In recent years, the tambura or tanpura, one of India’s oldest musical instruments dating back to the Rig Vedic period, has been losing the battle to its electronic and digital avatars. But this Ramanavami, the strains of the ancient stringed instrument are once again reverberating across mandalis and samitis in Bengaluru.
But then, the tambura, which forms the backbone of Carnatic music, has always held a special place in Ramanavami celebrations. Artistes and mandali organisers offer vignettes about artistes and their reverence for the instrument.
In the early 1960s, for example, flautist T.R. Mahalingam — who was affectionately called Mali — had to be assisted to get on stage for a concert at Sree Ramaseva Mandali at Chamarajpet. He made a strange request to the mandali founder, S.V.N. Rao. “You have to play the tambura for my concert,” Mali told Rao. “I would feel blessed if a great man like you provided shruti for me on the divine tambura,” the artiste had said.
The maestro and the mandali founder have long gone, but the memory lives on. Rao’s son S.N. Varadaraj of the mandali, who narrated the incident, explains why the tambura was important to Mali. “When people spoke of other instruments such as harmonium or the pitch pipe to help assist one in determining the base line shruti , he would ask them to tune the tambura and use it instead,” said Mr. Varadaraj. “In the 22 concerts that have happened till now at the Ramaseva Mandali, all of them had tamburas playing in the background. Some, like T.M. Krishna and Bombay Jayashri, even used two wooden tamburas on either side,” he added.
A deep reverence to the shruti providers helped the mandali take a step forward to honour three of their regular tambura players — Jagannath Rao, Hulikal Prasad and Sripada Rao — during the Ramotsava.
“My father Vittal Rao played the tambura for five decades. Just as the tambura twangs provide an aural relaxation, our exposure to stalwarts on stage are rewarding,” said Jagannath Rao, who works with the ISRO Satellite Centre as a junior engineer.
The reverence for the tambura is also seen at the Ramaseva Samiti at Seshadripuram and the Vani Kala Kendra at Basaveshwaranagar. “I remember Neyveli Santhanagopalan asking for a tambura accompaniment, but the youngsters are game with either the wooden instrument or the digital one,” says Lakshmi Keshava of the Vani Kala Kendra.
Hulikal Prasad of Anekal, who runs an Iyengars Bakery in Bengaluru, is a vocal student of Ramakrishna Bhagavatar, and has been providing accompaniments for nearly 30 concerts a year. “I have four tamburas that I have specially sourced from Tiruchi. We are trained to not just strike on the strings, but taught the art of playing on them at the right pace,” said the devotee of music.
There are some concerns that the tambura will lose out to digital versions even during Ramotsava, but so far these fears remain unfounded.
