BSU 2014 - Abhishek Raghuram 7th Nov 2014

[bhaskaran19]

Abhishek Raghuram concert at Narada Gana Sabha
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Bharath Sangeeth Utsav 2014, Chennai -7th November 2014
Abhishek Raghuram
Mysore V Srikanth – Violin
Anantha R Krishnan - Mirudangam
The genius began with a lovely Sahana followed by class Kalyani. The next one came with brilliant Jana Ranjani.
Then master piece of the evening was certainly unexplored RTP - laavaNya raamaa in pUrnashadjam – an extraordinary performance wherein Mysore Srikanth was finding difficult to keep pace with the ace singer. The next one and hours the audience were spell bound and one of the rasika went on the extent of asking for raaga (since this very rarely heard in concerts) during the middle of the concert itself..
Abhishek showed his immense skill and craft and certainly a gifted artist and his presentations is astounding with freshness and uniqueness.
Then there was spirited thani by Anantha R. Krishnan
The list of songs
1) Nijamuga Nee - Raga Sahaana
2) srI madurAmbikE – kalyANi
3) Nannu Brova Rada Jana Ranjani
4) RTP - laavaNya raamaa pUrnashadjam
5) srInivAsa tiruvenkaTa hamsaanandi
6) Kanthanodu Neelambari
This concert will be cherished by everyone for a long period

[rajeshnat]

O gosh , the start was at 04:45 Pm could not go from work so early. I recollect last year when Mahesh3 made a post about his poornashadjam pallavi somewhere else , that is certainly a miss that too with anantha in percussion

[mahavishnu]

Yes, Rajesh. I too have heard of this amazing poornashadjam pallavi that he does.
BTW, what happened to Mahesh3? I haven't seen his posts in a while.

Again it looks like the youtube video has been taken down (just like Bharat Sundar's concert).

[mkal]

It was over a year ago, but Abhishek did perform an RTP in Poornashadjam (well Tanam was by Sri. B.U. Ganesh Prasad) in Cary, NC last fall. I think it was the same pallavi sahitya. I do recall there being a wrinkle in the tala. IIRC the original plan was to render it in khanda jati triputa (chatusra nadai), but, Abhishek said that would have been too simple for the mridangist Sri. Neyveli Narayanan , so he switched it on the spot to Adi tala but with the laghu rendered in khanda nadai and the drutams in chatusra nadai (I am laya challenged but I recall thinking that he basically switched the jati and nadai in the laghu part). The team made it look like child's play! Not sure if that was recorded. Looks like he has a fondness for that ragam

[sureshvv]

There was an added cognitive load for the audience of a griha bedham/madhyama sruti that made the raga sound too much like kuntalavarali for comfort. Although the audience was highly appreciative, I thought the RTP fell short since the raga chaya was not conveyed in full.

[mahavishnu]

There was an added cognitive load for the audience of a griha bedham/madhyama sruti that made the raga sound too much like kuntalavarali for comfort

Suresh: Not sure I follow. Did he sing the ragam in madhyamasruti or was the grahabedam done using M1 as shadjam? In any case, I wonder how would either of these lead to a sAyal of kuntalavarali.

Does the M1 N2 jump (seen commonly phrases in lavanya rama and certain versions of gananayakam) that is characteristic of poornashadjam somehow seem like the S M1 leap seen in kuntalavarali? The intervals between these notes are not equivalent, which is the reason for my question.

[sureshvv]

Did he sing the ragam in madhyamasruti or was the grahabedam done using M1 as shadjam?

I think it was the latter. And the madhyamasruti was amplified on the sruti box.

Does the M1 N2 jump (seen commonly phrases in lavanya rama and certain versions of gananayakam) that is characteristic of poornashadjam somehow seem like the S M1 leap seen in kuntalavarali?

Yes.. This was it.

The intervals between these notes are not equivalent, which is the reason for my question.

Can you explain? 5 note jump, no?

[Ranganayaki]

Did he sing the ragam in madhyamasruti or was the grahabedam done using M1 as shadjam?

I think it was the latter. And the madhyamasruti was amplified on the sruti box.

I checked this out. It cannot have been a grihabhedam done using m1 as shadjam. A grihabhedam always involves an initial raga and a target raga. Here the target raga would be Purnashadjam. There was no mention of an initial raga. Also if you work back from the target raga (Purnashadjam) considering that its shadjam is the madhyama of another raga, you do not arrive at any raga as the there is no shadjam that is present among the notes arrived at.

So the answer to the question had to be that it was Madhyamasruti using M1 as shadjam, not grihabhedam using M1 as shadjam. Please correct me if I have jworked it out wrong.

It occurs to me now that this could just be an inadvertent mix up "former" and "latter".

The intervals between these notes are not equivalent, which is the reason for my question.

Suresh is right, the intervals are equal.

[mahavishnu]

I agree that the intervals are the same. My bad. I even tried it out on my son's piano!

But Ranganayaki, I don't understand your post at all.
By shifting to madhyamasruti in the middle of a piece initially set to S, you are making M1 as shadjam. This is the equivalent to doing grahabedam using M1 as your adhara shadjam. So, the target ragam becomes kuntalavarali and when he comes back to his original shadjam he returns to poornashadjam, his initial raga.

[Ranganayaki]

This could be a misunderstanding with the person who told me about this concert. I was texting with someone who had been to the concert and it was my understanding that Purnashadjam itself was sung in madhyama shruti (I could not say why, as I know Lavanya Rama. It seemed contrived and did not make sense.).. they told me of a confusion with kunthalavarali, just a kuntalavaraliesque feeling and not that there was an overt or intentional grihabhedam. The person I was talking to spoke of this confusion and my explanation was that it could happen if you lose sight of the position of the adhara shadjam. When I wrote here, I was aware that you could do a grihabhedam to kuntalavarali by dropping the avarohanam pa of purnashadjam but not that it was actually done. My writing here only meant that singing purnashadjam at madhyamashruti (which did not happen, apparently) could not have been a grihabhedam.

I hope you are able to make sense of it.

Just the hazards of a clipped texted conversation without proper grammar. Sorry. I should have just kept quiet.