15.08.2010
HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY FRIENDS AND FOES! :P
For a 5.30 pm kacheri of Sri. T.N.Sheshagopalan (who hails from Madurai :D), I ended up at the FINE ARTS society’s auditorium only at 7.30 pm with my 30 yr old best friend KALS (Kalyani hariharan). I could hear him end a really heavy song garnished with thundering mirudangam beats and ganjira. The auditorium appeared packed but somehow we managed to find seats in the last rows.
As soon as I took my seat, I could see very little black haired heads among a sea of cotton colored ones! As expected… Honestly I have never heard T.N.S. sing. I totally depended on KALS’s very unconvincing opinion about him. She claimed that only very few of his songs were masterpieces. But I, unlike her, have no enough knowledge to opinionate on such great vidwans!
As I am a huge FAN of ragam reethigowlai, I was hoping that he sings a song based on this ragam in the remaining 2 hours of the kacheri. He commenced with a song which was based on Abheri. No qualms at all! DID YOU KNOW (:P) that abheri was the 1st ever ragam that I fell for? And coincidently I like all ragams which are derived from KHARAHARAPRIYA ( reethigowlai too is a janyam of this ragam).
He sang the alaapanam as if his lungs and food pipe were well lubricated with nalla yennai (:/). I was eagerly waiting for him to soak into that ragam and present its most beautiful form ever to us but in vain. Somehow somewhere I felt that he wasn’t using the right combination of swarams in his alaapanam. With a slow death of his voice, a gradual birth of the music of VIOLIN( my most favorite instrument) happened and filled the auditorium with divinity!
