The Kite Runner

The arrival of the New Year is always a bitter sweet thing. The good cheer is not without traces of regret - targets missed, promises unkept, friends unmet…beyond a certain age, it can also be a gentle reminder of mortality...

But for rasikas of carnatic music, the regret goes a few tons beyond what qualifies as “a trace”. If you’ve been following this blog the reason should be clear enough – the Season has folded up. Worse still, for rasikas outside Chennai, it is time to bid farewell to the Mecca of music.All the sabha hopping, vambu sessions at the canteen and slugfests on the forum (rasikas.org if you’re new to this blog) left very little time for blog updates. So here’s a series of reflections on the Season, starting with my concert of the Season

Sanjay Subrahmanyan, The Music Academy, 29/12/2008
S Varadarajan - Violin
Neyveli Venkatesh - Mrudangam
Bangalore Rajasekhar - Morsing

I showed up at the Academy counter 9 AM that morning and knew even before I asked, that I was too late. I picked up a ticket for the LCD show but struck a minor windfall later in the day when a friend mentioned that he had a spare pass - that too in the lower tier!

It was, thus, with that self-important air of someone unused to privilege that I stretched out to greet the Khanda Ata varnam in Sahana. But before the Pallavi was completed, I was having some second thoughts about the value of my freebie – an equivalent ticket would have cost me Rs. 600. At that point, however, my own valuation would have been a few hundred rupees less. Sanjay’s voice, sandpapered by a couple of dozen concerts and in advanced stages of season-itis, was making a brave attempt to trace the pitch curve of the 28th Mela. The result was, at best, a rough approximation.

By the time he came around with a second helping of Venkatamakhin’s Number 28, concerns about his voice had receded to the background eclipsed, as they were, by a meandering Dharmavathi and a composition that only served to underscore my opinion that the scale’s evolution into a raga is still work in progress.

To appreciate the import of what happened next, one requires a certain background in the unique vocal tradition of Indian classical music. Of diamonds lurking inside ugly, amorphous stones, and shaky vocal foundations supporting imposing raga edifices. The Kambhoji was a celebration of this glorious tradition. Its standard struggled to gain any wind from the acrobatics of Sanjay’s fatigued larynx but he ran and ran – lines and angles, ellipses and eights – and then, with a final, desperate tug, the kite and its bearer were launched into the sky. Mr. Subrahmanyan, who had thus far appeared to be racing towards the ENT clinic down the road, was suddenly transformed into the Sanjaya of legend - surveying the raga’s magnificent landscape with his exalted vision and conveying tales from an unseen, distant world, to an audience gasping at every little twist…until the climax brought them, if only for a moment, to the portals of that rarefied world beyond joy and sorrow…

That pass turned out to be priceless in more ways than one.

Songlist
Evare - Sahana - Khanda Ata - Patnam Subramania Iyer
Kanjadalayadakshi- Kamalamanohari - Adi - Dikshitar - S
Arurvai Angayarkanniye - Dharmavati- Rupakam - Dhandapani Desikar - RNS
Nannu vidachi- Reethigowla-Misra Chapu -Thyagaraka
Rasa vilasa -Kambhoji - Adi - Swati tirunal- (R, S)
RTP - Jaunpuri- Misra Chapu