Marghazhi Mozhi : Vidhya Ramanathan and The Dubai Thiruppugazh Anbargal Group.

Marghazhi Mozhi is our attempt to make the world a smaller place.in this beautiful time of devotion, dedication and celebration of all arts.

In this episode we are joined by Vidhya Ramanathan and The Dubai Thiruppugazh Anbargal group.
First let us delve deeper into what is Thiruppugazh before understanding the background and emotions of Vidhya and why she is so passionate to share the music to stir souls.

What is Thiruppugazh ?
These are soul stirring songs written in Tamizh in praise of Lord Muruga and composed by Saint Sri Arunaginathar, a 14th century poet who was born in Thiruvannamalai. It is believed that Thiruppugazh reflects the message of the Vedas and the Upanishads. Around 16,000 thiruppugazh songs were known to have been composed by the Saint of which only 1300+ songs were retrieved. These were propagated by many devotees in the last 2 centuries. Amongst them was Guruji Sri. A.S.Raghavan who set to tune 503 Thiruppugazh apart from tuning few other works of Arunagirinathar. He created a formal method to conduct a Thiruppgazh recital named as “Thiruppugazh Isai Vazhipadu” and started a movement called “Thiruppugazh Anbargal” in mid 1950 with the goal of spreading the message of love, brotherhood, self-discipline and unity through music which has now become a global movement. Devotees all around the world render Thiruppugazh on every special occasion and festival dedicated to Lord Muruga.

Vidhya Ramanathan initially trained in Carnatic music under her mother Smt. Lalitha Krishnamurthy since the age of 7. She then pursued training under Sri. Ramakrishnan followed by Smt. Nirmala Srinivasan (who is a direct disciple of music doyen Smt. ML Vasanthakumari) and had performed music concerts during her school and college days in Coimbatore.
A Software Engineer by profession, after moving to the UAE, Vidhya , along side her professional pursuits, continues to participate in many music programs conducted by music fraternities in UAE. For the last 14+ years, Vidhya has been passionately engaged in learning and teaching Thiruppugazh to adults and children. She initially learnt from Sri N.V Vaidyanathan , Coimbatore and in recent years from Sri. Nagesh , Bengaluru as per the paddathi set by Guruji Sri. A.S. Raghavan. The Dubai Thiruppugazh Anbargal group regularly performs Thiruppugazh Isai Vazhipadu on many auspicious occasions of Lord Subrahmanya celebrated in UAE. Vidhya continues to learn Thiruppugazh and share the same with her Thiruppugazh group via online classes held on Fridays and Saturdays every week.
In today’s session, The following Anbars will be presenting few thiruppugazh songs
Chitra Satish
Kasturi Sekhar
Lakshmi Ramachandran
Meena Ashok
Priya Sekhar
Vaishnavi Sankar Ram
Vidhya Ramanathan