In November 2016, the great musician Dr. M. Balamurali Krishna passed away. I have written about my encounters with him in my long-ago youth. There was a gap of many years during which I didn't meet him and listened to his live concerts only occasionally. And then, in August 2012, a dear friend took me along to meet Balamurali, and we spent several hours with him. I was back in his home, where I had spent so many happy hours all those decades ago. The house looked much as it did when I used to visit in the 1970s and 80s. That encounter thrilled and saddened me in equal measure, drove home to me how much both he and I had changed. One day, maybe, I will write about it.
So many memories and emotions bubbled up after I heard of Balamurali's death. Grief, of course, but also a longing to revisit the past, rekindle old musical memories - to listen to those concerts and radio performances from the days I listened to him for hours on end. Life works in strange and wonderful ways. Not long after Balamurali's passing, I learned, thanks to the same dear friend, about a Mr. Sreenivasa Murthy who has set up a fantastic YouTube channel on which he has uploaded (and will continue to upload) many amazing songs and concerts of my beloved Balamurali. There are some real gems in there. He has tirelessly and relentlessly tracked down some rare performances (many of them given up for lost), digitally remastered them and is sharing them on this channel.
The treasures poured in. An old AIR recording of Tulasidalamulache from 1980. I had recorded it off the radio on my little cassette recorder. Floods had ravaged my parents' home and destroyed so many things - books, photographs - and many of those cassettes. I never thought I'd listen to that particular Tulasidalamulache ever again, but there it was, every bit as beautiful as I remembered it. And then the incredible, the unbelievable, the stuff of dreams, happened. I received a note from Mr. Murthy in response to my piece on Balamurali on this blog, in which I had mentioned the song "Sangeetha Vidvat Sabha", that so bedazzled me the very first time I heard him live, at his Madras Music Academy (MMA) performance in December 1976. He wrote:
"The piece you mentioned "Sangeetha Vidvat Sabha jayati "is actually composed by Dr. V Raghavan and tuned to the raga 'NAMA NARAYANI' by BMK. This happens to be the 50th Mela for the golden jubilee of MMA. I have the recording and working on the audio for several weeks in restoring the same. I will post this song in YouTube and you can listen again and enjoy."
No words will adequately capture the depth and variety of emotions that churned through me. I had lost all hope of ever listening to that song again. That song was sung for a particular time and place, and there was no cause for him to sing it again, and so (as far as I know) he never did. The recording which he made for me, at his home, the day following the concert, was long gone, having met its watery end in the Madras monsoon floods. I remembered most of the song, and would hum it to myself occasionally, but oh, what would I give to hear it sung by Balamurali?! And now the long arm of the Internet had reached out and was tapping me on the shoulder and telling me that - the song was alive! It had been retrieved, dusted off, remastered - and was being presented to me out of the sheer generosity of Mr. Murthy's heart and his aim to celebrate the joy of sharing music for posterity.
It got even better. Mr. Murthy wrote to me a few weeks later telling me that the entire December 1976 concert had been retrieved, digitized and restored to good audio quality. As someone who had been present at the concert, would I be willing to write something about it?
I agreed right away. What a delightful assignment this was, to immerse myself in that music that had so shaken my world more than 40 years ago, and to record my thoughts and memories!
So let me stop here and share the songs from that memorable concert with you. The link will take you to the first song; you can then scroll through to the rest. Do also look around when you are there and you will find many, many more jewels. But first, let me include a few words I wrote after the last song, about how I felt about this concert after reliving it more than 4 decades later.
Listening to this concert after an interval of more than 40 years, I am delighted and grateful to see that I felt the same joy and awe I did all those years back. A few things struck me. Over the years I find that many Carnatic music concerts have become full of technical virtuosity and flash, and are sometimes overly gimmicky and loud. I was struck by how relatively spare and simple this concert was - and I mean this in the best possible way. The beauty of the music was allowed to shine without being smothered in excessive frills and ornamentation. I also noticed how perfectly the violin and mridangam blended in so that the harmoniousness of the whole group was very pleasing to the ears. When music, and music alone, is the star of the show as it is with Balamurali, it will remain evergreen for eternity.
(Do pick the option to watch it on YouTube, where you can read the commentary).
* The title of this post is from a poem by William Blake.