Radha Namboodiri is making up for lost years. For a little more than three decades with All India Radio and Doordarshan (1975-2006), the Mumbai-based Carnatic vocalist and revered teacher was engrossed in her mission of passing on the legacy of her guru Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer to a new generation of students of Carnatic music. Initiated into music by T V Ramamurthy, Radha was trained by doyens like T M Tyagarajan and T Brinda before joining Central College of Carnatic Music in Madras [Chennai].
Post retirement, Radha served as Director and Principal of Sri Shanmukhananda Fine Arts and Sangeetha Sabha, Mumbai, and as the editor of its journal, Shanmukha. She was honoured with the Sangita Kala Acharya title by the Madras Music Academy and the Dr. M.S. Subbulakshmi Sangeetha Pracharya title by the Sri Shanmukhananda Fine Arts & Sangeetha Sabha this year. Radha recently performed at Tripunthura as part of an event in commemoration of Neyyattinkara Vasudevan, organised jointly by Manirang and Sree Poornathrayeesa Sangeetha Sabha.
In an interview with FridayReview, Radha speaks about her career as a singer, administrator, her gurus and more.
Excerpts:
When did music come in?
Both my parents were passionate about Carnatic music.I started learning Kathakali and singing Kathakali padams from an early age. The initiation to Carnatic music was by osmosis, thanks to my sister’s music classes at home. I was hardly six or so and not really interested in learning music, but my sister’s guru proclaimed that ‘music was written all over my face.’ When I was about 10, I started learning Carnatic music under the tutelage of T V Ramamurthy on the recommendation of H A S Mani (husband of noted Carnatic vocalist Alamelu Mani and father of singer Hariharan). After graduation, on the advice of my father’s friend, Sethuraman (Aruna Sairam’s father), I moved to Chennai to learn from T Brinda, who, at that time, was teaching at the Central College of Carnatic Music. I also enrolled for the Sangeetha Vidwan course at the college. It was during this time that I learnt from stalwarts such as T M Tyagarajan, K V Narayanaswamy and T K Govinda Rao.
Classical touch Carnatic singer Radha Namboodiri; (below) during a concert | Photo Credit: KVSrinivasan
When did you start learning from Semmangudi?
Listening to some of the seniors, I was attracted to the gamaka-oriented, open-throated, singing style of G Seethalakshmi who was Semmangudi mama’s student. She introduced me to the doyen. I was fortunate that he agreed to teach me.
What is it that makes Semmangudi such a special guru?
I feel blessed to have been able to learn directly from him. Apart from his complete involvement in teaching us, he assiduously prepared us for various thematic programmes. He used to make us sing each kriti innumerable times in class and improve on the sangatis as we sang.
Carnatic music concert by Radha Namboodiri | Photo Credit: Thulasi Kakkat
While most of Semmangudi’s disciples strictly follow his patantharam, you have judiciously attempted to impart a new verve to it.
There has been no deliberate attempt on my part to impart anything to his patantharam. He was such a stalwart and so much of thought went into the setting of each kritis that I can’t even think of changing it. However, our music is not static; it is constantly evolving and moving with every artiste’s individual perception. A certain phrase that one may have heard in a kriti rendition or even in manodharma may seem like a logical follow-up sangati though it would not be part of the original patantharam. So one tends to continue singing and teaching this sangati, provided it obeys lakshana and fits in with the aesthetics of the artiste. This is an inevitable part of an artiste’s growth. Perhaps, there is such a perception since there is a difference between male and female rendering due to differences in quality of voice. More than changing the original patantharam, I have attempted to embellish it.
How do you remember Semmangudi as teacher and performer?
I have attended many of Semmangudi mama’s concerts. His stage persona and his teaching persona were totally different. As a teacher, he used to sing comfortably, letting go during raga alapana, niraval and swaram — it was pure, soulful music, soaked in raga. He used to venture into unexplored areas of the raga with no repetition of raga phrases. In his classes, raga alapana used to be a listening and absorbing exercise, there was no repeating of raga phrases after him by the students. Every kriti learnt would be followed by sessions of kalpana swaram and niraval with each of us singing in turn and mama singing for each of us. He was at his innovative best while teaching. As a performer as well as a teacher in his music, whether in manodharma or kriti rendition, raga bhava was his forte. His brisk and dramatic renditions used to leave the audience spellbound.
Do you think those three decades in AIR and Doordarshan affected your singing career?
Performing is close to my heart. If I had not taken up the government job, I would have continued to perform. And I was getting opportunities for performing in Chennai, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh during my final years in college. As a gazetted officer with AIR and Doordarshan, I needed special permission from Directorate General, New Delhi, for public performances. This restricted my career. Post-retirement, I’ve been performing in Mumbai, Chennai and New Delhi.
However, the years spent in AIR did add to my musical knowledge and I was able to serve music in various other ways. My first AIR posting was in Thiruvananthapuram in 1975. I had to select songs, tune those and train singers and instrumentalists for a morning devotional programme, ‘Udaya Geetham’. There were many good, graded singers in AIR Thiruvananthapuram then, as well as great instrumentalists like flautist K S Gopalakrishnan, Vainika R Venkatraman and vocalists like M G Radhakrishnan and Neyyattinkara Vasudevan. Coordinating these great musicians was a valuable learning experience. You have seen Carnatic music evolve over the years. What is your opinion on today’s practitioners and present trends?
I believe in the traditional concert format. Voice culture is important, so too are the musical nuances. In my opinion, learning from notation is simpler than learning from audio sources. Once you learn from the notation format, the composition can be framed in one’s own style. Notation is an important tool for reference. I wouldn’t recommend students listening to different people in the initial learning stage. Let them listen to the guru alone and try to sing like the guru. Otherwise, they may tend to pick up wrong things from other artistes.
Classical touch Carnatic singer Radha Namboodiri; (below) during a concert | Photo Credit: K.V.Srinivasan
Students should not jump into performances until they learn what concerts are all about. At a given time of one’s learning, there will come a stage when the guru will ask his disciples to listen to other artistes and gain inputs for manodharma. This should be followed by small, informal concerts. It is only after gaining proficiency and experience that they should think of proper, full concerts.
The present-day artistes are educated and intelligent, and their concerts reveal that.
It would be nice to see balance and proportion in terms of speed and time allocation. Sangatis and compositions that are meant to be slow, sound best when rendered at a slow pace. Sowkhyam is lost when everything is rendered at high speed. Maintaining kala pramanam is important in raga alapana too, with reposeful sangatis taking turns with fast ones.