my heroes

hello everyone...this is my first blog and i consider this as my tribute to all the great musicians whom i hv heard growin up and whose music would always travel with my soul...here comes the first of my posts and i could not think of a greater vidvan than ariyakudi ramanuja iyengar to whom i could dedicate this... i could never forget the excitement which i first experienced wen i heard iyengarval for the first time..at first wen elders in my family spoke with awe about his music,i used to wonder what was so great about singin phrases like aaaa,tha dha ri naaaa, something like that..i was also too young to understand the intricacies of carnatic music at that time...then slowly by GOD's grace i slowly understood wat is wat about this glorius art and i became mad about our very own form of music after first hearin my guru sri.umayalpuram sivaraman play in a concert which was some 10 years back..

after that i became one of the millions of carnatic music rasikas in the miiddle of my studies and my admiration for vidvans (apart from mrudanga vidvans) grew slowly...it was then i slowly started recognisin ragas and i slowly started learnin vocal music from a local music teacher(a fact not known to many) apart learning mrudangam from uks sir ..its another story that a tonsils operation put my vocal career to an end...then i started listenin to concerts emphasising on wat varnam and keerthanais were being sung on stage and how to accompany for those...after reachin a stage wer i strtd appreciating vocal music i came across an old AIR recording of iyengarval...the first snatch of thodi which he sang swept me of my feet..the kind of adrenalin rush which i had can never be explained here..all fans of iyengarval wil understand this..te kriti "kotinathullu dhanushkoti" the kalapramanm and the accompaniment of mani iyer,the precise one avartanam swaras, the bful kuraippu which created an excitement without absolutely any kind of gimmicks or kannakku all this added to my reverence for him...i suddnly cannot have more of his music..i started collectin a massive collection of his concerts and still found myself wanting for more....
his "subramanyaya namaste" with niraval at "vasavadi", his tiruppavai's, his rama nataka kritis of arunachala kavirayar, his precise raga alapanas, jst 3 minns of solid panthuvarali and there was no empty stretching beyond that, the way he managed his voice...for eg in a concert at the varnam he started off very badly constantly coughing and he must have had a very bad cold...but his selection of kritis was so bful whhich required not much of singing in the top octave and by the time he came 2 subramanyaya namaste he was able 2 sing till the top panchama and in the latter part of the concert his voice sounded like honey literally...my paati used 2 say that iyengarval had no match in the way he presented his concerts and how he judgees he audience and he had his finger right at their pulse..she would say that many in the audience would come out and say proudly that iyengarval sang the song which they had in mind...
all this kept on adding to my reverence for him and i could never have enough of his music..the thing which i found so great in his music was its simplicity...the way he sang some sangathis seemed so simple i tot that i can sing it straight away...but only wen i attempted it and found it to b so horrible and disastrous, i realised wat it took to sing like him....as i quote which i read in a book "much of iyengarval's greatness owes to his astrological father who trained him in music after looking at his horroscope...destiny and the call of the voice within did the rest"and we got ariyakudi ramanuja iyengar
as sriram.v in his book "carnatic summer" so bfully said which i quote "his music never tires the listener and that perhaps is the greatest attribute that any musician can aspire for".....

quite exactly so