Arar Asaippadar

After weeks of rushing from one Sabha to the next last December, the opportunity to watch a film on Sanjay Subrahmanyan, Carnatic Music's reigning prince, offered a diversion that was not altogether dissonant with the melodious gales of Margazhi sweeping across Chennai. There’s some reason to question the choice of the subject, given the number of masters, past and present, whose legacies languish undocumented...But the persona of Sanjay Subrahmanyam turns out to be a remarkably effective portraiture of the intensity of Carnatic music.

The documentary commences, very appropriately, with the Kalyani Ata Tala varnam and winds its way through a number of musical journeys before concluding with the song that gives the film its title. Prasanna Ramaswamy’s gift for visual metaphor is breathtaking, - a Begada alaapana tumbles down a frenzied maze of streetlights whereas Husseini floats gently along the backwaters of Kerala. In one of the film’s most striking moments, the clamorous crescendo of Kapaleeshwarar’s nightly “Urgolam” is abruptly muted to allow the gentle strains of Papanasam Sivan’s “Kapali” in Mohanam to waft in – the chaos of darkness yielding to the tranquility of dawn….

With due respect to the director’s talents, however, it is the fiery passion of its protagonist that is the film’s sheet anchor …from the doting father reading out excerpts from “Inspector Gopalan” on the bedside to the wild-eyed, hysterical gayaka, possessed by the raga rasa of Shanmukhapriya, Sanjay is a showman to the core - programmed to perform, designed for the stage. I suspect there’s a good career awaiting him somewhere in the vicinity of Kodambakkam if he chooses to prematurely terminate his association with music!

There are some gripes, of course – the director has a tendency to arbitrarily expand the canvas, probably with an eye on her primarily western audience who will no doubt lap up the dizzying exotica peppered generously over her oeuvre. For instance, one can understand the connection with Nagaswaram, given Sanjay’s (very successful) attempts to experiment with that bani, but the extended dance sequences seem somewhat contrived. Indeed, the film’s sub-consciousness veers more towards Tamil culture rather than Carnatic Music - not a single composition of the trinity that I noticed, in close to 90 minutes overflowing with music! If that was an accident, it was an unhappy one.

Some of the set-pieces also seem highly affected – the first is a conversation between the former editors of sangeetham.com, Sanjay and Sriram, about their soon-to-be-doomed website! In another shot, Nagai Muralitharan and Guruvayoor Dorai ham on endlessly about Sanjay’s vidwat…neither of these need have been spared the editor’s scissor…

Despite the complaints, this is the most evocative cinematic coverage of the performing arts I’ve seen since “Farewell My Concubine” Kaige Chen’s lyrical ode to Chinese opera. Even if you’re not into movies, the awesome alaapana of Shanmukhapriya alone, would be well worth your money.

A DVD will hopefully be out shortly and should set off Sanjay's many fans on a mad scramble for a copy.