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"The Hero as a Musician" - To talk about modern Carnatic music is to talk of Sri Ariyakudi, the architect and maker of our music today. He is 74 years young and very much in his strides as a top performer and musician. His record is unique in the annals of music history, in its consistently high level of performance and reputation. As a man and as a musician, he is many-sided, entertaining as well as instructive. Throughout, his career has been the cumulative result of professional dignity, business acumen and artistic ideals.He has been outstanding, long-established success. It is not due to luck or adventitious chance that it is so. There are solid grounds for it. Moreover, it is, it will be admitted, more difficult to maintain leadership in a public career than to gain it. His repertoire is as varied as it is big. He is as firm in his ideals as he is adaptable in his music and manners. He is as alert and aware of contemporary musical trends and movements as he is composed and convinced in his belief in tradition and sampradaya. He is probably the one instance of a unique wedlock of seeming incompatibles, sastra and sravya and tradition and modernity.
Still Retains Sovereignty
There are a good many amongst us now who have followed his musical career for the past four decades and more, who have noticed all the qualities which conduced to make him an undisputed leader in the profession, ever since he entered the music world. Many musicians have come in the music field after him and risen to prominence. He still retains his sovereignty. Why? If one such, tries to make a mark by specialising in any aspect of performance, this aspect is immediately taken up by hum and he has unfailingly demonstrated that he could do it and more, in a better way. This naturally presupposes that his stock and resilience should be sufficiently big and tough so that he could meet these moves and prove himself superior to them. Incompatibility in equipment and musical temperament of the accompanists have never stood in the way of his making a success of the performance. He is at home with both great senior accompanists as well as rising junior ones. He never allows himself to be nonplussed on the platform. His adjustability, stock and diplomacy are in ample evidence when new and young accompanists perform along with him. He is a musician with a classical ideal, with a definite choiceful awareness: choiceful because, there is all rounded fullness from which to choose. He knows what he is about, leaving nothing to chance or the moment, preferring "how" a thing is done to "what" is done - a typically classical idea, based on conscious, deliberate artistry, rather than haphazard musical adventure. This is why he is so dependable and never below par on any occasion.
It cannot be denied that his is the greatest share amongst all the musicians for making Carnatic classical music as popular amongst the laity as it is now. he effectively exploded the myth and illusion prevalent for a long time that sampradaya and tradition were not pleasing to the ear. the music world is and should be indebted to him for the long and signal service he has rendered in stabilising and presenting our prasiddha and rakti ragas in their true basic and traditional form and with their characteristic and unmistakable sancharas, sangatis and prayogas.
Clear Vision
Sri Ariyakudi is a musician with a clear vision and idea of what he is about. he never allowed himself, even in his early days, to fall in the dangerous illusion that originality comes only with the avoidance of the well-known, obvious and basic sancharas and form of a raga, a shoal n which many young musical minds are apt to wreck themselves. He ha to his credit introduced the largest number of new compositions of the Trinity, pallavis and miscellaneous items which come after the pallavi. He, it is, who has codified and adapted to modern times, the aspects of a concert, their spacings and timings - and this so well done that both the lay and the leared never have a dull moment or feeling of boredom, throughout the concert.
Sri Ariyakudi's music is the touchstone on which we can judge the standard of the music of others, probably because it is in the truest and basic traditions of our classical music. the unmistakable and indispensable attributes of our classical systems are its gamaka suddha, the prime importance given to madhyama kala and the strict maintenance of and timely and well-proportioned admixture of chauka, madhya and druta kalas, the appropriate use of the correct kala prmana and the necessary gamakas in the phrases and jiva swaras in the ragas and the usage of the "thin" and the "thick" in the jiva swaras of the ragas. These are exemplified very well in his style. That madhyama kala, the jiva of our sangita has been amply demonstrated from the days of Thyagaraja, the composer, through performers and musicians like Patnam Subramaniya Iyer, Maha Vaidhyanatha Iyer, Poochi Srinivasa Iyengar and of the present, the late Mysore Vasudevachar and Ariyakudi. The madhyama kala is neither too fast nor too slow. This, his gift for gamaka suddham and madhyama kala, makes his music unsatiating and never tiring. Hence, there is as much movement and life in his vilamba kritis and ragas as there is poise and balance in his madhyama kala ragas and kritis. There is no listlessness in the latter, nor any drag in the former. This is amply borne out in his method of singing vilamba kala Kshetragna padams which when rendered in pure chamber music style, do not have that movement and vivacity for lay listeners which he is able to impart by his manner of singing them.
High Music Ideals
With all his equipment, musical, and temperamental, he rose by sheer merit to eminence, not by the supplementary and auxiliary methods of sycophancy or seeking patronage. In his case, it was the reverse. Distinguished personages and patrons sought him. He, being such a grateful, inoffensive and pleasing person, never antagonised them. In spite of his inordinate and longstanding, though legitimate, success, he is unique in not making a handle of this art for gaining social or material status for himself. He has always placed his musical ideals on a high pedestal and stood by them. He has not been known to sacrifice his ideals for personal gains nor make any concessions thereof to please a particular section of the public, or water them down to meet the tastes of the masses. Those who know his musical history may remember in this connection that he antagonised a very great accompanist in his young days, which few musicians in his place and status then would have dared to, in their own interests and the glory of it is the he got away with it too. All these are unmistakable pointers to the tenacity of his conviction in his own musical ideals and courage to practise them. With all this, he is probably the one musician with a real sense of humility. Humility as a pose and artifice, stands self-indicted and self exposed. He has always attributed his "humble" success to the reverential care with which he has preserved what he has imbibed from the great masters like his guru Poochi Iyengar, Tirukodikaval Krishna Iyer and others.
Reverence for Art
The great concern he shows for the success of his performance, how he spends the time on a performance day, avoiding sleep in the afternoon even at this age and doming musical mananam all the time, these indicate what reverence he has for the Art and how humble he is. Besides, the smug complacency that comes with an established reputation, which is the canker that kills progress and improvement in the art, has never claimed him as its victim at any time of his life. He is even now learning new compositions, On the platform, the way he conducts the performance, shares it with his accompanists, never indulging in meaningless or unprovoked diversions or even unintended offence under provocation, to his accompanists, or a noisy audience, again show his sense of seriousness while performing. Even during moments of great success, his behaviour has never been tinged with insolence or swankiness. Technique in his music has always been given its proper place never, obtruding on aesthetics. Throughout his career, he has been an example on the platform for others to emulate. Further, from private conversation to platform concert his deportment is the most pleasing and graceful. There is not one discordant word, or unmusical sound.
Sri Ariyakudi typifies the golden mean. The golden mean is an ideal of the Gita. His music to Carnatic music, what the Gita is to Indian philosophy, its quintessence-eternal and elemental truths and values which stand for all time. Singing with full-throated ease and undeflected middle position of the chin and face, the mouth, neither too open nor too closed, the use of pure akaras-golden mean of madhyama kala, the jiva of Carnatic music-the balance in proportion of the presentation, of the various aspects of the concert-these represent the golden mean. This is the key to his musical longevity. If one may say so, his music can be called the "Gita of Sangita".
He has been the Sangita Dharma Paripalaka for so many decades by fostering Carnatic sampradaya with genuine care, real interest and innate strength. It is the duty - the best and most effective tribute to his services for our music - of musicians and listeners to adopt in principle and encourage, the establishment and growth of the music culture and tradition he has so assiduously and for so long, built-up.
At the feet of the Master
