An unequal music

My husband Frank was better as a mridangam accompanist than as my veena partner

Does everyone think about his/her profession at a young age like, say, eight or nine? I do not think that I ever thought about being a professional veena player. I studied music as a special subject in the bifurcated section in the National Girls High School, Thiruvallikeni, Chennai, and I got a high score in Mathematics in the final exam.

My mother talked me into taking up Mathematics as my major in Ethiraj college and then Queen Mary’s. Her argument was “You already have music at home. Why don't you go for a subject in college that you love so much?” All my sisters hold degrees like M.A., M. Phil., and Doctorate in music except for one of the sisters, Dr. Padma Gadiyar, and myself.

From my childhood I played duet veena concerts with my father in which I would follow him like a shadow. After my B.Sc., the family moved to Madurai when appa was offered a job as the principal at Sri Sathguru Sangeetha Samajam. In and around Madurai, I played a few veena solo concerts, in places such as the temple festivities, etc.

Many American students came to Madurai under the Fulbright programme and I would play for them, which not only boosted my ego, but improved my spoken (American) English also. Some of my students such as Geetha Gopalaswami (Veena S. Balachandar's sister-in-law) or Savithri Ramaswamy would invite me to play songs like "Chinnanjiru Kiliye' for a plateful of hot onion pagodas and freshly brewed filter coffee. Yes. I loved those sessions.

Around that time, Appa invited me to join him at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, where he was teaching. I again started playing duet veena concerts with him in the U.S. When I got married the same continued with my husband Dr. Frank Bennett, who was a veena student of Sri Kalyanakrishna Baghavathar and later my father. Bennett and myself played our first veena duet concert in Madurai to a full house introduced as man and wife at the Angayarkanni sabha with Mrs. Ranganayaki ammal accompanying on the mridangam. Our duets continued after we went back to the U.S.

Cool as they say these days but this posed a big problem for me. Once the novelty of playing with the new husband wore off, I was faced with choices. Frank insisted on practising each song several times before we got on the stage. He was a novice to the instrument but I was not. I felt that I could play a full concert without much effort and of course, this was only possible because of the fact that I had been a veena player all my life.

I was very diplomatic about the whole thing, and convinced my western drummer husband to accompany me on the mridangam. He was fortunate to have studied mridangam intensively with Ramnad V. Raghavan at Wesleyan University. He played ganjira and tavil apart from all kinds of global percussion including the drum set, marimba, vibraphone, tympani and xylophone.

That was one of my best ideas, because wow... that turned out SO well. He right away ordered several E flat (two and a half sruti) mridangams from Chennai and we started rehearsing together at home and became a very good team. Mr. Parthasarathy of Oriental Records was the one who recorded, produced, and released our first L.P. album. Time Magazine photographer shot our cover picture in a very non-Indian traditional way.

The writer, a veena exponent, talks about her father, her musical journey and more.