I have been learning Carnatic music (vocal) for several years now, and have also begun teaching some of the younger students of my guru. We have an informal get-together of the school coming up, and I'm supposed to teach the kids some small songs to perform. Unfortunately, I never really learnt any small songs (other than Geethams, but they are sung so often ... it would be nice to have something new!) as I only started learning songs at keerthanams level - these wouldn't be suitable as my students are 6 and 7 years old! Would anyone have any suggestions? Any recordings would be great as well.
Pick Utsava Sampradaya Krithis of St Tyagaraja. Some of them are very simple and the charanams are all sung in the same tune. It will also be nice for a small group rendition.
All the nOTTusvara sAhityam are in SankarAbharaNam - with flat notes without gamakas. After listening to the nOTTusvaras rendered in the flat style, listening to them sung in traditional (CM) SankarAbharaNam makes for some very tough listening!
Last edited by rshankar on 27 Oct 2008, 21:35, edited 1 time in total.
Daily Prayers and Daily Bhajans are two cds available at Giri Trading which contain lot of Bhajan songs for kids. It would be easy to follow as all the charanas will be in the same tune. Try that.
The traditional Purandara compositions were intended for Children. They were called 'piLLari geetham' which morphed into 'piLLayaar geetham'.
They should be the best introduction to CM for small children...