The Markandeya of music is no more. No more shall we listen to his tantalising alapanas making the listener wonder for the first few minutes what the raga was going to be. Mo more the thrill of his innovative but instantaneously composed kalpanaswara patterns .
It was his Bhakti Ranjani programme on AIR Vijayawada that got me and many other listeners hooked to his music and to rare kritis such as ‘E dhaari sancharinthuvao,’ ‘Maara vairi,’and so on. Even Semmangudi (by no means a friend of balamurali ) wanted to introduce a similar programme on the Trivandrum radio when he was heading the Swati Tirunal Academy. Vasudevachar once said that though he composed the kriti ‘Devaadi deva’, it really belonged to Balamurali. Even oft-rendered kritis such as ‘Nannu paalimpa’ gained a special flavour and swarupa when he sang it. His tuning of the Ashtapadis and Sadasiva Brahmendra’s compositions make other similar efforts appear amateurish.
For all his greatness, he was a warm and friendly person. Once he and I were travelling from Hyderabad to Chennai by train. He was in the next compartment. I went to meet him. I asked him to teach me his Ragamalika composition ‘Gaana lola nee leela’, which he had composed on the spot when TTD made him the asthana vidwan. He took out a piece of paper and pen and wrote not only the lyric and explained the meaning but also the swara notation and sang it for me till I absorbed it correctly. When I met him during a concert on his 80th birthday, I asked him in fun whether this entitled me to call myself his sishya. He smiled and said, “Why not?”
His compositions are not only innovative in tune and chittaiswaram but contain i creativity which is rare in Carnatic compositions. In ‘Engum thunai neeye’ (Charukesi ), he says, ‘Were you so absorbed in my wonderful music and forgot yourself that you even forgot me?’ In his Amritavarshini kriti on Tyagaraja, he says, ‘You are the master musician who rejected all wealth, but singing your kritis we have all gathered wealth and titles.’
In these days, when even younger musicians struggle to maintain their voice with melody often taking a back-seat, Balamurali reigned as the Markandeya of music.
The fifth descendant of the Tyagaraja parampara and one who composed kritis in all the 72 melakartas when he was just 16, is no more. All that we can say, a la Mark Antony, ‘Here was a Balamurali, when comes such another?’
(The writer is a retired IAS officer)
