With more than five decades of association with the mridanga, a majority would know him as mridanga vidwan Srimushnam V. Raja Rao. But for those who have observed him closely, he is primarily a vocalist who went through a routine of vocal lessons prior to his mridanga classes, “as was the norm at Srimushnam in Tamil Nadu for any kind of music study,” he says. The familiarity and fluency he later gathered with every percussive instrument – khanjira, ghata, morsing, konnakkol – is what makes him an unbelievable man of beats today, an achiever who has made Srimushnam synonymous with percussive arts!
It wasn't surprising for the seven-year-old to have performed, as his illustrious musical inheritance goes back to his great grand father Sethumadhava Rao, a renowned mridangist and musician in the court of the Mysore Royal Court. “The royal patron as a token of his appreciation gave a piece of land to my great grand father at Srimushnam and we shifted from Mysore,” clarifies the maestro. Raja Rao got his initial training from his father Vidwan Venkataramana Rao in mridanga and subsequently from Kumbakonam Rajappa Iyer.
His passion for singing brought him to Sri Rama Bhakthi Mandali in Bangalore recently for a two hour concert that reflected his control on his overall musical persona. That brings us to one more vital aspect of his intrinsic love for melody. As a child of six, Raja Rao would often take strolls in his garden which had a profusion of bamboo trees. Fascinated by the thin bamboo reeds that produced so much of music, the little boy tried his hand at making a flute. Without anybody's help he had calculated the distances between the holes for perfect swara sthanas and soon made quite a few that he even started playing with them. He packed a few flutes (out of the nearly 100 that he made) and left his home town for Madras when he was barely 13, dreaming of becoming a flautist.
Shrimushnam was blind with passion, but that did bring him to a turning point when Thanjavur Upendran took him to flute Mahalingam who was awestruck with the little ones skill of ‘making' flutes and as he used one he announced to the audience about the ‘flute maker,' when Upendran and Raja Rao had accompanied him on the mridanga. “You will make it big in mridanga, mark my words,” Mali had told Raja Rao on many occasions.
Raja Rao came into contact with several top rung musicians especially during his participation at the ‘Bhajane and Tyagaraja Swamy Akhanda Sangeetha Seva' where stalwarts such as T.M. Tyagarajan, Musiri Subramanya Iyer took part. At 15, he had accompanied Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer and then there was no looking back. “Gradually, there came a time when I packed 40 concerts in a 30-days schedule, and this was happening until a few years back,” says Raja Rao, secretary of Thyabrahma Aradhana Samiti, Tiruvaiyyur. From 1975-78 he headed the Carnatic Music department at the University of California, Berkeley. Workshops and concerts in Singapore, London and Australia had increased but what is etched in his memory is the marathon six-and-a-half hour accompaniment to Madurai Seshagopalan at a Cleveland concert.
“Even in the 1950s we were used to marathon concerts with two ‘Thani Avartha sessions' - one for 20 minutes and the other, 10 minutes. This wouldn't be a strain on the audience as laya belongs to a different league. Here the language gets intermingled with complicated calculations which is difficult for all rasikas to follow. So don't blame the audiences when they get restless after an over-stretched percussion session,” he reasons, and adds, “otherwise you could only see audiences taking intervals.”
Where does the novelty lie in the Srimushnam maestro's beat? “The two basic schools Thanjavur and Pudukkottai differ in their format and style. Although trained in the former, I have pioneered certain soft strokes that blend and synchronise with the tempo of the main artiste. My style consists in following the main artiste without disturbing the flow. The way we softly glide across with our embellishments is what makes it special. In olden days we were asked to listen to artistes performing. This helped in understanding the flow and character of each style. Mridanga can be adjusted to any pitch, be it the shrill notes of Mali or even the base of M.D. Ramanathan!” he says. Amongst the 100-odd students of Raja Rao who have made it big are H.S. Sudhindra, Neyveli Ramkumar, Poongulam Subramaniam and others. Raja Rao's son Raaghavendra Rao has this year won the Carnatic Music Idol in a television show. The Sangeet Natak Academy Award for Excellence in mridanga for 2011 is being given to the maestro on July 22 at New Delhi.
