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Photos: V. Ganesan

Informative: Suguna Purushothaman

Suguna Purushothaman presented a demonstration of pallavi singing. She took up Thodi in Simhanandana talam of 32 matras or 128 aksharas. The angas for talas have been categorised as six (shadangas) and the Simhanandana talam has five angas except anudritham. The angas are Guru, Laghu, Dhrutham, Plutam, and Kakapadam. This talam is the 35th in the 108 tala group and the longest one.

Suguna Purushothaman was accompanied by Charumathi Ramanujam on the violin and senior mridanga vidwan Tanjavur Kumar.

After a brief raga alapana with Tanam, Suguna proceeded to render the pallavi. The lyric ran thus: Narasimhanandana Priya Ahobila Vaasa Bhakta Poshaka Prahlada Varada Ninnu Charane Gati/Parama Kripa Nidhi Nee Andro Shankaranai katha Abhatbandhava Kava Sri Lakshmi.

The pallavi was executed dexterously and precisely with all the speed variations and kalpanaswara ornamentations. As a person who has great control over sarvalaghu, Suguna appeared to handle the intricate aspects of the pallavi with absolute ease.

The young violinist followed Suguna like a shadow and handled the pallavi during her turn with equal exactitude and ease. Thanjavur Kumar, seasoned mridanga vidwan extended exemplary support.

Suguna said that her training under mridanga vidwan Tinniam Venkatarama Iyer in her early years in all aspects of layam had given her the resource to handle complicated pallavis. Senior vidwans who were present in the conference complimented her on the presentation. They said they were all reminded of the rendition of a pallavi in the same talam in the raga Khambodi by

Mudicondan Venkatarama Iyer decades ago at the Annual Conference of the Music Academy.

On December 22, a paper on the musical aptitude of visually impaired children was presented by Dr.S.Sundar.

Dr. Sundar

Dr. Sundar explained that the human brain, comprising a complex structure of 100 billion cells, had a unique and stupendous capacity. The capacity refers to the important aspect of attentiveness. However when one considers attentiveness, it allows only for one external environmental stimulus to occupy centre stage at any given point in time. In the ambit of art, people who are able to spontaneously allocate their attention to a single subject are able to excel in that field.

Sishupunarjanmam is a project run by Freedom Trust established by Dr. S Sundar. The trust has identified children who are differently abled and has taken the task of imparting music to them. The children are visually impaired, and they have a heightened aptitude to music. The shut down of their visual stimuli has morphed, perhaps, into a heightened response to auditory stimuli.

Special mention has to be made of Hikari, the son of Nobel laureate who had severe brain deformities that left him with autism and near blindedness. However he was an excellent composer of classical music and Tony De Blois, born blind, autistic and retarded is a famous jazz musician.

The famous neuroscientist V. Ramachandran explains this as the phenomenal plasticity of the brain, in the visually impaired children. One in five blind children have perfect pitch. This is indicated in the study paper of Dr. S. Sundar.

Twenty children were taken up for the study and tested for musical ability with reference to pitch, rhythm, tuning and identification of the tune. The findings were that there was perfect sruti alignment with keen concentration skills. Although eye contact was absent, all cues being auditory their memorising capacity and response to music were excellent.

This study was contrasted against the measurables for normal children and there was a distinct difference in the above mentioned measurables.

Vidarte presented a drawing, Mahalakshmi presented a dance item. Sathyanarayana, Akshaya, Manoj, Sowbhagya, Srilatha and Vishnupriya presented two songs ‘Sabapathi Ki’ and ‘Shanthi Nilava Vendum.’ The rendering of ‘Kamalambam Bajare’ by Sathyanarayana was immaculate.

Dr. Sundar summed up saying that the study gives a better understanding of differently abled people with regards to their musical potential and skill.

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