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Music Season
Truly glorious
M.V.RAMAKRISHNAN
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Singing in a soaring crescendo, Aruna Sairam took the spellbound audience on a whirlwind tour of Arupadaiveedu.
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EARNEST: Aruna Sairam
Aruna Sairam is quite used to attracting a full house wherever she happens to be singing these days. But even by her own usual standards, the highly excited gathering in the premises of the Chettinad Vidyasharam School, Kotturpuram, could not be fully accommodated even in the very spacious Muthiah Hall there.
The programme was part of the winter series of Carnatic music concerts organised by Jaya TV, and television cameras were capturing the whole scene, making the occasion extremely glamorous.
The recital had a sharp focus on Lord Muruga, so most of the songs were in Tamil. After an initial spell in Sanskrit — a slokam from Subrahmania Bhujangam, a Dikshitar kriti and a composition by V.V.Srivatsa — Aruna rendered a couple of songs composed by Papanasam Sivan, a pallavi with her own Tamil lyric, a Tiruppugazh verse, and Madurai Somu’s favourite song ‘Enna Kavi.’
She had excellent support from the accompanists, H.N.Bhaskar (violin), J. Vaidyanathan (mridangam) and S. Kartick (ghatam).
There’s invariably a stage in Aruna Sairam’s performances when she achieves a heart-to-heart communication with the adoring listeners, which makes them all forget her glamorous personality and concentrate intensely on her earnest music.
In the concert under review, that point was reached in the course of the unconventional ragam-tanam-pallavi.
Midway through the pulsating tanam which followed a calm and meditative elaboration of Thodi, Aruna switched over to a resounding mode with strong percussion accompaniment.
That set up a lively prelude for the pallavi and a dynamic tempo for the swara-prastharam featuring a string of six melodies (Sunada-vinodhini, Atana, Ranjani, Darbari-kannada, Senchuruti and Abheri).
Aruna has an intriguing way of infusing a worshipful flavour even into a normal series of improvised swaras.
On this occasion, after each colourful spell of sol-fa notes she inserted a line of her own Tamil lyrics visualising Lord Muruga as enshrined in one of six sacred locations in South India, which greatly enhanced the emotional element. And singing the whole sequence in a soaring crescendo, she took the spellbound audience on a whirlwind tour of Tiruparan-kundram, Tiruchendur, Swamimalai, Pazhani, Tiruttani and Pazhamudirsolai, giving us some flashing impressions of the youthful God.
That was the stage when the self-conscious rasikas even lost sight of the television cameras, and just swam in a strong current of sacred music which flowed gloriously on. According to the Oxford and Chambers dictionaries, the word ‘glory’ means (among other things) ‘great beauty,’ ‘magnificence,’ ‘resplendent brightness,’ ‘summit of attainment,’ and ‘worship and thanksgiving offered to God.’
Judged even by the most severe standards, Aruna’s performance was truly glorious in every sense of the term as defined above.
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Music Season
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