It becomes child's play
LAKSHMI VENKATRAMAN
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Playing the veena is common. But learning to make one?
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BASICS: The team watches the craftsman at work.
"I like the experience of learning to make the veena. I think it will be useful in life later and perhaps I will teach others; I might experiment with the woods available in America; but now I enjoy making those decorative designs on the veena with a small chisel," says Ashwin, a seventh grade student. He is one of the students of Vidya Chandramouli learning veena and vocal music.
There was a break in his tutelage when his parents moved out of Portland, Oregon, but he is back at it, for the past two years, and is now learning to play varnam. We have heard of young NRI Indians or young foreigners coming to India to learn our classical vocal and instrumental music. But here were a few boys who had come to learn to make a veena and tanpura during their summer vacation.
The teacher
Vidya has been living in Portland, Oregon, U.S. for 17 years, and teaching both veena and vocal music. She is the tenth generation artiste from the family of the famed Karaikudi Veena Brothers — Karaikkudi Subbarama Iyer and Karaikkudi Sambasiva Iyer. The latter taught at the Kalakshetra, Chennai for many years. Vidya's mother Rajeswari Padmanabhan, formerly of the Kalakshetra, is the direct disciple of her granduncle Sambasiva Iyer. With a post-graduate degree in music from the University of Madras, Vidya completed a graduate level course in Ethnomusicology (she is on the verge of completing her doctorate on the same subject) at the Washington University, where she has also been teaching South Indian music.
What prompted Vidya to learn the art of making the veena? Says she, "When I was a post-graduate student in Chennai we were taught to fix the veena frets as part of the course; even then I wanted to learn the process of making the instrument. These days everything is turning electronic. Many Carnatic musicians when they come to perform in the U.S. come with the electronic tanpura; though convenient, the ambience of the concert is just not the same as the traditional one.
Vidya says, "Students need to know that art and entertainment are two ends of the same spectrum."
In Vidya's teaching method, the stress is on getting the fundamentals correct and once that is done the rest is easy. Veena requires a lot of practice. ``The young ones have imbibed rhythm. Sometimes they fall asleep during a concert but when they wake up suddenly they can pick up the talam perfectly," says Sudha, who started learning two years ago as she got interested when her sons began learning under Vidya.
"One must listen to the sound of the tanpura while singing and not drown it," says Vidya. ``In school, acoustics is not taught and I decided to teach it to my music students. Many of my students have a background of science and objective thinking, whereas but intuitive thinking and learning also are necessary," she says.
The craft
All these aspects encouraged her to learn to make the veena and the tanpura. Natarajan, who comes from a traditional instrument makers' family, has been working at Brhdhwani in Chennai for the past few years and he was willing to teach Vidya and her disciples his craft. His method was intuitive and they got practical training.
They learnt to spot the proper wood, how to work with its grain and so on. Jack wood and rose wood are used for making veena and tanpura. The boys and three women including Vidya had a hands-on training working with special tools. They learnt to work on the inside of the resonator to obtain proper tone and to stop and let the wood dry. It is almost like a dialogue with the wood.
The instruments which were made here during the past few weeks have been taken to the U.S. The plan is to take Natarajan there next summer to continue the training and initiate others in this fascinating art.
The group went to Tiruchi and Thanjavur to the workshops of veena makers and looked at the variety of woods and how they were selected.
They found that there were rooms filled with woods of various ages and qualities.
"Till I began to take part in this project I never realised it took so much effort to make a veena or a tanpura," said Sudha.
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