Kallu Sakkare is popular in Karnataka — it even figured in a Kannada movie called ‘Kantheradu Nodu’— but rarely heard in the Chennai concert halls. Hence Sanjay Subrahmanyan’s choice of this Purandara Dasar’s Kalyani creation as the central element of his concert was a knock-out surprise. ‘Kallu Sakkare’ followed a sumptuous alapana of the raga, which took off like an aircraft. The niraval and swaras came with the anu-pallavi line, which also begins with ‘Kallu Sakkare.’ Kalyani alone was well worth the ticket’s price, so all else was bonus.
Teeing off with a Tamil Begada varnam, Sanjay hummed a bit of Mayamalavagowla before taking up Tyagaraja’s ‘Tulasi Dala.’ The niraval at Sarasiruha was vintage stuff, tailed by thirty single-cycle swaras before the artiste broke into multiple avarthanas.
Sanjay keeps firing music at you rapidly —before you internalise one, another is upon you, making it like drinking out of a high pressure hose pipe. Even before one could digest the Mayamalavagowla, the audience was buffeted by a storm of Bahudhari, a nine-minute alapana, which deceptively began as a zephyr but quickly turned into a gale.
Violinist M. Rajeev’s brief follow-through couldn’t match Sanjay’s brilliance — the young instrumentalist’s show of class would come later — and the vocalist took up G.N. Balasubramanian’s ‘Unnadiye Gatiyendru,’ which came like a galloping horse with a few rounds of swaras stitched to the opening line.
Sprightly Bahudhari
After the sprightly Bahudhari came a leisurely, soothing Asaveri alapana, presented without any fireworks. The raga was followed by Dikshithar’s ‘Kumaraswaminam,’ a composition known to have been sung before probably only by Sanjay. It flowed like molten wax, each Adi tala cycle taking all of 13 seconds. It was a nice contrast to the Mayamalavagowla and the Bahudhari.
Now it was time for the central piece, Kalyani. Palladam Ravi with the mridangam and Alathur Rajaganesh with the ganjira produced a brief but spirited thani. The clock cued an RTP, which duly came, and how! Raga Sivasakthi! Listeners would have assumed it to be Varamu if Sanjay hadn’t announced the name, or until the Pallavi words came. The raga, which is Varamu without the ‘ni’ in the ascent, is associated with GNB, who has composed two songs in it, one of which goes as ‘Sri Chakra Raja Nilaye Sivasakthi Aikya Rupini’. Sanjay took up the Pallavi of the composition, starting with ‘Sivasakthi’ and omitting ‘Aikya.’
It was at this point that violinist Rajeev, a disciple of Kanyakumari, showed his mettle. Sanjay took the audience through Anand Bhairavi (which had the audience screaming, like in college culturals), Manorama (said to be created by M Balamuralikrishna), which came with a strong fragrance of Basant Bahar, Durga, Sivaranjani, Hamsanandi and Surutti.
If Sanjay was at his best, Rajeev proved equal to him, and won equal applause. The Durga bit in particular, though brief, was stunning.