“This ‘Sangeetha Surabhi’ Award from Nadasurabhi in Bangalore means a lot to me, because I believe that I am recognised for my dogged belief in ‘music for music sake,” said musicologist and scholar R. Vedavalli who received the Award at the Nadasurabhi Annual Music Fest for her lifetime dedication to the cause of pure classical music.
While her puritanical approach is regarded a textbook for posterity by the Mecca of Carnatic Music, Chennai, it was to the delight of the young students at her Sabha concert that followed thereafter that mirrored her progressive approaches. In following established principles of classicism, we don’t have to lose out on ingenuity, she says, as her opening Kalyani Varna “Vanajakshi” brought back yesteryear memories as she took up the Charana Sahitya for Neraval! “Such exercises were much in vogue as improvisations at right interventions made them richer,” she later told The Hindu in an interview.
How did Vedavalli latch on to such principled playing, when the world around her lapped up ‘newer exercises.’ “When I was six I learnt from Srirangam Iyengar, and it was the same time when M.S. Subbulakshmi too learnt from Srinivasa Iyengar, the two brothers who were known as Madurai Brothers in the 1940s. Later I was guided by Mudikondan Venkatrama Iyer who was a known perfectionist. Both the stalwarts together weaved in the lakshya and lakshana aspects and this schooling had a deep effect on me,” she says.
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Although changes in singing are part of evolution, Vedavalli insists on students understanding the raga-lakshana, or the raga structure for “it is in taking up the right prayogas (the apt phrases) that the raga exhibits its true colour.” Daily practice akin to melodic meditation , taking up slower-paced vilamba-kala kritis, full throated singing to overcome a false-tone are some of the ‘dos and don’ts’ she recommends for students.