It was the late 1990s, when the worldwide web was a fairly new concept, the internet was spelt with a capital ‘I’, and personal computers were a rare facility for the average educated Indian. Web crawling with our first home computer, we came across a list of Tyagaraja kritis, alphabetised by the opening word of the pallavi, with columns for raga and tala. There was a similar list of works of Muthuswami Dikshitar. To find two of the greatest pillars of Carnatic music represented so diligently in this strange new cyber universe was delightful to say the least, and one imagined some South Indian whiz kid in Silicon Valley using this burgeoning medium to create a bridge between the old country and the new.
Hardly two decades later, the internet is awash with Skype classes, YouTube channels, live streams and all manner of electronic data related to Carnatic music and other arts once considered esoteric. And while the fundamentals haven’t changed — an adequate education in music and dance still requires the presence of a real teacher and not a virtual or video-linked one — it can’t be denied that there are innumerable ways now to bolster the old guru-shishya parampara. Feeding right into the rising demand for such aids is a new work by Kanakam Devaguptapu on varnams, one of the most significant intra-forms prevalent in Carnatic music. “Varna Varnanam”, a printed book with customised web-based audio support, represents a pragmatic partnership of convention and new technology.
The book contains forewords by three eminent personalities. The first is Veturi Anandamurthy, a historian and researcher of medieval lyrical literature and music compositions. The second is B. Krishnamoorthy, former principal of Tamil Nadu Government Music College. And the third is V.P. Dhananjayan, renowned dancer and guru and one half of the Shanta-and-Dhananjayan duo.
The varnam is a form of utmost importance to performers of both dance (particularly Bharatanatyam) and music. By including an essay by a renowned Natya guru and performer alongside those of erudite music scholars, the author focuses readers’ attention on the inextricable interdependence of music and dance, a link whose dimensions are not always understood. It is not incidental that the Dhananjayans prefer the word ‘Natya’ over ‘dance’, stressing on the Sanskrit term for a complex and composite art that encompasses body movement, footwork, dramatic expression, and a constant quest to meld melody and rhythm with meaning.
Improvisational skills
The author, who learnt veena from childhood under Behata Rajarao of Rajahmundry, Andhra Pradesh and later received advanced training under Ayyagari Satyaprasad and Mutnuri Jalajakshi in Visakhapatnam, imbibed the importance of a holistic approach from her gurus. Her first guru, she says, “always insisted that I sing along as I played the veena, which gave me a clear understanding of the lyrics. His teaching was so well rounded that he insisted I understand the technicalities of the raga, the meaning of the lyrics and the nuances that are to be employed while playing a composition.” Under her later gurus her repertoire grew, along with her improvisational skills, or manodharma sangeetam.
It is largely in manodharma or improvisation that the meaning of a song takes on paramount importance, which neither dancer nor vocalist nor instrumentalist can afford to ignore.
“The lyrics lose their authenticity if they are not understood, as the lack of understanding reflects glaringly in the way they are presented. The presentation may reflect wrong splitting of lyrics, lack of clarity in intonation, and may eventually be devoid of the emotion that goes with the lyrics,” points out the author.
Although she describes her own training as learning only “for music’s sake,” she sympathises with today’s performers who face “a humongous task to understand every word in the song and utter them like a native speaker of that language.” And, she notes, “When linguistic challenges become unsurmountable, be it musicians, dancers or any one of us, we will definitely try to circumvent them.”
One of the main objectives of the book, on which she worked for two-and-a-half years, is “to address this challenge to the best of my ability for a few chosen compositions. I gave the meanings of the words, divided the phrases into meaningful clusters, and gave the overall meaning of each sentence.”
Language develops with society and is never far from the historical milieu, so she also attempted to “comprehend the compositions in the backdrop of the times in which they were written” before elaborating each one.
Language barriers are one reason some compositions are going out of circulation, says the veteran, who retired as Head of the Department of English from the Qatar campus of the Netherlands’ Stenden University.
Although varnams in Tamil are not uncommon, Telugu was the language of the courts and poetry for several centuries, and Carnatic music has a large corpus of Telugu lyrics. Telugu being the author’s mother tongue helps her “navigate better with the compositions.” Thus, of the 26 varnams dealt with, 20 are in Telugu, while two are in Tamil, two in Sanskrit and one each is in Kannada and Malayalam.
She has researched some rare varnams with anubandham, a type that has all but gone out of vogue. The anubandham refers to that section of the lyrics that augments the thought of the varnam. In many cases it completes the charanam, and therefore is also called the sampoorna charanam. The author cites the Saveri raga varnam, “Neeve dikkani” in tala Khanda Ata. The charanam of this varnam is usually sung as “chinna naad̤e neevu nannu”. This means, “In childhood itself you to me,” says the author, adding, “Notice that the meaning is incomplete.” Once the anubandham is added, the lyrics make sense: “During our childhood itself when you met me, you were the most desirable among the suitors. You have been the renowned Lord who maintained his stature; our supreme brave Lord, Rama Kumara Yettendra!”
