Â
‘With Tamil lyrics, I do a Sivajiâ
Sanjay Subrahmanyan talks about a documentary on his music, and reveals how he learnt a song rendered decades ago by Dandapani Desikar through… the Internet.
NOV 26, 2006 – SANJAY SUBRAHMANYAN LIKES TO LAUGH.Every so often, our conversation is punctuated by that huge, hearty sound â a wholly unique, wholly infectious cross between the sharp hiss of a pressure cooker letting off steam and the heavy wheeze of an asthmatic. The singer remembers training under his grand-aunt Rukmini Rajagopalan, who was not a performer, and referring to her amateur status, he says, âThey still maintained the difference between the Gentlemen and the Players.â? Thatâs the cue for a laugh, as is his revelation that he likes doing different things at different points in time, and, âRight now, my obsession is European strategy board games.â? I get the impression Sanjay is one hell of a jolly chap, one hell of an audience pleaser, but by the end of the interview, Iâm left with the nagging doubt that the laughter was perhaps more to keep himself entertained. Because the winding-up question I ask, almost as an afterthought, is why heâs so reluctant to talk to the media, and he responds, âIf the press is going to keep asking me questions like whom I learnt my music from, how long my training lasted, what my favourite ragas areâ? â for the record, Begada, Sahana, Khamboji â âwhere I have sung, what the difference is between singing in India and the US, why I sing so many Tamil songs, I can just prepare an answer sheet and distribute it, even before these questions come up.â?
That sound you did not hear is me going, âUlp!â? These are some of the exact questions Iâve brought up, hoping not for literal answers, but sometimes the way you dance around a familiar topic can result in illuminating insights. And here he is, pretty much indicating that the entire session was a cliché parade, and if heâs agreed to this interview, itâs primarily to promote the documentary that Prasanna Ramaswamy â the theatre director whoâs been working in films for over 15 years, with two independent shorts to her credit â has made on him. âHere there is a specific thing. Itâs new, itâs unusual, and so I want to talk about it,â? he says, jabbing the air in her direction, and when I ask why someone who seems to dislike publicity â or at least, the apparent inanities that it entails â to the extent that he does would want to be the focus of an entire film, he explains, âItâs not that Iâm an actor. I was asked to do the things that I normally do. As far as publicity is concerned, she wanted to film me because of her own interest and excitement about my music, and her own interaction with me over 20 years. That is something I value a lot. This whole interview is because of the film.â?
THE FILM is titled Aarar Asaippadar (Desired Melody), and it begins and ends with the exquisite Nadanamakriya composition it is named after â sung, of course, by Sanjay. Aarar Asaippadar is structured like a concert, proceeding from varnam to virutham, and while Sanjayâs forceful detailing of Shanmukhapriya alone would justify the filmâs existence, the quieter moments are equally affecting â like the part that has the singer at his home, looking down from his verandah at the passers-by on the street, as if he were, you know, just another guy, like you, like me, whereas the voice in the background reminds you that that is absolutely not the case. âMany people tell me this must be the first film made on a musician still in his prime,â? says Prasanna, who still remembers the first concert of Sanjayâs she attended some 20 years ago. âNarada Gana Sabha. 12 oâclock. It was an unbelievable combination of abandon, intellectual rigour, and great leaps of imagination. It took me a few hours to settle down from that excitement.â? Or maybe she never really did, considering her estimate of having parked herself at an average of 25 concerts of Sanjayâs every year, for the past 20 years, and this prompts Sanjay to ask me rhetorically, âDo you think you can find a filmmaker who is making a film after listening to so much of an artist? That is the kind of understanding that this filmmaker has about this artist.â?
Prasanna defines Aarar Asaippadar as being about her excitement of this music, his music â but she says itâs neither an academic document of a musician nor a fanâs tribute. âIâm not a fan. I would like to call myself a sahridaya.â? Sanjay elaborates the concept. âIf both of us were to discuss a concert, Iâd look at it from a musical point of view, sheâd look at it from an experiential point of view, and yet weâd come to the same conclusions.â? The challenge for Prasanna, naturally, was in translating her excitement â one personâs excitement â to a series of images that would excite a general audience as well. âIt was a huge struggle,â? she says. âI didnât want to shoot with multiple cameras â not for financial reasons, but I didnât want that âcoverageâ quality. What you are looking at here is an experience. Itâs not a cut from here, a cut from there.â? Even the visuals that arenât about the singer, she didnât want them to be illustrative or descriptive. âMerely evocative.â? And that the film is â especially the segment that shows Sanjay picking up the nuances of a mallari from the nagaswaram vidwan Semponnarkovil Vaidyanathan and then fading out of the picture as phrases from a similar mallari are played by nagaswaram artists outside the Mylapore Kapaleeswarar temple; this then segues to phrases from another similar mallari forming the basis for Malavika Sarukkaiâs dance practice in her Chennai studio. What is this if not an evocation of the continuum that Sanjayâs music is a part of!
SANJAY describes his interest in this music as one of those âtypical, middle-class, Tam-Brahm things. While growing up, it was studies, sports, music â but studies came first. There was no way you could stop your education till you were self-sufficient, even if you had other interests. But my musical education remained constant, though there was no intention that I would be a musician,â? he says, adding that his isnât a family of musicians. âThey were all rasikas, basically. And I was as much a rasika of music as I was of cricket. If anything, I had ambitions of playing cricket, at least for Tamil Nadu. I really fancied my chances, even though I was a batsman who never scored runs.â? That laugh again. âThen in my teens, I became more interested in music. I started learning to play the violin, and continued till 1982.â? Apparently, when he was one-and-a-half, he exclaimed at a Lalgudi Jayaraman concert that he wanted to play the violin like the maestro. âMy mother took me seriously and, some years later, she dropped me off at the nearest violin class.â? But after a while, his guru left for the US, and Sanjay suffered a couple of accidents â one from âplaying football in a basketball court with a tennis ballâ? and the other from falling down in the steeple chase pit at Rajarathnam Stadium. With those injuries, Sanjay could no longer play the violin, and he shifted to training in vocal music, under his grand-aunt.
Around the time, while trying to convert his fatherâs collection of spool tapes to cassettes, Sanjay chanced upon a masterâs take on a song heâd just learnt â Maragadavalleem by GNB, accompanied by Lalgudi Jayaraman and Pazhani Subramanya Pillai. âI just couldnât stop listening to those tapes and trying to sing like those artists,â? he says, and then reflects on an angsty, what-am-I-doing phase while at college that made him realise that music was it. âI said, âIâve played cricket. Iâve played chess. Iâve done trekking. Iâve done acting.â And the only constant over 10 years has been Carnatic music.â? Even during exams, heâd go for music lessons, and attending concerts was a year-round passion. âAnd the YACM (Youth Association for Classical Music) happened at around the same time, and they literally pushed me into the system.â? Thereâs, of course, a difference between learning (or listening to) music and wanting to perform that music in front of an audience, but Sanjay says he was always a performer. âIn the sixth standard, I went for an oratorical competition. I had to recite Mark Anthonyâs friends-Romans-countrymen speech. My legs were jelly, yet I got first place.â? From then on, he was on stage all the time. âIf there was a fancy dress competition, Iâd wear a lungi and go as a drunkard. Itâs magic â if you have ten people sitting in front of you and watching you do whatever you want, you want to do it again and again.â?
HEâS been doing it again and again for over 20 years now, and Sanjay says he still sings for himself first â and only then for his audience. âItâs a composite process where, initially, the artist creates the music, then the music goes to the rasikas, then the feedback comes from the rasikas. So I cannot think of the rasika before I start singing. But once I start singing, I have to feel the pulse, the vibration with the audience. That is when they come into the picture. There are days this doesnât happen, when I know I am not doing a good job. There are days it happens in abundance.â? How he senses this vibration, he says, he cannot put in words. âItâs an experience. Suddenly the atmosphere gets charged, and you can see the change. Then whatever you do, youâre in the zone. You have to search, you have to strive to get to that magical moment.â? I ask if he tailors concerts according to audiences, especially when heâs invited by, say, World Music Institute to represent Carnatic music â he did so, in the âMasters of Indian Musicâ? slot â and Sanjay shakes his head. âWhen you are representing your music, you are expected to present the best elements of your music. And whatever I sing here is already representative of this music, so how can it change? Thatâs what I said. What I pick does not depend on the audience. The process of picking a song in Paris or Lille or New York is the same as picking one in Bombay or Delhi or Mylapore Fine Arts.â?
But he does think about his audiences â for when I make a reference to the new things he keeps trying out, he says, âIn an entire concert of three hours, if I am able to sing even one sangati that I have never sung in my life, Iâm happy. It could also be a new song or a new pallavi or a raga Iâve never handled earlier. That keeps the audience interested.â? That also keeps him interested. âIf I get bored, Iâd stop singing.â? Another thing Sanjay tries is to revive a raga or a song that has not been sung in the recent past. âSix-seven years back at the Music Academy, I sang Kaana kannayiram. I donât think anyone has sung this (Neelambari) composition since Musiri (Subramanya Iyer), some forty years ago. Somebody in the US called this data mining,â? he laughs.â? Now Iâve been singing Oh oh kaalame, in Sahana, which was popularised by Dandapani Desikar. I happened to hear AKC Natarajanâ? â the clarinet maestro â âhum the lines of the song once. I liked it. One day, I found this song on the Net. I downloaded it, learnt it, and started singing.â? Another fine little story he relates in this regard involves Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer. âMy guru Calcutta Krishnamurthy once said that Surutti was dying and Narayanagaulai was already dead, and he added that Semmangudi sings Narayanagaulai very well. So I went to him and learnt Sriramam (Narayanagaulai) â and I got to learn another uncommon song as a bonus, Srisukra bhagavantam in Paras.â?
SANJAY may be doing the musical equivalent of archaeology, but this doesnât get highlighted in the reviews he gets. If anything, all we keep reading about is his voice. âI guess thatâs the first thing people notice in a singer, the voice,â? he says. âWhen they talk about Yesudas or SPB, they exclaim, âWhat a voice!â SPBâs innovations and his brilliance come to the fore only later. Only if thereâs nothing to react to in the voice do they start looking at the music or the costume or the hairstyle…â? And Sanjay knows where Iâm going next. Whatâs with the baby-walrus moustaches and the rock-god hairstyles? âI guess itâs just mid-life crisis,â? he shrugs. These are the last few things you can try out before you turn forty.â? Musically, though, there are no plans for experimentation. âIâve learnt Hindustani music for two-three years, from Pandit Krishnanand. They have a lot of rigour in their system, but I was so into Carnatic music at the time that I didnât feel the same way towards Hindustani,â? he says, and confesses that even the music he listens to is fairly limited in range. âOutside of my music, if I have to listen to anything, I listen to Ilayaraja. The kind of music that he created was really magical. Otherwise, I listen to Hindi songs. I like Rafiâs voice. And a bit of Kishore. Thatâs it. Iâve tried a bit of western classical and opera, even ghazals, but that didnât do much for me.â?
Sanjay feels that this may be a reason heâs considered a âseriousâ? artist. âI havenât gone into fusion. I havenât gone into films.â? And, yes, he has been asked â by Vidyasagar, by AR Rahman, and most recently by Yuvan Shankar Raja for Pudhupettai. All Sanjay says is, âNot now.â? For one, he doesnât have the time. Thatâs why he had to give up sangeetham.com, the online music forum he maintained along with Carnatic Summer author (and friend) V Sriram. âI was crazy about the nuggets of information on the Internet, and at one time, the only forum for musical discussion was rmic (rec.music.indian.classical).â? But the discussions there were mainly about Hindustani music. âI felt we needed something for Carnatic music. I was also experimenting then with web designing, and so sangeetham.com came about.â? Ultimately, finances became a problem, as did time, and it died. But Sanjay has another kind of Carnatic music forum going â with his students. âIâve been teaching for about 10 years now, and some of my students have even started performing.â? But he says there is a disadvantage in learning from practicing professionals, and itâs not just the teacherâs busy schedules and travel and overall lack of time. âThe students can get led into the style of the performer, and may not be able to get out of the teacherâs shadow.â? But couldnât this be seen as carrying on a legacy? âIf itâs the same thing, you donât need it,â? says Sanjay. âIâm still young enough to carry on my legacy. I donât think the music field can take two or three Sanjays,â? he laughs.
BESIDES, Sanjay points out that he isnât a teacher in the traditional sense, as heâs working on his own music and his own progress. âSome people want to come and interact with me and get whatever they can from me. That is all. I am more like a PhD guide.â? He says he enjoys these sessions, as they give him the chance to practice â other than the practice he normally does, âMaybe for an hour, two, three… Not much before a concert, though. I just warm up a bit in the afternoon.â? By then, he has a mental map of what heâs going to sing, and he starts getting into that zone at some point in the evening â before the concert. âOf course, something may upset that plan. I can go into a concert thinking Iâm going to sing a Thodi, but my voice may not be up to it, or I may not be able to handle it. So I may choose something different.â? And sometimes, changing the song at the beginning of the mental map could upset subsequent items â a few of which are certain to be in Tamil. âThereâs no conscious decision to balance Tamil and Telugu compositions,â? says Sanjay, âbut I like Tamil songs. Tamil is a language I have grown to love much more in the last few years. You spend 35 years reading the English newspaper every day, getting access to all kinds of English literature, and ignoring Tamil almost completely.â? Only when his children started going to school did Sanjay realise what he was missing out on.
That â and a concert he gave for the Devan Trust. âI was given a complete set of Devanâs books â Thuppariyum Sambu, and much more â and thatâs when my whole concept of literature changed.â? It also helped that Sanjayâs guru was big on Bharathiyar. âI used to learn a lot of Tamil songs from him. Then in the early eighties, during Maargazhi maasam, I used to go every morning to the Sethalapathi Balu and Papanasam Sivan Bhajan Group. I became really sensitive to the language, and I picked up the expression and articulation of Tamil words mostly from Sethalapathi Balu â from how he sang the viruthams and all.â? Besides, Sanjayâs family used to insist that he sing a virutham or a sloka at the end of every concert. âAll that kept my interest in Tamil going.â? As an aside, I ask him why the Tamil composers havenât gotten the haloes that the Trinity have been conferred with, and he says, âThyagaraja was a revolutionary composer. He changed the landscape of music. But today, heâs not treated as a musician, heâs a saint. In India, we have the tradition of imposing divinity on the things we revere. We also have this obsession with three â like the Hindu trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva. Today, Cleveland even celebrates âSt.â Thyagaraja Day,â? he laughs.
THEREâS more laughter when Sanjay invokes Tamil cinemaâs most celebrated thespian during the course of an anecdote. I ask if he tries to highlight this aspect of divinity â in the composers, in their compositions â while he sings, and he says, âThe aesthetics of the music consume me most. When I sing, Iâm thinking of the Thodi, of the Bhairavi, of the beautiful ragas. Yes, I do try to articulate the religious sentiments if I am familiar with the words. I am not exactly comfortable with Telugu or Sanskrit, but with Tamil lyrics, I try to do a Sivaji.â? But this frivolity is all surface, for if thereâs something Sanjay is thought to stand for, itâs his respect for â and adherence to â parampara, or tradition. He feels this is because the compositions he sings have been handed down over generations, and because he tries to associate some of his music with some of the old masters. âBut thereâs no specific thing that can be pigeonholed as parampara, and itâs not static. Whateverâs been handed down is something that underwent changes over time, and we are also going to try and change it.â? He cites the Hamsadhvani composition Vatapi ganapathim as a classic case. âDikshitar never composed 15 sangatis for the song â only one or two. The rest were added by musicians over time to make it more attractive.â? Sanjay admits thereâs good and bad to this process â you can lose things, you can gain new things. âUltimately, time will pass a judgement. But because art is so subjective, you just have to keep living with these changes and growing with it.â?
After his mention about the old masters, I ask if thereâs anyone specific. âI am regarded by some as a GNB guy,â? he says, adding that there are people from other schools who donât look highly upon GNB, and therefore have a bias against his â Sanjayâs â music, âeven though I have come a long way from that single-minded GNB obsession to a much wider introspection of the art form.â? Some of these people are the critics, and Sanjay says theyâve been saying the same things about him for 20 years. âMy repertoire has changed. The way I sing my ragas has changed. Nobody has highlighted these changes at any point. I donât know if critics are sensitive to these things. If you find something new to criticise me about, Iâd read it with a bit more interest. Why has somebody been around for so long? Have they been able to highlight that?â? Sanjay says he still has his first review, for a concert in Bombay, and it screamed, âIneffective articulation.â? I tell him Iâm surprised he still hangs on to these things, and he replies that he has to, if only to attach them to his passport to get visas, and he narrates a story that makes him collapse into his biggest laugh of the morning. âI once had to have a change of status in my visa. So they called me. An officer asked if I was a musician. I said yes. He asked me to sing something. I sang a bit of Thodi. He said, âSing something with words.â So â right there, in the middle of the American Consulate â I burst into Kaddanu vaariki.â?
Copyright ©2006 The New Sunday Express
Baradwaj Rangan 
brangan
November 1, 2007
Time to gear up for December?
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G
November 1, 2007
Nice! Just a middle class guy like you and me who just happens to sing Carnatic. ;-0
Carnatic is most definitely not my cup of tea but I like the way he highlights that his critics have not been able to pick up some of his nuances over the years.
Seriously, when something as accessible as films are reviewed so moronically(not by you!), what chance does the public have of getting realiable insightful reviews of classical music?
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brangan
November 1, 2007
G: Quick reader, eh? I think I just put this up 🙂 About “when something as accessible as films are reviewed so moronically…” There’s a bit of a paradox (or whatever) there. There are so many film reviewers precisely because films are so “accessible”, as you say rightly. And the lesser numbers of reviewers for ICM — at least as far as I have seen/read — means that only those interested enough come forward to do reviews. And they are usually good with their gyaan, even if the writing quality may vary. I know I haven’t brought this out well, bu I think you can get the gist…
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Sagarika
November 2, 2007
G: I’m have a head-breaking moment here wondering if you are the “G” with the “Vijay vs. Abhay” nomenclature conspiracy theory from the previous post, or the “G for Gopi” who digs Sufi music? Pray tell. 🙂
brangan: That server-side ghost has surely stirred things up, no?
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APALA
November 2, 2007
Though a middle class guy myself and grew up in a village in TN, I was drawn to ICM by my friends – till I came across some greats like the M.S’s (M.S and Maharajapuram Santhanam!) among others – and I started to enjoy it thoroughly on my own!!
I am not in Madras for the December festival (was there for Ilayaraja’s kacheri – yes, it was great!) in a long time – hope you have a good time!!
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Sagarika
November 2, 2007
brangan: “Quick reader?” Either G’s a genius or a liar. This stuff is so dense it took me all of one hour to read it. And all I understood after that marathon reading was that Sanjay Subrahmanyan likes to laugh! 🙂
When it comes to ICM, I’m seriously neuronally challenged. Suffice it to say that Carnatic Music is my cup of coffee (inventing a new expression — taking thriller’s cue from yesterday’s post to stay away from the circuitous — to document my dislike, given coffee has always been a banned beverage in my household).
If I were a fly on the wall of the room this interview took place in, I would have dived into the coffee cup and drowned! If I were ever stranded on a deserted island and allowed to pick just one from the following two reading materials, I would make a beeline for (1).
(1) PWD project reviews by brangan
(2) ICM reviews/interviews by brangan
Phew! That vent sure felt good. But to your credit, I did enjoy your Bombay Jayashri interview from ’04 (read it two months ago). Much less, um, dense. Maybe I’m biased coz of a Vaseegara mention? Possibly. And also maybe coz she laughed a lot less and didn’t interfere with your flow…
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G
November 2, 2007
Sagarika: I think the mistake you are making is trying to read the article to make sense of the MUSIC. I read it(and I think that was brangan’s primary intention too) as an article about a way of life.
rgds,
G of the conspiracy theory fame. 🙂
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brangan
November 2, 2007
APALA: An Ilayaraja “kacheri”? Wow! When was this? And what was played?
Sagarika: “And also maybe coz she laughed a lot less and didn’t interfere with your flow” Ouch! This comment is the very definition of what they say in Tamil about the needle and the banana… 🙂
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S
November 2, 2007
Haven’t you done an interview earlier with him?
I don’t know why, never been a fan of his music. Bombay Jayshree and Maharajapuram Santhanam are the ones for me(diff. reasons). The title at my house for me starts with Gnyana and ends with sunyam, I should probably not comment on ICM at all.
But I always end up enjoying his interviews!
PS: Do you have any prizes for the people who comment here? May I suggest to make it based on quantiy rather quality. Also, can you make the 3rd prize as your future book.
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Sagarika
November 2, 2007
G: That was eye-opening. Maybe I was (at least subconsciously, at the first read) hoping to come away from this feeling like an ICM expert (yeah, without even knowing the abc’s!). I see that brangan did not intend for this to serve as an ICM crash course for novices, along the lines of a JEE-tutorial ad that perhaps goes – “We help you get into IIT even if the only Calculus you know is TinTin’s best friend”. My approach was wrong, I agree. As you rightly point out, this isn’t about ICM so much as what it’s like to be an expert in a field, swim with the sharks, hold your own, yet face not-being-fully-understood, or, worse still, being misunderstood…Pretty much challenges any one of us could come by in our everyday lives. And no doubts at all that brangan does highlight this. Just that I’d originally skipped right past it, getting completely entangled in the jargon. Hence the “sour grapes” response. Thanks for the perspective. 🙂
brangan: “Ouch! This comment is the very definition of what they say in Tamil about the needle and the banana… ” You mean this as a compliment, right? 🙂 If so, it has got to be the best one I’ve gotten in a long time, as the banana/needle thing is usually not my forte.
Btw, the oh-so-necessary jargon-that-jars-the-mind notwithstanding, this is as good a write-up of yours as any. It just did not appear to “flow” earlier (to me) only because, as I say to G above, my *kaleidoscope* was having an off-day. It’s back on duty now. I’m actually able to relate very well to what you say about the guy in para 7: “He’s been doing it again and again for over 20 years now, and Sanjay says he still sings for himself first – and only then for his audience.”
It reminded me of someone’s review of Thoreau’s nature writings thus: “He writes for himself, out of the fullness of the spirit of nature that he feels within himself. He writes not to be accepted, but because he is in the center of the acceptance of nature and his interbeing in it. That is the spirit of nature writing.” Or any writing, for that matter. Or singing.
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G
November 2, 2007
Damn, Sagarika. Now I seriously wonder how baradwaj keeps his head screwed on straight. 🙂
they are usually good with their gyaan, even if the writing quality may vary
I won’t disagree but what do the Carnatic rasikas really think of Kadri Gopalnath? I used to think introducing the sax to Carnatic was cool, my wife(with 6 years of mridagam bashing behind her) thinks he is cool, but a review of a concert of his informed me that the critic thought he doesn’t get even the basics right. Not unlike Kishore Kumar singing rabindro sangeet. 🙂
Even if true, it felt like the critic was being slightly churlish. 🙂
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Sagarika
November 2, 2007
G-the-conspirator-who’s-now-having-me-relish-Carnatic: >>”I seriously wonder how baradwaj keeps his head screwed on straight.”
My read on Baradwaj is that he quite enjoys the journey, “albeit” (BR: wink, wink) a perilous one, to keeping his head screwed on straight. 🙂
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munimma
November 3, 2007
BR: nice to (re?)read. Talking about “doing a sivaji”, OSArun is a great entertainer too.
Just wondering how you have gathered your gyaan? Did you learn it or imbibe it from the household?
G:: Kadri is a great musician. Having had him as a guest at chez moi, he is a greater human. One sour critic can be ignored.
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brangan
November 3, 2007
S: This is that older post, from that other blog. I’m doing a transfer, remember?
munimma: Kadri is good, but I wonder if sometimes he doesn’t overreach in trying to make his instrument comply with certain ragas. About the gyaan, it’s a bit of everything – learning, imbibing, reading, listening…
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Jayram
January 21, 2022
Happy birthday Sanjay Subrahmanyan! Somebody had mentioned about his Thamizhum Naanum concerts in the other thread. Well, here’s a message about his next one!
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