gItam 'varavINA mrdu pANi' as first elaboration of concert

On 8th October, 2019, Vidwan Sikkil Gurucharan concluded the 85th Avatara Mahotsava, of Jagadguru Jayendra Saraswati, at Shri Kanchi Kamakoti Shankara Matam in Malleshwaran with an excellent concert. He was accompanied by Vidwan C N Chandrasekhar on the violin and Vidwan Sumesh Narayanan on the Mridangam.

Vidwan Gurucharan wished everyone on the occasion of Vijayadashami and mentioned that since he was singing last in the series, most ragams and songs may have been explored already. He was in a difficult position and would do the best possible. He definitely excelled in that effort and we were treated to a very melodious concert with many intricacies included too.

He began the concert with a very short AlApanai as introduction to nirOshTA rAgam before he announced that he will take up Shri Tanjavur S Kalyanaraman's varnam in the rAgam that begins with 'kannin maNiyE'. The beauty of this rAgam and the various cittaswarams rendered added to the good beginning of the concert. He then took up the durgA pancaratnam, composed by Jagadguru Shri Chandrasekhara Saraswati, which is well known from Srimathi M S Subbulakshmi's renditions. This is set to karnAtaka shuddha sAvEri rAgam (S R1 M1 P D1 S, a janya of kanakAngi the first mELakartA), and sung in kaNDa cApu tALam.

For the first elaboration of the evening (I am not a fan of terms like sub-main), Vidwan Gurucharan took up mOHanam. The AlApanai was quite thorough and Shri Chandrasekhar also played a good follow-up in this rAgam. Then came the surprise of detail rendition of the mOHanam gItam, varavINA mrdu pANi. He rendered in a kriti style, with extended sangatis of each line and all the gamakams allowed in mOHanam. If one did not know that this is a gItam, they would have mistaken it for a kriti. He included neraval at the starting line itself and followed by kalpanaswarams.

After the rendition he mentioned that his gurus have always asked him and fellow students to sing gItams on Vijayadashami day as part of their start to the next year of learning. He also encouraged the many young children in the hall to keep practicing the basics regularly. Finally, he also mentioned that this was the first time he was rendering the nirOshTA varnam and the mOHanam gItam in a concert.

Next he sang parvatarAja kumAri in shrIranjani composed by Shri Muthuswami Dikshitar. This medium tempo song led us to the second exploration of the evening. nAsikAbhUshani was the chosen rAgam for presentation and Vidwan Gurucharan sang beautifully. Vidwan Chandrasekhar also followed-up with his AlApanai in this rAgam nicely. The extended step by step rendition made us think it would be the main piece for the evening. mAravairi ramaNi, a composition of Saint Thyagaraja, was taken up and they did full justice to the song. Vidwan Sumesh Narayanan provided very soft and appropriate support along with the mood set by the two artists.

The main rAgam for the day was tODi which, he had been informed by the organizer in the matam, was not presented in elaborate form by anyone earlier in the 9 concerts of the festival. It was a melodious and brilliant AlApanai by both the artists. Included in the AlApanai by Vidwan Gurucharan was a rendition of akArams without the shadjam and pancamam, leading to the mOHanam scale, with the tonic note set to ri of tODi, for a couple of minutes, before dramatically introducing the shadjam again to bring us back to the world of tODi. They presented ninnE namminAnu sadA of Shri Shyama Sastri, set to misra cApu tALam. The neraval at kAmAkshi kancadaLAya tAkshi was beautiful followed by kalpanaswarams and the thorough laya vinyAsam of Vidwan Sumesh. Rain was pouring heavily by this time, as though the goddess was very pleased with their music.

In contrast to many concerts, where experiments lead to phases of loudness overtaking the musicality, this was one of the few concerts where melody and softness of music were the only focus. The sound engineer had also set the speaker settings at a nice medium level (I hear many artists are to blame for requesting loud settings in many places; and in some cases each artist in the team asking for their mic output to be increased, like a competition).

Vidwan Gurucharan concluded the concert with two songs - first a rAgamAlika composed by Shri N S Chidambaram, in which the names of the rAgams appear, and the shrI rAgam kamalAmba navAvarnam, shrI kamalAmbikE with the mangaLam. The rAgams in the rAgamAlika are jaganmOHini, Anandabhairavi, sunAdavinOdini, kIravANi, kalyANi, nAyaki, ranjani and dEvagAndhAri.

Now, what happened to the other 9 concerts? Well, I had earlier posted brief notes about 3 of the first 4 concerts. I will followup this post with notes on the 4 other concerts of 4th-7th October, in the coming days.