Shri Raja Rao ended the concert with 2 beautiful and short compositions – Gambheera NadaiyOdu (Ananda bhairavi) and a Kavadi Chindu.
His team that included his son Raghavendra, his disciples Shankaranarayanan and Venkata Subramaniam and the violinist Rahul, provided apt support and added great value to the lec-dem.

[chitravina ravikiran]

Thank you for sharing the info. I must place on record the immense help that Shri Raja Rao rendered in mid-1980s when he came to know of my interest in Venkata Kavi. He shared several songs of Venkata Kavi that he had obtained from NKB and also gave me quite a lot of insights with respect to NKB's approach to the composer.

It is definitely known that he is a very accomplished vocalist. We used to have many interesting musical sessions while travelling but I am glad that he was invited for this presentation.