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From doh-ray-me to sa-re-ga-ma

Photo: M. Srinath

Saint Composer Muthusamy Dikshidhar

No classical music fan, I was delighted with what I heard that evening. There was an invocation to Lord Ganesha set to a French air still heard in the taverns of Montreal and Quebec. There was a Viennese waltz whose words paid homage to Lord Siva in Kanchi. And ‘God Save the Queen’ had words expressing words of devotion to the Goddess of Music.

I know the Americans sing ‘My Country ‘Tis of Thee’ to the tune of ‘God Save the Queen’. The Germans too have a patriotic song to the same tune. There was a group in Bombay, who, when George V arrived for the Delhi Durbar, greeted him at the Gateway of India with a poem in Marathi set to ‘God Save the King’. And, in those pre-Independence days in Ceylon, the anthem at the end of the film came in handy for groups of schoolboys after the city’s famed Big Matches to sing vilification against the Crown in Sinhalese to the same tune. But none of that was the case that evening in Madras.

It was Kanniks Kannikeswaran from Cleveland, Ohio, revealing what his research had found. Namely that a tenth of Muthuswami Dikshitar’s compositions were Sanskrit religious lyrics written to the popular tunes the British military bands played in the Madras of his time. Dikshitar, one of the Musical Trinity of Tanjore, lived in Manali for a while and, later, travelled through much of India, the only one of the trio to do so. Everywhere he went he listened to the airs, ditties, folk tunes, and anthems the British military bands played at public performances in the evenings, and out of that listening there came the 39 ‘colonial interludes’, compositions that are a part of his 400 classical compositions.

A few of these had been put down in staff notation by a member of the Manali Muthukrishna family who were patrons of the Dikshitar family. The origins of others were tracked down by Kannikeswaran, interacting with Western musicologists. What he found was that with recitals of these classical compositions, both solo and in choral performance, he was able to get many young Indian-Americans — and not a few Americans — interested in Carnatic music. “This is the stuff that appeals to Fourth Graders”, he had found. Which is no doubt why I enjoyed it — particularly the film clip of a concert of this music presented by a chorus of 90 Indians and 60 Americans. And, all this to the accompaniment of Celtic orchestral instruments — which is what many of the military bands of those days used. These instruments, and tunes such as these, can still be heard in the Appalachian region of America, he stated, States such as West Virginia, Virginia, southern Pennsylvania and Tennessee. And the search for the link between Appalachian music and Tanjore Carnatic is where Kannikeswaran is next headed.

After the talk, Carnatic music historian V. Sriram told me that besides Muthuswami Dikshitar, there were other instances of British-Indian connections in the music field. Ghanam Krishna Iyer sang on Sir Thomas Munro (a song that is now lost). The Madras Jubilee Gayam Samaj, a body that was formed in 1883 mainly to facilitate interaction between the English and the natives on Carnatic music, translated Tennyson’s Ode to Victoria, and performed it for the benefit of the Governor and his Lady. Later, in the Gandharva Gana Kalpavalli book, there is a mangalam (benediction) dedicated to King George V and Queen Mary. In 1911, immediately after the grand Coronation Durbar in Delhi, the Muthialpet Sabha organised a competition among musicians for the best song on King George; Ramanathapuram ‘Poochi’ Srinivasa Iyengar got the gold medal for his Satatamu Brovumayya, which is a prayer to Rama to protect King George.

In the 1930s, Papanasam Sivan composed Devi Vasante on Annie Besant, which is even now sung in Besant School. There is also a Sanskrit hymn in her praise on her release from internment. This also, rather ironically, praises King George. Besides these, there is the George Deva Shatakam, a set of 100 verses on King George V, composed in 1911 by Mahamahopadhyaya Lakshmana Suri, father of Sangita Kalanidhi T.L. Venkatarama Iyer (Justice, Supreme Court of India) and uncle of Sangita Kalanidhi Harikesanallur L. Muthiah Bhagavatar.

“It would be great if some of these songs were performed in public, but today’s view of Carnatic music is that all such music as I have mentioned is the praise of mere mortals and, so, inferior,” Sriram adds with a tinge of disappointment at the lack of appreciation of the historical context.

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