The Hindu : National : Quest for Vivekananda’s voice recordings

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Wednesday, Sep 05, 2007
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Quest for Vivekananda’s voice recordings

Indrani Dutta

KOLKATA: Efforts are on to trace and recover a number of recordings made by Swami Vivekananda, which are believed to be in the collection of one of the Maharajas of Mysore.

Union Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh has joined the Ramakrishna Mission’s long-running quest to trace the recordings of Sri Ramakrishna’s favourite disciple.

Mr. Ramesh said here that he was following up on a letter written to Srikantadatta Narasimharaja Wadeyar, the scion of the Wadeyar family, on the subject about a year ago.

The Minister stressed that he was doing this in his personal capacity and out of his reverence for Swami Vivekananda.

According to sound engineers and music restorers, time is running out. Unless found soon, they may be lost for ever.

Krisharajendra Wadeyar, a great granduncle of Srikantadatta, a friend of Swami Vivekananda, was a music collector and is believed to have built up a major personal archive. Recordings are believed to have been made during Swami Vivekananda’s visit to the West when he also met Thomas Alva Edison, the inventor.

Swami Vivekananda’s short but extremely active and fruitful life came to an end in 1902. He was born in 1863. He addressed the Chicago Parliament of Religions in 1893, and gave many discourses on Vedanta in the West thereafter. In the early days, recordings were made on a cylindrical pole and they were played on a “graphophone.”

If the recordings are found now, they will have to be reformated to suit current technology.

But disciples of one of the greatest monks and followers of the Order will without doubt be eager to hear even a broken syllable that can be thus recovered.

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