do i have the right to write anything about MS?
every time i listen any recording of hers, i feel that the sublime music ferries me to a different world. a beautiful and divine world. a world filled with bhakti. today, i was listening to her "bhavayami raghuramam" and felt compelled to write something about her.
what makes MS so special and endearing to everyone is that her music has the power to reach the heart of every person out there. she "connects" with the listener, and this is what makes her one of the greatest singers ever. i refrain from using the past tense because for me, MS is still very much alive. a lot has been written about MS, so whatever i write here is not something new. we don't talk about MS as just a singer. we talk about her as a great human being, an altruist in the true sense, the one with the god-given gift of a mellifluous voice. i also remember my grandmother telling me how people used to flock to MS concerts just to get a glimple of the queenly lady on the stage. however, her music resides at such lofty heights of both technicality and divinity that one doesn't need to know anything about her philanthropic nature, humility or anything else to fall at her feet and worship her. the profundity in her music makes everything else inconsequential.
for a long time i believed that sticking to the rule book of carnatic music while rendering krithis had nothing to do with the bringing out of either bhakti or bhava. as a kid, i never paid attention to bhava as such. as i grew up, all the people around me started telling me that i should put more emotion, more bhava, more expression into my singing. yet, my gurus never told me anything beyond clear diction, shruthi shuddham, swara shuddham, adherence to tala, and singing every sangathi twice. why? is it because they ignored bhava? they knew that bhava is something that cannot be taught, but is in fact something that comes along with the krithi. but the key is to render the krithi exactly the way it should be. and MS's rendition of every krithi is a standing example of this fact. her diction is perfect. her gamakas touch the exact frequencies at the exact speed and with precision. every sangathi is sung twice. every syllable of the sahitya falls perfectly at the same place in the tala, whichever sangathi she sings. the shruthi is perfect to digital accuracy. the tala metre is unwavering. and the bhava comes along with it. this is something that i realized after i started listening to her renditions closely. you first need to have perfection before any bhava can come out. trying to put bhava into your singing without strictly following the rule book will do nothing but dilute the krithi and do no justice to the reason the composer composed it in the first place. you definitely need to "feel" the lyrics when you sing a krithi, but the expression will never come out if you don't sing the sangathis perfectly. i remember my teacher telling me that if MS sang a krithi now and sang it again 20 years later, it would sound exactly the same. i looked at my teacher with a bewildered look because at that time i didn't know if this was a good thing or a bad thing. but now i know. my teacher meant to say that the perfection would still be there, and so would the bhava.
her raga alapanas are perfectly structured. but a great exposition of a raga is something more than structural perfection. her exposition of the raga goes beyond the nuances, brikas and raga bhava. there is a certain grandeur in her sancharas, a certain augustness in her improvisation, and above all that, she makes it sound so easy. the brikas are there, but there are no "acrobatics", because she doesn't need any. the magic is already there. the same thing applies to her niraval as well. again, every syllable of the sahitya falls perfectly at the same place in the tala, and the sahitya bhava co-exists with the raga bhava. and above all, there is balance. nothing is in excess, be it swara kalpana or niraval.
what i have written about her now is nothing. but then, i don't have the right to talk about anything else. this is all i understand. for me, MS stands for tradition, purity and divinity. she is loved by one and all. she might not be amongst us today, but her music is so powerful that she is still alive.. very much alive...
every time i listen any recording of hers, i feel that the sublime music ferries me to a different world. a beautiful and divine world. a world filled with bhakti. today, i was listening to her "bhavayami raghuramam" and felt compelled to write something about her.
what makes MS so special and endearing to everyone is that her music has the power to reach the heart of every person out there. she "connects" with the listener, and this is what makes her one of the greatest singers ever. i refrain from using the past tense because for me, MS is still very much alive. a lot has been written about MS, so whatever i write here is not something new. we don't talk about MS as just a singer. we talk about her as a great human being, an altruist in the true sense, the one with the god-given gift of a mellifluous voice. i also remember my grandmother telling me how people used to flock to MS concerts just to get a glimple of the queenly lady on the stage. however, her music resides at such lofty heights of both technicality and divinity that one doesn't need to know anything about her philanthropic nature, humility or anything else to fall at her feet and worship her. the profundity in her music makes everything else inconsequential.
for a long time i believed that sticking to the rule book of carnatic music while rendering krithis had nothing to do with the bringing out of either bhakti or bhava. as a kid, i never paid attention to bhava as such. as i grew up, all the people around me started telling me that i should put more emotion, more bhava, more expression into my singing. yet, my gurus never told me anything beyond clear diction, shruthi shuddham, swara shuddham, adherence to tala, and singing every sangathi twice. why? is it because they ignored bhava? they knew that bhava is something that cannot be taught, but is in fact something that comes along with the krithi. but the key is to render the krithi exactly the way it should be. and MS's rendition of every krithi is a standing example of this fact. her diction is perfect. her gamakas touch the exact frequencies at the exact speed and with precision. every sangathi is sung twice. every syllable of the sahitya falls perfectly at the same place in the tala, whichever sangathi she sings. the shruthi is perfect to digital accuracy. the tala metre is unwavering. and the bhava comes along with it. this is something that i realized after i started listening to her renditions closely. you first need to have perfection before any bhava can come out. trying to put bhava into your singing without strictly following the rule book will do nothing but dilute the krithi and do no justice to the reason the composer composed it in the first place. you definitely need to "feel" the lyrics when you sing a krithi, but the expression will never come out if you don't sing the sangathis perfectly. i remember my teacher telling me that if MS sang a krithi now and sang it again 20 years later, it would sound exactly the same. i looked at my teacher with a bewildered look because at that time i didn't know if this was a good thing or a bad thing. but now i know. my teacher meant to say that the perfection would still be there, and so would the bhava.
her raga alapanas are perfectly structured. but a great exposition of a raga is something more than structural perfection. her exposition of the raga goes beyond the nuances, brikas and raga bhava. there is a certain grandeur in her sancharas, a certain augustness in her improvisation, and above all that, she makes it sound so easy. the brikas are there, but there are no "acrobatics", because she doesn't need any. the magic is already there. the same thing applies to her niraval as well. again, every syllable of the sahitya falls perfectly at the same place in the tala, and the sahitya bhava co-exists with the raga bhava. and above all, there is balance. nothing is in excess, be it swara kalpana or niraval.
what i have written about her now is nothing. but then, i don't have the right to talk about anything else. this is all i understand. for me, MS stands for tradition, purity and divinity. she is loved by one and all. she might not be amongst us today, but her music is so powerful that she is still alive.. very much alive...
