gaurimanOhari

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SrinathK
Posts: 2477
Joined: 13 Jan 2013, 16:10

gaurimanOhari

Post by SrinathK »

Alternate spellings : gowrimanOhari, gauri manOhari, gowri manOhari

I looked everywhere and to my surprise there was no thread on gaurimanOhari. This rAgA is the 23rd sampUrna mElakarta, in the 4th chakra of the 72 sampUrna mElakarta system(vEda chakra - after the 4 vEdas)defined so :

Aro : S R2 G2 M1 P D2 N3 S
Ava : S N3 D2 P M1 G2 R2 S

The 23rd rAgAnga rAga in the asampUrna school is gauri vElAvali - and it's quite different in phrases. As is the norm for my rAga sojurns, Dikshitar's system of rAgAs has its own thread.

Now I have talked a lot about the phrases of ragas in gauri and ghaNTA(ravam) in my last 2 posts. But those were phrase based rAgAs, defined by key phrases. You just couldn't do anything and everything you wanted with them. You had to have a keen understanding of the phrases and rAgA bhAva, the compositions in them and knowledge of different ways of interpreting the rAgA while still maintaining its recognizable identity and only then you could think of ways and styles of improvising swaras and the rAga.

This is where the modern approach to rAgAs reveals its biggest strength. It makes it very easy to form phrases of all kinds - short, long, linear, twisted, multiple notes, brighas, connecting far off notes, skipping notes, sequential patterns (3 octave plus elaboration, varying gamaka levels, using swaras in complicated rhythmic patterns, etc.etc. In other words, the full works : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamak_(music)

Notice that the definition of gamakas seems to have altered slightly from the pure veena-vocal techniques of phrasing a note to plot devices of what you can do with said notes as well.

Of course there are also some specific non-linear organic phrases in this particular chakra of ragas (e.g. GPM(P)-GR (G)RSS,,-DN,S) which can be sung and only enhance the rAgA and not sound out of place (of course, you'll have to listen to AlApanAs to get the feel of those phrases, not all of them can be literally turned into swaras as they use virtual notes).

This means I really cannot give you a phrase list for gauri manOhari (some of you will be thanking God I'm sure). There are too many even in one expansive AlApanA to properly capture in words. You are best advised to listen to the compositions, AlApanAs, neravals, swaras and RTPs and decode the phrases and that would be far more practical.

gaurimanOhari is a rAgA with enormous elaboration potential, IMHO a little more than keeravANi because that D2 has a wider range of possible motion compared to D1. But in practice it is underutilized and seems to have gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to stage opportunities, overshadowed by kharaharapriya (I joke that gauri manOhari is a victim of rAga sexism, having said that please kindly do not divert the thread :lol: ) and keeravANi (who uses some popular compositions to keep gaurimanOhari at a lower profile).

What we can do is talk about the role of the notes. The rAgA's most important distinguishing note is the D2, which gives it a lush, cool flavor, devoid of the introversion of keeravANi. Of course use of G2-R2 combination gives the rAgA great emotion, a bhakti bhava. The gamakas on G2 are very important to the identity of the rAga. G2 is almost always sung with oscillations and gamakas as a phrased note. The use of a plain G2 will be rarer compared to the oscillated G2 with kampita and vali (quite less than dharmavati, which has the excuse of M2 being far away and restricts the G2 as a result). IMHO plain G2 will probably used for a contrasting expression as it can change the mood of the rAgA significantly. Now note that nothing anywhere says you can't or shouldn't sing a plain G2, but it will need a little more skill and experience to nail it.

On either side of G2, R2 will be almost always plain, except for janTa (keeping in mind the gamakas on the G2). M1 is also a vital note, but it will mostly be a plain note when paired with G2, using heavy gamaka from G2 will make it sound more like bhairavi for a split second, so that's usually avoided. M1 however will use nokku and kampita when it does not lead to G2 (like MPDNS or SNDP-M,).

All other notes can be used as "staircase steps" for extended karvais and beginning and ending phrases with ease.

gaurimanOhari doesn't seem to be even as popular as it's prati madhyama equivalent dharmAvati for some reason. The most probabe cause seems to be the lack of popular heavyweight compositions in it. It does find some presence in the RTP segment, but there it is clearly 2nd tier in popularity behind the big rAgAs and the rakti rAgAs, and even some vivAdis these days.

More by Charulatha Mani in her article "Godly Gaurimanohari" : https://www.thehindu.com/features/frida ... 271861.ece

So coming to the compositions in gaurimanOhari, let me start yet again at a very unusual place. gaurimanOhari on one occasion became a star among rAgAs, depicting a song on the Divine source behind music (did you guess it, don't click the link and cheat) :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9msd0j1n9yA -- :mrgreen: :twisted: Oh yes, verily a star and a super-hit. It was used in many other film songs too. Sh. Ilayaraja has also composed aplenty in gaurimanOhari

In CM, gaurimanOhari seems to have been first brought out by Thyagaraja, as with other sampUrna mElas of which he was the pioneer. We have 2 of his compositions in it. With my earlier understanding, things should have been simple at this point - I'd have moved on to giving links to recordings. However, very interestingly, karnatik.com lists as many as 6 kritis of Oothukadu Venkata Kavi in it, not one or two, SIX! Now I'm curious and have quite a few questions. Allow me to go off road into the jungles for a while...

We now know that the sampUrna mElakarta system already existed before the Trinity. However, most of the 72 rAgAs were only on paper till that point. So who was the first to start using gaurimanOhari? Thyagaraja or OVK?

Was OVK aware of both systems of rAgAs? (We now know for sure that Thyagaraja was aware.) Why I ask this is because If a composer has 6 compositions to his credit in one rAga, we really need to study those carefully, as it indicates that composer has taken special interest in that raga. But the need is even more when it is in a rAgA that is widely considered to have been given its break by Thyagaraja. Was it OVK? Or are the tunes of these compositions the work of a later tunesmith's? Are those his compositions or a later composer's in the family? (That last one is easier to answer given his singular style).

Or did OVK actually compose in gauri vElAvali and we are now singing them in gaurimanOhari? Unfortunately we have no idea how many of OVK's original tunes have survived to the present day - there is evidence he has used the old rAga phrases of his era for some songs preserved in notations (we do not use those prayogams today), that tells you the approximate time period of the tune notated and also helps establish that at least the songs with older phrases are not the work of later composers. What about others? Now we have plenty of proof that very few of the Trinity's kritis have been preserved in their original tunes since their times, and most of them have changer dramatically despite (or because of) their big shishya paramparas, so who knows what happened to OVK?

More information and publications on the sources, documentation and researching of OVK's songs, tunes and lyrics are very much needed, like what we are doing for Thyagaraja and Dikshitar. OVK's family kept many of the songs to themselves for a long time, he did not have a big shishya parampara, and we do not how far the prevailing traditions influenced his music. In those days all composers were very well aware of the lakshanas of existing ragas. We do not know if OVK was known to other composers of that era, or whether he was known but not publicized (he kept a low profile).

I personally have a doubt on the popular timeline whether OVK was indeed well before the Trinity or a contemporary as the dates of the timeline of his family tree aren't adding up. There is a big issue when you push back OVK's time to 1700-1760 and that is the development of ragas itself. Venkatamakhin wrote his work somewhere around 1650 +/- a couple of decades - at that time he was able to identify lakshanas for only 19 out of 72 melas, though he seemed to have realized the possibility of 72. His grandson first fully developed the asampUrna mEla system, so that would at the very earliest put its development in the late 17th century. The naming scheme for the 72 ragas (kaTapayadi) happened almost a century after Venkatamakhi's time and it was the Dikshitar family that gave many of those ragas in the 72 asampUrna mElAs their debut. So the asampUrna mEla system must have been completed by the early 18th century before the time of Ramaswamy Dikshitar. The sampUrna mEla system of Govinda definitely came on the heels of the asampUrna sometime after the rAgAngA scales were fixed. How do we know? Because Ramaswamy Dikshitar and his family did not use the sampUrna mElas, but Thyagaraja did.

So when you date OVK back to c.1700-1760, you start wondering how his songs could be in the sampUrNa or apoorva rAgAs that were popularized much later by the trinity. If you look at the present list of OVK's ragas, you won't find a single asampUrna rAgAnga raga there (No, his rasamanjari is different from Dikshitar's). You'll find old rAgAs in vogue during that period, still in use today, but not the old ones that went extinct since. But there are plenty of newer names. For ragas whose names are found in Sangraha Choodamani, the best estimate for that book is c.1800. We now know based on phrases in manuscripts that Thyagaraja himself hardly had 4-5 ragas whose lakshanas matched SC - they were his own creations and his disciples gave them names. So the older you date OVK, the less and less likely that his original tunes could have been in the modern rAga system. The longer his songs have been around, the more changes in traditions and lakshanas they were exposed to, the greater the possibility that they have been retuned in modern rAgAs. 320 years is an eternity in CM -- 4 musical yugas have come and gone in this time!

So given what I have seen with the Trinity's compositions, I have absolutely no doubt that the ragas of OVK's songs, and by extension the tunes have also been through the same modernizing and retuning process, but his unique lyrically shaped rhythmic structures, tAlAs and naDai changes might be better preserved. Lyrics make a good scaffold for rhythm and given OVK's unique signature rhythmic devices, the rhythmic aspects must definitely have fared better than the rAgAs - even here I would not be wrong to consider that some of the naDai changes could have been later ideas. Exceptions would be some of the old notated songs in classic ragas like mOhanam or gambhira nATa that haven't changed over the ages, those might still be preserved today. Also there are some ragas that are used uniquely by OVK and no one else. Perhaps those might have survived.

I'd say that most of his tunes were modernized by the late 19th-mid 20th century and by the time modern musicians found them, they have been this way for a while now. E.g. brindAvana nilayE was set to tune by GNB. Who knows how many more have been set to tune over those lyrical scaffolds in recent years?

If OVK was indeed more recent, then could there have been cross pollination between his musical ideas and the Trinity's? If he lived in a later period, maybe a senior contemporary of the Trinity, it makes it more likely he could have known of both the raga traditions as they would have begun to establish themselves seriously by then. But then he'd have been more well known. Unfortunately we can only speculate. His songs are proving to be a second Swati Tirunal at times - at least for the Maharaja his dates are clear and we might find old material in the libraries, but OVK's songs seem to have mostly been passed on orally, with only some songs containing old prayogas in notebooks AFAIK. Those old versions though, would make valuable treasure, and might date back to the Trinity period at least given those old prayogams. But they aren't coming out anytime soon.

On the sliding scale of compositions which I wrote sometime back half joking half serious, (viewtopic.php?f=2&t=33561), I know where most of the Trinity's songs fall and I wonder where OVK's present versions will end up. With the paucity of documented records of OVK's compositions, we can only examine the lyrics and overall musical style for support. Out of the 590 available songs of OVK, tunes aren't yet there for all of them and many are coming out in the last few years even. It doesn't help that even today, the flag bearers of OVK's compositions aren't as forthcoming with the sources and details of research into his compositions and their tunes and lyrics(or probably don't have all the details themselves) -- so in the end we'll have to take their word for it, and believe they did their best to resurrect his works keeping in mind his uniquely delightful style.

So to conclude, we didn't know who used gaurimanOhari first - OVK or Thyagaraja. Or whether OVK's songs were originally in gaurimanOhari to begin with, or if all those are his. Assuming they are, the first 2 questions remain. The older OVK is dated, the weaker his case becomes, while the history of ragas favours Thyagaraja's side. Investigating the matter of OVK's original rAgAs and tunes raises more questions than answers - the lack of detailed information on the research carried out into OVK's compositions, their tunes and how they came to be, hasn't helped. Thyagaraja and Dikshitar are better documented.

Anyway, this issue of lack of info aside, I will of course cover OVK's compositions here as far as I can find recordings of them. I hope they'll answer some of my doubts. Let's get back on road now...

Coming to other composers, there is a kriti attributed to Dikshitar (parAshakti Ishvari) in gaurimanOhari (no way). His composition kumAri gauri vElAvali is in the SSP in gaurivElAvali, so any tune you hear of Dikshitar in gaurimanOhari is a later invention. Swati Tirunal has a composition in it. Tiruvottiyur Tyagayya, Garbhapuri Srinivasa Iyengar, Harikesanallur Muthiah Bhagavatar, Papanasam Sivan, Shuddhananda Bharati, Mysore Vasudevacharya, the 72 mElakarta composers (Koteeswara Iyer, M Balamuralikrishna and others), all the way down to Dr. V V Srivatsa, Madurai G S Mani and even K Ramaraj (of the old guard of rasikas.org) have all composed in it, but only some of the songs are well known.

EDIT : thanks to @srkris for extending the character limit to 15000 now. So I'll cover compositions in gaurimanOhari in the next post.

SrinathK
Posts: 2477
Joined: 13 Jan 2013, 16:10

Re: gaurimanOhari

Post by SrinathK »

I shall first start off with Thyagaraja (well, I actually already started off with pATTum nAnE in the last post :mrgreen:). It has become the custom that on Thyagaraja Aradhana day, we all offer homage to him with his most popular composition in gaurimanOhari, considering him as a guru in both music and bhakti. It was Swamigal who composed one of the few kritis on the guru tattva itself.

So we pay respects to gaurimanOhari and Thyagaraja and the guru tattva starting with gurulEka ETuvanTi :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_QzKdHr3sU - MS Amma's rendition, with the full works. The modern version is in khanDA chApu (abridged jhampa basically). But there is a version in Walajapet manuscripts that is actually in rUpakam! I'll have to wait for the day it comes out.

SSI singing gurulekha yetuvanti : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlfKWrof400 - SSI always excels at organically singing these rAgAs.

MDR brings a completely new touch to it : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkgGCf9j_Zs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDDLZqlO9zw - TV Sankaranarayanan

There's no end to recordings of gurulEka eTuvanTi, but so far I have never included a veena recording in my links, so here you go : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGzHbHUlinU - Jayanti Kumaresh

For all your patience in the last few days, here's your free lesson : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGhUbr_PwXs :mrgreen:

Thyagaraja has another song to his credit, garuDa gamana vAsudeva, but it's surprisingly hard to get hold of a recording. Hopefully a manuscript version is out there, just waiting to be discovered. But in the meantime, enjoy this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gCx8jKGwXU - K J Yesudas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp37Ufn9eVE - Bellary Venkatesh Achar - A different version
http://www.sangeethamshare.org/tvg/UPLO ... avarshini/ - TRS mama

The next most popular composition is brOva samayamidE of garbhapurivAsa, specifically Karur Dakshinamurthy Sastri (note, garbhapurivAsa was actually a quartet of 4 composers! https://www.karnatik.com/co1023.shtml) :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88ho2s5rmF4 - A rare recording of Brinda & Mukta giving it a detailed treatment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YWGnwoIUIo - Vidya Kalyanaraman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVSDk0o6t5c - R Vedavalli

Of course, Gopalakrishna Bharati, also has taken it up (eppO tholaiyum inda thumbam?) :
http://www.sangeethamshare.org/tvg/UPLO ... i_Koothan/ - Ok, so was GKB again inspired by Thyagaraja here?

Next up, Oothukadu Venkata Kavi.

pazhamO pazham : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvJdSdNiqec - No idea who is the singer

vishati vishati : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdaHiVKj7ik - Akshay Padmanabhan

Also for vishati vishati : http://www.sangeethamshare.org/tvg/UPLO ... hra_Veena/ - Ravikiran

Unfortunately I haven't been able to get hold of any of the others, though the lyrics are available. I suspect that the rest might still be on paper and may come out in the future, and one day I will be able to update this thread. Anyway, you should know them.

http://www.venkatakavi.org/ovk/compositions.html?id=170 - bheema nadikaraiyil
https://www.karnatik.com/c8709.shtml - tavamonrum ariyda pAmaratti
https://www.karnatik.com/c8758.shtml - virundonru Agudu pArum uLLE
http://www.venkatakavi.org/ovk/compositions.html?id=143 - yārum iyalāda tavamāna shuka māmunikku āyiramum namaskāram. (There's a kriti on Shuka??)

According to karnatik.com, shuddhananda bharati has composed in it, but I fail to find any recordings of his compositions, not only here, also other ragas. He needs some more support!

Among the next gen of composers, Harikesanallur Muthiah Bhagavatar has a composition from his Chamundamba Ashtottarashata (108) kritis (dEvi gauri ninna dhyAnisuva) :
http://www.sangeethamshare.org/tvg/UPLO ... is-Part-1/

Then we have Mysore Vasudevacharya's varalakshmi namOstute : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bSWI-EbD_o - TVS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvw83ghYz1M - MLV (from her dEvi kriti album)

Papanasam Sivan also has a number, gaurimanOhara to his credit :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPDGvTaS1Fo - Saketaraman
http://www.sangeethamshare.org/tvg/UPLO ... olin_Solo/

And of course, Maharaja Swati TIrunal's sArasa : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCdU_ecQHQk - if there's a rAgA, consider that Sanjay has sung it, one of his better ones this. ;)

http://www.sangeethamshare.org/tvg/UPLO ... lyanaraman

Then of course, the mElakarta vakgEyakaras, starting with Koteeswara Iyer (pArAi aruL) : http://www.sangeethamshare.org/tvg/UPLO ... Rajeswari/

Dr. M Balamuralikrishna has composed smararE chitta in this rAga : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ktknlw-w980

kausalEya shrI is a rare number, a composition of Dr. V V Srivatsa :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8WXAO_QA5U - Ram Kaushik's YT
http://www.sangeethamshare.org/vijayago ... man-Vocal/ - DKJ was instrumental in popularizing many of Dr.VVS's compositions

Then we have rAja bhOgavE, a composition of H Yoganarasimhan : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Yv8hxb0zxE - by MS Amma

This is an unknown number, courtesy YT : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3utVb6aL0k - Dr. MBK

And we have Subramania Bharati too on this list (manadil_uRudhi_vENDum) : http://www.sangeethamshare.org/tvg/UPLO ... hasarathy/

And others too, karunAkara paramporuLE of Vedanayakam Pillai : http://www.sangeethamshare.org/tvg/UPLO ... asundaram/

Some more rare numbers : http://www.sangeethamshare.org/tvg/UPLO ... eekshitha/ - tirumalai udayAnai by Madurai G S Mani (EDIT : mudra guru rAjapUjitar), sung by @Deekshita.V

kalaigaLai kAttidum, a composition of S Kalyanaraman : http://www.sangeethamshare.org/tvg/UPLO ... agam_24x7/

There's a VARNAM in it by NP Ramaswamy : http://www.sangeethamshare.org/tvg/UPLO ... agam_24x7/

And let's finally get to the RTPs :

http://www.sangeethamshare.org/rao_shar ... V-Live-06/ - MLV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlgIFwhq0iA - Nithyashree
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za84q3gxm_A - S Rajam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkPb5CGUBbc - Dr. L Subramaniam
http://www.sangeethamshare.org/balaji/U ... amy-Vocal/
http://www.sangeethamshare.org/ramasamy ... mi_Pillai/ - Oh yes, let's not forget the nagaswaram

Oh and bonus material, Dikshitar's kaumAri gauri velAvali, by Dr. M Balamuralikrishna : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72_wh_wlBiE - why it's bonus is because he has actually sung the kriti in gauri vElAvali following SSP (!!), but he has sung all the kalpanaswaras in gaurimanOhari ! :lol: :lol: Who would have thought the maverick doctor would prove himself to be the traditionalist yet again? :lol:

I admit I am very surprised by just how many compositions in gaurimanohari are out there - I had to dig the internet since last night to get all this. Clearly gaurimanOhari has been explored amply over the years. It is only suffering from a lack of popularity.
Last edited by SrinathK on 05 Apr 2020, 19:11, edited 3 times in total.

rajeshnat
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Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 08:04

Re: gaurimanOhari

Post by rajeshnat »

Salem Shriram@rAgasudha on Jan 04th,2010
---------------------------------------
5. RTP - gowrimanOhari
11 mins alApanai , 6 mins violin and 7 mins tAnam
pallavi for 5 mins
pallavi line was "brahmA naNda swaroopa sathguru ramnEsA"

One more RTP that I heard in person , just put the relevant snippet here from the review that i wrote in 2010.

rajeshnat
Posts: 9906
Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 08:04

Re: gaurimanOhari

Post by rajeshnat »

Just like how you have reduced firepower for say a shriranjani to a mighty kharaharapriya, GowrimaNohari is very impactful , isaignani illayaraja has done a lot of compositions that are musically very noteworthy. Tx Srinath for this and the ghanta , you even found a varnam in gowrimanOhari.

For me the first time i think i heard this raga gowrimanOhari is a gurulekha yetuvanti from SSI , straight like to obsession from there on with his special verve in neraval and swaras.
SSI singing gurulekha yetuvanti in below link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlfKWrof400

and another exactly direct opposite is MDR, MDR superbly singing the same gurulekha yetuvanti with that pace he completely disambiguates keeravani or Kharaharapriya.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkgGCf9j_Zs
Last edited by rajeshnat on 05 Apr 2020, 18:55, edited 1 time in total.

SrinathK
Posts: 2477
Joined: 13 Jan 2013, 16:10

Re: gaurimanOhari

Post by SrinathK »

I was thinking just now why I left Semmangudi out and was just about to include him. Will do. Now did.
Last edited by SrinathK on 05 Apr 2020, 19:09, edited 1 time in total.

rajeshnat
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Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 08:04

Re: gaurimanOhari

Post by rajeshnat »

SrinathK wrote: 05 Apr 2020, 18:52 I was thinking just now why I left Semmangudi out and was just about to include him. Will do.
I added 2 more lines in my previous post check the opposite of SSI. :P

SrinathK
Posts: 2477
Joined: 13 Jan 2013, 16:10

Re: gaurimanOhari

Post by SrinathK »

That's added too. Ok, enough recordings from my side. Now the field is all yours folks! I am moving on. Have to cover gauri velAvali. And I have found something interesting in gurjari. ;)

Suryasriram
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Joined: 11 Sep 2015, 22:27

Re: gaurimanOhari

Post by Suryasriram »

Sir, you have mentioned Thirumalai Udaiyanai in your list of recordings. It is a composition of Vidwan Sri GS Mani, whose Mudra is Rajapujita.

Also my Guruji Dr.B.Govindarajan (He is son of Prof P.Balakrishnaiah, musician-cum-musicologist, disciple of Sri K.Ponniah Pillai) has composed three songs in Gaurimanohari: 1. Eesha en Nesha, 2. Gaurimanohari Pudhalva, both in Khanda Chapu, and Kaanbome Kannanai, in Adi Thalam.

I'll try to upload renditions of the songs soon.

SrinathK
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Joined: 13 Jan 2013, 16:10

Re: gaurimanOhari

Post by SrinathK »

I'll request the mods to edit the post for Vid. G S Mani's composition.

bhakthim dehi
Posts: 539
Joined: 24 Feb 2014, 21:28

Re: gaurimanOhari

Post by bhakthim dehi »

Because Ramaswamy Dikshitar and his family did not use the sampUrna mElas, but Thyagaraja did.
May I know the reason for considering Dikshitar family as the gold standard?
Think of this possibilty - due to some unknown reasons the raganga classification was known only to Dikshitar and the sampurna syatem was well spread. This also preclude the possibility that both of the systems were existent at that period.

RasikasModerator2
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Joined: 27 Aug 2018, 21:02

Re: gaurimanOhari

Post by RasikasModerator2 »

SrinathK wrote: 06 Apr 2020, 07:10 I'll request the mods to edit the post for Vid. G S Mani's composition.
Done now.

Jigyaasa
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Joined: 16 May 2006, 14:04

Re: gaurimanOhari

Post by Jigyaasa »

SrinathK wrote: 04 Apr 2020, 20:11
Thyagaraja has another song to his credit, garuDa gamana vAsudeva, but it's surprisingly hard to get hold of a recording. Hopefully a manuscript version is out there, just waiting to be discovered.
This is disputed in terms of the composer. Could very likely be mis-attributed to Sri Thyagaraja.
SrinathK wrote: 04 Apr 2020, 20:11
Next up, Oothukadu Venkata Kavi.

pazhamO pazham : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvJdSdNiqec - No idea who is the singer
Bhairavi-Malavi sisters
SrinathK wrote: 04 Apr 2020, 20:11
This is an unknown number, courtesy YT : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3utVb6aL0k - Dr. MBK
This is in patdeep rAga, not gaurimanOhari as mis-identified by the YouTube video title.

Lakshman
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Re: gaurimanOhari

Post by Lakshman »

Srinathk wrote:
Thyagaraja has another song to his credit, garuDa gamana vAsudeva, but it's surprisingly hard to get hold of a recording. Hopefully a manuscript version is out there, just waiting to be discovered.

If, by manuscript, you mean notations-they are readily available in Rangaramanja Iyengar's Kritimanimalai. However this krti, among others by Tyagaraja, is a disputed one. Please see details here:
http://www.carnaticcorner.com/articles/prakshipta.html

Ranganayaki
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Re: gaurimanOhari

Post by Ranganayaki »

Jigyaasa wrote: 01 May 2020, 00:11 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3utVb6aL0k - Dr. MBK



This is in patdeep rAga, not gaurimanOhari as mis-identified by the YouTube video title.
No, Jigyaasa, it might well be Gowrimanohari. There are many occurances of PDNS which is not supposed to happen in Patdeep, which does not have a Da in the ascent. You can hear it at 0:19, 0:33-0:36, etc. There the sense of Gowrimanohari is clearly present. I guess we just have to get used to the lighter style to recognize it as Gowrimanohari. There is also the Ri in the ascent, you cAn hear it at about 1:45. Please do correct me if I am wrong.

In the charanam too, he touches the Da on the way to the Ni, again if I’m not mistaken (at “nirmalanai”).

I feel it cannot be Patdeep. The video is mislabeled as “Telugu” which makes a dent in our faith in “Gowrimanohari,” but I think it’s correct.

Jigyaasa
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Re: gaurimanOhari

Post by Jigyaasa »

It certainly isn't "pure" patdeep particularly around "tEDiduvAi" which sounds like "ma pa da ni sa" but there are so many pronounced sa-ga phrases in the ascent that it can definitely not be ascribed to gaurimanOhari. In general, the flavor and feel sound very much like, say, the first portion of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRtzuHN0_XQ (which is a rAgamAlikA)

Ranganayaki
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Re: gaurimanOhari

Post by Ranganayaki »

Jigyaasa, you are willing to say it is not pure Patdeep when there are predominant phrases that make it impossible to say it’s patdeep, but you are unwilling to say it is “not pure” Gowrimanohari when there are definite shades of gowrimanohari. If I remember right, there is not a single direct pa-ni in this song, but it is consistently present in Nithyashree’s song. Also the ascending ri is present in the charanam in a couple of places, such as at “jagatkarananai Paripurananai.” Paripoo = sariga-ma (just touching the ma).

I think the lack of a ri in the pallavi adds to the light music effect. We know that in light music they are quite loose with swaras in a raga. I’m not saying that this is classic Gowrimanohari but in my mind it just cannot be Patdeep and I’ve said why. and it doesn’t at all sound like Nithyashree‘a song which has clean passages to the Ni (as in maghizhndu -(p-n-s for each syllable) in the pallavi and a total absence of asc. Ri.

I don’t agree with you Jigyaasa, but I’ll leave it at that. I wonder that Srinath is not weighing in - it was his post about Gowrimanohari, and his choice of video.

narayan
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Re: gaurimanOhari

Post by narayan »

For what it is worth, if we are voting, I vote for Gowri Manohari, not Patdeep.

SrinathK
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Re: gaurimanOhari

Post by SrinathK »

It is neither of them, though it has shades of both. In fact it is very close to the Walajapettai version of kalyaNavasantam but not quite that either with phrases like SRPG, and SN,DPG, NNS, and SRGRS. This has to be some new raga.

Is this something bmk has sung in a film? Those songs can and do favour the effect of directly working with the melody itself, not strictly adhering to raga boundaries.

Ranganayaki
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Re: gaurimanOhari

Post by Ranganayaki »

I was thinking about it and since strict raga does not strictly matter in light music, my guess was that BMK was winging it, creating the tune almost as he sang.

Skipping the ri just once in Gowrimanohari in a light song, how big of a deal is that?

In fact, in the pallavi itself, he has the ascending ri, at the end of “Kumaranai” leading into “Nadiduvaai.”

”Brindavanam” has a strong asc. d2.
Taandavam has sgrg. How big a departure is that?
Aadiye: nsrns
Anthi : has the jump to ga though, but it sounds fine to me, certainly in this light version of GM.
SN,DPG, NNS,
This is not much of a problem with GM, only with Kalyanavasantham in either version. He just flows over the Ma, adding to the lighter effect.
Last edited by Ranganayaki on 05 May 2020, 11:37, edited 7 times in total.

Ranganayaki
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Re: gaurimanOhari

Post by Ranganayaki »

Also, I don’t know if he ever sang the Walajahpet version of Kalyanavasantham, but his version of the raga, as far as I know, only had a D1. I couldn’t imagine that he used an unusual version of the raga here while even that doesn’t fit.
Last edited by Ranganayaki on 05 May 2020, 11:38, edited 1 time in total.

Ranganayaki
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Re: gaurimanOhari

Post by Ranganayaki »

I misremembered the song, so I took back some of the things I’d said earlier, deleting them.

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