Charsur has dedicated this December Festival to the 72 Melakarta/ Raaganga ragas. Sangeetha Swaminathan expounded four Melakarta ragas — Salagam, Vardini, Dharmavati, Varunapriya — in her expressive and melodious voice.
Sangeetha’s lucid ‘Devakriya’ (Suddha Saveri) captured several nice phrases of this slightly unique raga. Muthuswami Dikshitar’s ‘Sandhya Devim’, rarely heard in concerts, was refreshing. She opted to go for niraval on the charanam line ‘Gupthathara maarga’ and suffixed it with a captivating package of swaras.
Then came an exposition of a raga that left the listeners guessing whether it was Charukesi, Chalanattai or one of the closely related ragas of the Mela chakra. However, that did not stop the audience from applauding after the alapana and swaras. The artist’s announcement, “raga Vadhini,” cleared the doubt.
ADVERTISEMENT
She sang a Lalgudi Jayaraman composition in Tamil, ‘Thavarizhaippathu En’. Once again, the kriti was an unfamiliar one. One feels that rare ragas and pallavis definitely need an introduction in concerts.
Later, Sangeetha elaborated Dharmavati, followed by a tanam and pallavi with a medley of ragas including Maand, Sahana and Rageshri in both tanam and pallavi. The pallavi was set in Adi talam tisra nadai, two kalais.
The accompanying artists, MR Gopinath (violin), Poongulam Subramaniam (mridangam) and Trichy Murali (ghatam) put in their best.
ADVERTISEMENT