Category archives: Musicians and scholars

Video | The idea of classifying ragas – Akshara & Kiranavali Vidyasankar

Akshara Samskriti is the daughter of Carnatic musician Kiranavali and scientist-philosopher, Vidyasankar Sundaresan. This video was recorded on Nov 1, 2013, when Akshara was 4 years old. It was originally in multiple parts for educational video compilation, and has been put together as a single video here.

The 72 Melakartas are regarded as the parent scales in Carnatic music and serve the purpose of grouping similar sounding ragas/scales in the same category. It also helps create new scales which can then potentially evolve into full-bodied ragas.

The idea of classifying ragas that sound similar has existed over many centuries and were taken to a more definitive stage by 17th century musicologist Venkatamakhin. It was fine tuned further by Govinda to its present and more popular form. Nevertheless, the Melas propounded by Venkatamakhin continue to stay in vogue primarily through the compositions of well-known Carnatic composer, Muttuswami Dikshitar.

More on and from Kiranavali Vidyasankar: www.kiranavali.net >>

Rabindranath Tagore sketched by Dutch artist Martin Monnickendam during a lecture tour in September 1920 © Stadsarchief Amsterdam

The world of sound is a tiny bubble in the silence of the infinite. The universe has its own language of gesture; it talks in the voice of pictures and dance. Every object in the world proclaims in the dumb signal of lines and colours, the fact that it is not a mere logical abstraction or a mere thing of use, but it is unique in itself, it carries the miracle of its existence.–Rabindranath Tagore quoted by Dinkar Kowshik in

Doodled Fancy, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan 1999, p. 8

Related post
“Sampradaya is like a broad river and the bani is a tributary”: Umayalpuram Sivaraman on his 75 years of performance >>

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A musical tribute to Prof. S. A. Srinivasan by Karaikudi Voyage – Sreevidhya Chandramouli (vocal & vina)

Vocal with vina accompaniment: Sreevidhya & Chandramouli (Karaikudi Bani)

Dr. Srinivasa Ayya Srinivasan, a dear friend of ours, and an Indologist at University of Hamburg, Germany, passed away on May 2nd, 2019. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife, Pia Srinivasan, who was a student of late Rajeswari Padmanabhan. We pay homage to his great soul with a few of his favorite compositions on voice and Veena.

  • To listen and view photos on youtube, click here >>
  • Find the lyrics* sung in the tribute by Dhvani in the search window seen below or click here >>
  • Visit Dhvani’s homepage >>

Dhvani was formed to Preserve, Explore & Disseminate Indian art and cultural heritage. As a grassroots organization devoted to expanding knowledge in our community, Dhvani fulfills the need to inculcate an integrated understanding of art in Indian culture as well as other cultures.

Compositions heard as part of the Karaikudi Voyage tribute

  1. Paripalaya – Ritigaula – Adi tala – Tyagaraja
  2. Ramapahi meghasyama – Kapi – Adi tala – Tyagaraja
  3. Amba nilayatakshi – Nilambari – Adi tala – Muttusvami Dikshitar

Find song lyrics by typing any of the above in the search window:

S.A. Srinivasan (2011)
Prof. Dr. S.A. Srinivasan
18 September 1932 – 2 May 2019
Acknowledgement
Deutsch: Tributes by colleagues (in German)

Select titles

Hinduismus und ökologische Ethik: Einige Bemerkungen
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/900603864 | Details in German (Vienna University) >>

The goddess Māriyammaṉ in music and in sociology of religion
by Pia Srinivasan Buonomo; Srinivasa Ayya Srinivasan
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/247408025
Open access version (text and audio files discussed):
https://archive.org/details/mariyamman-in-music

On the composition of the Nāṭyaśāstra
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/499646888

Studies in the Rāma story : on the irretrievable loss of Vālmīki’s original and the operation of the received text as seen in some versions of the Vālin-Sugrīva episode
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/560465987

Nonviolence and holistically environmental ethics : gropings while reading Samayadivākaravāman̲amun̲i on Nīlakēci
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/929910155 / http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/899297850

Find these and related publications (add “open access” for freely downloadable content) on worldcat.org >>

Veena Dhanammal’s soulful music

Read the full report in The Hindu (13 December 2018) >>

Vainika K. G. Vijayakrishnan’s determination to get the younger generation interested in Veena Dhanammal’s soulful music resulted in a documentary on the legend. The documentary, conceptualised by Vijayakrishnan and directed by Avinash Prakash, was recently launched at the Music Academy. […]

Vijayakrishnan’s father had all seventeen of Dhanammal’s 78 rpm records. He recorded them in his Grundig spool recorder. Except for the Kapi javali ‘Sarasamulade’ by Poochi Srinivasa Iyengar, Vijayakrishnan has digitised all the others. He presented the entire set of recordings to the Music Academy. […]

N. Murali, President of the Music Academy, said that Dhanammal was a mystical genius, who played for herself, and not for an audience. HMV, which cut all Dhanammal’s discs had difficulty marketing them, because only a few had the knowledge needed to understand the nuances of her music. […]  

K.G. Vijayakrishnan has performed in leading sabhas in Chennai and in Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and the U.S. He is the author of The Grammar of Carnatic Music published by De Gruyter Mouton, Germany. 

1. Varnam 2. Triloka Mata 3. Sri Narada 4. Bhajare 5. Marubari [JavaLi]

Grammar of Carnatic Music by on Scribd

Related post
“Sampradaya is like a broad river and the bani is a tributary”: Umayalpuram Sivaraman on his 75 years of performance >>

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Tip | Online research library: Musicresearchlibrary.net

Merger of websites: The two sites www.musicresearch.in and www.musicresearchlibrary.net have now merged! We have closed www.musicresearch.in and moved its contents to www.musicresearchlibrary.net. In the ‘musicresearchlibrary.net’ site, a menu ‘musicresearch.in‘ has been created which will house some of the earlier contributions of senior scholars. Please like and follow our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Musicresearchlibraryadmin/ for latest news and updates.

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