“Meenakshisutha”
Nagaraja- A Gifted Composer from Karnataka
V.S. Ananthanarayanan
(Published in Sri Thyagaraja Aradhanai Souvenir, Apr 2014, Bharathi Kala Manram, Toronto)
”Full many a gem
of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”
- Thomas Gray in Elegy written in a Country Churchyard
The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”
- Thomas Gray in Elegy written in a Country Churchyard
Quite a while back in 1985, during one of my trips
to India, I was introduced by a friend
and an erstwhile colleague of mine at the Indian Institute of Science in
Bangalore, to an extraordinarily talented musician and teacher, Sri Ramakrishna
Bhagavathar. Although he had been one of the senior students of the maestro
G.N.Balsubramanian, this vidwan was, for some reason, relatively less known to
many and was living in oblivion in a very small rented house in Malleswaram
when I met him. He was also suffering from severe asthma. In spite of his
handicaps, his devotion to music and his earnestness to teach were still aglow
in his heart. I spent most of the six weeks of my Bangalore visit learning music
from this great scholar. It is at that time, I was introduced to the stunningly
beautiful ‘Meenakshisutha kritis’.
They were compositions of one Sri.Nagaraja who had lived in Bangalore during
1922-1974. His musical compositions are referred to as ‘Meenakshisutha kritis’ based on the mudra he used in them. Nagaraja is a
remarkable vakgeyakara but is,
unfortunately, not as well known to the Carnatic music world as he richly
deserves to be.
In this article, I will give a brief account of the
life and contributions of this great musical personality who, in the short span
of his life, left a veritable treasure of musical compositions as his
legacy.
Nagaraja’s father, Eswara Iyer was a great Sanskrit
scholar who lived initially in Kerala but moved later to Bangalore where
Nagaraja was born and brought up. After studying engineering for two
years, Nagaraja secured a job in the State Bank of Mysore in Bangalore. He was
married in 1949 and had four daughters. He was initially known mainly for his
regular Friday bhajanai-s held in his
house which attracted many of his friends and relatives. Nagaraja’s ishta devata was Goddess Meenakshi but
his bhajanai-s included songs on
other gods as well. He is said to have taken part in the bhajanai-s conducted by the doyen of sampradaya bhajanai, Sri. Pudhukkottai
Gopalakrishna Bhagavathar. He is also said to have composed songs on this
saintly personality but these are not available now. Although it is known that Nagaraja had
acquired a sound knowledge of Sanskrit from his father, no clue is available about
his formal training in music. A sudden transformation in Nagaraja’s musical
ability seems to have occurred during one of these Friday bhajanai-s when, in a moment of ecstasy, he started composing his
own songs on the deities he was worshipping and sang them blissfully. It took a
while for those attending the bhajanai-s
to realize Nagaraja’s authorship of these songs. When Nagaraja was told by others
in the bhajanai-s about his
spontaneous composing and singing of kritis,
he requested one of his daughters to pen them down thereafter along with their ragas and swaras. Many more persons, including some musicians, started
attending the Friday bhajanai-s to
experience the divinity as well as musical exquisiteness of Nagaraja’s creations. It is a pity and great
misfortune for the musical world that Nagaraja did not live long and passed
away prematurely in 1974 at the age of 52.
Nagaraja is known to have composed over 200 kritis in Sanskrit and Kannada
languages. However, for a long time, the only composition which
was widely known was ‘RakshamAm caraNAgatham’ in gambeera nAttai (in praise of Lord
Guruvayoorappan) which was popularized by the great Chembai Vaidhyanatha
Bhagavathar and his disciple, Jesudas. It is said that, at one time when the Bhagavathar
was suffering from a sudden loss of voice, he went to the Krishna temple in
Guruvayoor where he received a mysterious call to sing, upon which he sang the
above kriti and thus got his voice
back. Chembai’s singing of this piece, which has several charaNams and two madhyama
kAla passages in it, brings out the majestic beauty of the ragam and the brisk array of phrases in the
lyric. Several of the Meenakshisutha kriti
have similar madhyama kAlam parts in them which embellish these compositions.
This and the skillful use of Sanskrit words might remind one of the kritis of Muthuswamy Dheekshithar.
However, as mentioned earlier, there is no information about Nagaraja getting a
formal training in the compositions of the Carnatic Trinity or other composers.
In kritis like ‘bAlam chinthayE’ in bilahari, the elaboration of a key word
with successive qualifying phrases (such as nanda
bAlam, gOpAla bAlam, rAjagOpAla bAlam and santhAna rAjagOpAla bAlam) adds to the
musical and emotional aspects of the song. In the kriti ‘charaNam caraNam caraNam’ in kApi ragam, Nagaraja pays glowing tributes simultaneously to the three mathAcharyas, which reinforces his broad religious outlook. An
ecstatic composition, ‘nigama niyamEna natana gurO’ in karaharapriya describes the cosmic dance of Lord Nataraja in its
full glory, . The lyric ends with the inclusion of the names of the pancha gathis, which provides the singer
and percussionist ample scope for elaboration of the different beats.
Since Nagaraja’s compositions were extempore,
there was no systematic effort to preserve them for posterity until the advent
of a lady musician by name Abhayam Raju on the scene. The gods in the heavens seem to have played a role in making
Abhayam Raju return to Bangalore along with her husband Professor T.A. Raju in
1973 after their long stay in the U.S. Hearing about the musical genius of
Nagaraja and his regular Friday bhajanai-s,
Abhayam Raju soon started attending them. Mesmerized by the lyrical beauty,
musical quality and devotional fervour embedded in the Meenakshisutha kritis, Abhayam Raju wasted no time writing
down the songs as they were sung by the composer himself and also setting the swara notations and, in some cases,
adding chittaswaras to them. Some of
the kritis were also tape-recorded directly
as sung by the composer himself. This yeoman service of Abhayam
Raju becomes all the more valuable when we realize that, within about a year
after her return to Bangalore, came Nagaraja’s premature end. It is due to the enormous effort taken by
Abhayam Raju that we have today at least 60 Meenakshisutha kritis with swara notation. After Nagaraja’s demise, Abhayam Raju
took it upon herself to make the gifted composer’s work known to a larger
audience. To this effect, she created a musical group in Bangalore in 1976,
called Sruti Ranjani, with the sole aim of training students in learning the
glorious compositions of Nagaraja and propagating them. Through Sruthi Ranjani,
Abhayam Raju trained over 300 young musicians to sing over 50 Meenakshisutha kritis before she passed away in 1984
due to illness.
Abhayam Raju’s husband, Prof. Raju, lent continuous
support to his wife
in her heroic efforts including the running of the Sruti
Ranjani group. He also helped her publish
41 of the Meenakshisutha kritis in
Tamil during the period 1975-1982. These appeared in three separate parts. They
were later translated into Kannada by Ananda Rama Udupa who set the notations
in this publication according to the way they were recorded on tape by the
vAgkeyakAra himself. This Kannada version was published in 1989. A fourth part
containing an additional 18 kritis
which were similarly notated using the tape recorded version, appeared first in
Kannada and later in Tamil as a Sruti Ranjani publication in 1994 with Udupa as
the editor; the songs were typeset in this edition with Udupa’s beautiful
handwriting. The initial 41 songs, which earlier appeared in three parts, were
collated and published by Sruti Ranjani as a single volume (Vol. I) in 1995 with
Abhayam Raju as editor and was released by the then editor of Sruti magazine,
Mr.N. Pattabiraman. (It may be mentioned in passing that Ananda Rama Udupa, who passed away in 2010, was a senior
musicologist and had compiled all Muthuswami Dhikshitar kritis in Kannada in two volumes, writing and printing all the 1200
pages in his own handwriting!).
As a tribute to the great vAkgEyakAra, the Sruti
Ranjani troupe released five cassetes containing Meenakshisutha kritis around 1995. These are now available as a series of five
albums entitled ‘Naadhasudha Varshini’(Sangeetha Cassettes) and contain 37 kritis of Meenakshisutha Nagaraja. These
albums are available online for preview and buying: see: http://www.sangeethamusic.com/album-details.php?album_id=2000 and http://www.sangeethamusic.com/album-details.php?album_id=2004
It is indeed regretful that today’s senior
Carnatic musicians have not woken up to the excellence of Meenakshisutha Nagara’s
kritis which, in addition to their
lyrical and metrical elegance, are rich in bhava
infused into them by their inspired composer. It is, however, gratifying to
note that some of the younger artistes are now including Meenakshisutha kritis in their
concerts. Examples are: Amrutha Venkatesh (‘Vishweshwara Priya Kaamini’,
in sindubhairavi, in the album ‘Ksetra Devi Kritis’); Ganesh and
Kumaresh (Balakrishna dhevam in yamunakalyani
in their violin album ‘Santham’). There is also a recent Youtube clip of Meenakshisutha
songs by Smt.Girija
Ramachandran and her students (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csnA6aZMueU&feature=youtube_gdata
).
Let me conclude by translating in Tamil an appeal made by Sri Jayarama
Sarma in his forward to the third part of Meenakshisutha Nagara’s kritis published in 1982: “Do not we
hear complaints from critics that new sAhityas
are not being published? To fill this lacuna, I request all musicians to sing
the Meenakshisutha sAhityAs on stage and obtain the
blessings of Goddess Meenakshi.” For my part, I have requested several of the
local and visiting artistes to include kritis
of this gifted composer from Karantaka in their concerts. I had also given
a lecdem about his compositions at a MACA-Music meeting some years ago.
