The Rainbow of Shuddha Dhanyasi - M Balamuralikrishna - A Ramaswamy - M Radhakrishna Raju (1987)

Today, the 21st June, is a special day. We celebrate the International Yoga Day and the Fête de la Musique, also known as World Music Day. We present you a very rare and unique recording of a peerless artiste uniting with another, living the spirit of attitude of gratitude.

The “Rainbow of Shuddha Dhanyāsi, bridging present with past” is a reunion concert in 1987, commemorating the journey in music of Dr. M Balamuralkrishna (BMK) with the percussion artiste of his maiden concert.

We hope that a flashback of an event that took place in 1940 would help to get a perspective about the reunion concert.

Susarla Dakshinamurthi Shastri festival was regularly conducted in Vijayawada by his disciple Ramakrishnayya Pantulu (and subsequently the guru of BMK) and his disciples.

In the year 1940, Pantulu gāru had to go to his village on some urgent work, when the festival was due to start in about two weeks.

Pantulu gāru entrusted the programme arrangement to some of his disciples, and Radhakrishna Raju, a mridangam player, was one among them.

The disciples decided to include a ten year old music prodigy Muralikrishna in the programme and pamphlets were accordingly printed, scheduling a music concert of the wonder-kid for the 18th July 1940.

Apparently, this decision was not known to Pantulu gāru. On his return, his disciples, i.e., the programme organisers, pleaded and convinced their guru to go ahead with the programme which had already been announced.

Muralikrishna’s father was worried too as his boy had not yet performed on a stage, though his talents were very well known to him. The boy gladly agreed to perform and sought the support of his confidants Akkaji Rao (Veena) and Radhakrishna Raju (mridangam) to accompany him.

A stipulated 30 minutes concert of Muralikrishna flowed flawlessly and overflowed to 3 hours, casting a musical spell on the audience. On that day, the boy was rechristened as Balamuralikrishna and the rest is the known history of Muraligānam over the next 70 years plus.

After many years of that historic event of “the making of Balamuralikrishna,” BMK happened to meet Radhakrishna Raju. The latter was senior and quite old when BMK came to Vijayawada for a concert in 1987. That is when an idea occurred to him.

BMK requested Radhakrishna Raju to be the percussion accompanist for a radio concert. BMK also assured him that he would sing in a manner that would be comfortable for the aging mridangam player.

Then, BMK also requested All India Radio, Vijayawada for a radio programme with Radhakrishna Raju (RR) on the mridangam and his long-time associate Annavarapu Ramaswamy on violin.

During the recording, BMK had suggested to RR while he was singing the rāgālāpana, RR could relax on a nearby sofa and could come back to play only for the kriti part.

In this special AIR concert, BMK has elaborated the rāga Shuddha Dhanyāsi and has explored it to bring out many facets of the rāga to accommodate his senior accompanying artiste.

Although the leisurely approach was the objective of the concert, yet the flow of creativity, the second nature of Muraligānam, appears to be concomitant with the purpose of the concert.

The composition that followed, “tana hitavé tana matamu” of BMK himself, is noteworthy for its being selected for the occasion.

Further, it is interesting to observe how appropriately BMK chooses the line, “kāla-gamanamé” (implying the passage of time) for sahitya-vinyāsam and then for a stimulating svara-vinyāsam.

Continuing that streak of creativity, during the svara-vinyāsam, the pentatonic rāga (Shuddha Dhanyāsi) gracefully blossoms into a rainbow displaying its intrinsic beauty. BMK, taking the note “pa” as reference (pnsgmp-pmgsnp), brings out the raga Hindóla; then rāga Móhana from the note “ga” as reference (gmpnsg – gsnpmg) and finally the rāga Madhyamāvati from the note “ma” as reference in tonal shift (mpnsgm – mgsnpm).

The three pentatonic outputs originating from another pentatonic: could it be interpreted as the appearance and merging of three modes of relative time (past, present and future) into the absolute of eternity?

The rendition is concluded with a laya-vinyāsam by RR, thus fulfilling the desire of the maestro - remember the artiste who played when he was a boy of ten; respect him when he was old; and seek him to accompany him.

Acknowledgements:
My sincere thanks and appreciation to Sri. D V Mohana Krishna for sourcing the audio and to Sri. T K Ramkumar for his support.