As part of its Diamond Jubilee celebrations, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan felicitated nine legends of Carnatic music — Umayalpuram Sivaraman, T.V. Gopalakrishnan, Vikku Vinayakaram, A.K.C. Natarajan, A. Kanyakumari, Trichur V.Ramachadran, Bombay Sisters, T.V. Sankaranarayanan and T.N. Seshagopalan.
Dr. C.V. Krishnaswami, who has been on the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan committee for 20 years, and who was M.S. Subbulakshmi’s and MLV’s doctor, gave the felicitation address. He said that he had been listening to Carnatic music for more than 70 years. Musicians who visited his father C.K. Venkatanarasimhan, popularly known as Babu, would refer to Venkatanarasimhan’s house in Palathope, Mylapore, as Mount Kailash, because discussions on music took place in the third floor of the house. Krishnaswami’s role was to serve coffee to the visiting musicians. He said the munificence of people like Preetha Reddy and Vijayakumar Reddy, who had funded renovation of Bhavan’s auditorium, was a great boon to institutions like Bhavan’s.
Umayalpuram Sivaraman said that it was wrong to attribute the achievements of the music legends to luck. A tall gopuram is built on a broad and strong foundation, and in the case of musicians who had scaled the heights of excellence, that foundation was their hard work.
K.N. Ramaswamy, director of the Chennai Kendra of Bhavan’s, said that Bhavan’s had been built on land, where the house of K.S. Jayarama Iyer, a leading criminal lawyer, had once stood. Jayarama Iyer was C.K. Venkatanarasimhan’s senior. Chamber concerts used to be organised in Jayarama Iyer’s house for 15 years, until Bhavan’s bought the property. So, the place where Bhavan’s auditorium had been built, has been reverberating with music for more than 85 years, Ramaswamy said.
T.V. Gopalakrishnan gave the acceptance speech on behalf of all the musicians on stage. Ramaswamy said that all the artistes honoured would be performing at Bhavan’s. TVG’s performance will be on June 11, which happens to be his 86th birthday.
