When one thinks of Carnatic Music festivals, the great Tyagaraja Aaradhana at Thiruvaiyaru and Madras December music season come to mind. However, neither of these has a history comparable to that of the nine-day Navaratri music festival in Thiruvananthapuram, which has been taking place for 175 years now, without a break. It is set in the historic and regal ambience of the Sree Padamanabha Swamy temple palace complex centred around Kuthiramalika, which was once the residence of Swati Tirunal.
To any music buff in Thiruvananthapuram, listening to the concerts inside the mandapam, or even better, sitting on the centuries-old granite stairs outside, is an experience like no other. As mellifluous music flows out through a modest speaker mounted on the mandapam, devotees flow past the listeners, and the setting sun seems to melt into the ripples in the Padmatheertham pond.
It is in this mandapam that the grand old man of Carnatic music, Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, held the audience spellbound for 50 years. His ‘Deva Deva Kalayami’ and ‘Pankaja lochana’ must have enriched even the wood and stones of the mandapam. Perhaps some of his music is soaked in the earthen pots that open downwards from the ceiling (a clever arrangement to improve the acoustics).
The names of veterans who sang in the mandapam in the last 75 years read like a ‘who is who’ in Carnatic music: Muthiah Bhagavathar, Semmangudi, Palakkad K.V. Narayana Swamy, M.D. Ramanathan, G.N. Balasubramaniam, T.V. Gopalakrishnan, T.N. Seshagopalan, Maharajapuram Santhanam, Madurai Mani Iyer, Musuri Subramanya Iyer, T.K. Govinda Rao, Trichur V. Ramachandran, T.V. Sankaranarayanan, Neyveli Santhanagopalan, Neyyattinkara Vasudevan, Neyyattinkara Mohanachandran, R.K. Sreekantan, Sanjay Subrahmanyan, Aswathi Thirunal Rama Varma, O.S. Thyagarajan... And one day, the towering colossus in music M. Balamuralikrishna too walked into the mandapam to sing his only concert there. Of late, the present organiser Aswathi Thirunal Rama Varma has introduced women singers in the mandapam, starting with octogenarian Parassala Ponnammal. Conspicuous by their absence are Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavathar and his disciple K.J. Yesudas. The longing for Chembai’s magical music in the mandapam is quenched by many by through the popular Malayalam film song, ‘Nakshatra Deepangal Thilangi’ , which mentions Chembai singing in the mandapam, which never happened. All India Radio used to broadcast the concerts, earlier for 90 minutes, but now curtailed to 60 minutes, time enough to broadcast only the main composition sung with ragam, thanam, niraval and taniavarthanam.
The mother of all Carnatic music festivals flows on, enriching our aesthetic senses, our music and our heritage.
Notes on the festival
The Navaratri festival in Thiruvananthapuram has given rise to some writings that reveal its glory. Navarathri Keerthanam, a book published in 1883 by Chalayil Valavilakath Veeettil Bhagavathy Pillai and printed at St. Thomas Press, Kochi, contains songs sung in the mandapam and some other compositions of Swati Tirunal . Navarathri Prabhandam is a work of Irayimman Thampi (dated as belonging to the period 1839 to 1856). It mentions that in the mandapam, “in fine ragas and thalas, the Bhagavathars are singing compositions of King of Vanchi or Travancore”. Vishaka Vijayam , a work dated 1888, contains a description of the Navaratri festival at Thiruvananthapuram, which the work says, begins from the first day after the Mahalaya Amavasi in the month of Kanni, after Sravana . The worship of Subrahamanya, the idol brought from Kumarakovil, is also referred to. The mandapam in which the pooja is conducted is described in detail (the present Cokkatta mandapa). There, the Kavya reveals, the damsels performed the different items of lasya dance (dasiyattam). In the evening, the hall witnessed an assembly of scholars and their deliberations on scholarly topics, with the Maharaja witnessing it. The kavya gives the names of some of the poets and musicians present in the court.
