This morning over the radio, I heard this wonderful rendition of the song, "Kshemam Kuru Gopala", played by Flute Shashank. It is such an evocative song. I have heard it so many times sung by the one and only "Mahavidwan KVN".
I was almost certain this song, with saahityam composed by Sri.Narayana Tirtha, would have been tuned by Sri.KVN himself. I later verified it with Sri. K. N. Vishwanathan, Sri.KVN's son that my surmise was correct.
The raagamaalika in Mohanam, Kaapi, Behag and Sindu Bhairavi has so many signature phrases and jells so well with the saahityam. I give below the audio as well as the saahityam, copied from Sangeethasudha.org
Recently, we had a few sessions on Carnatic music via Zoom in the IITM 1973 group. I was asked to introduce our music. I made a few slides and talked throrugh them, using playists of music I had created from the public domain. I would like to share the pitches and the playlists here:
Whereas the first part spoke of some basics of the history, format and naunces of our music, the second part went into the subject of how to develop a taste for "quality" in Carnatic music. I also shared the results of a survey I had done in 2013: https://bit.ly/2013CarnaticSurvey
The Playlist is here> Zoom was not very cooperative and people listened to the music in peace only after the call.
We had 3 sessions via Zoom among IITM1973 batchmates about Carnatic music recently. This is the pitch I made in the second session. The session was intended to explain what is a Raaga in Carnatic music, with all its nuances. To keep it simple, I used only one raaga, Mohanam. Arguably the most popular and natural tune all over the world!
Here is the playlist we used:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT5COFfoKkzV45CJh15sQJXzjld0EbaQR
You have arrived at a magical, rain-forest home, a temple of Nature tended by man. You're welcomed by fragrant creepers, colourful flowers, fruit-laden trees, the cool breeze and and nature's continual song.
This is the world of the raaga Todi (soft t, hard d). Some spell it as Thodi. It is the heart of Carnatic music. When you listen to Todi, you surrender to it. It takes you in unknown trails, and stops at quiet resting spots. All immersing you in a deep sense of bliss. It is raw and yet majestic. It is graceful and yet solid. You simply have to tune in. Neither singer nor listener bothers about flat notes or equivalent scales while listening to Todi. It all seems childish and not germane to this continuum of a rich dialogue with the Eternal. The best way to experience Todi is to yield to its heavy southern spell.
Todi is an old raaga. In Karnataka Sangeeta Vishwakosha (by Sampathkumaracharya) they have listed about 110 songs in Todi. I saw another list with 910 songs. I have heard the mridangam maestro Vid. Umayalpuram Sivaraman introduce in an Odakattur Mutt concert the vocalist Vid. T. N. Seshagopalan as someone who knows 300 songs in Todi. In fact TNS even acted in a movie called "Thodi Ragam".
Here is a scan of the Oxford Encyclopaedia entry on Todi:
Todi is a melakarta raaga (no. 8). It is called Sarvaswara-gamaka-varika rakti raaga. This means that it is a full-fledged and magnificent raaga. That is how it can be elaborated in so many dimensions. Todi in fact defines many melodic ideas that typify Carnatic music.
Let me quote Vocalist Vid. K. V. Narayanaswamy, whom I regard as a past master of CM. KVN was the prime disciple of Ariyakudi Ramanuja Aiyengar, who has been accepted as the "Karanataka Sangeeta Shikhamani". KVN once told me that the touchstone of Carnatic music is Todi. A musician who sings Todi well has graduated into this art form.
I heard as a child the famous Ariyakudi rendition of a Devaranama in Todi. That was my introduction to this raaga. I also learnt the Todi varnam as a teenager. It has got under my skin.
Note: The following embedded links work within this post in most browsers. You can also right-click and open in a separate window.
It is said that some 220 years ago, one Vid.Todi Seetarama Aiyar sang Todi for eight days at a stretch. That is still is a record.
Vid. MLV says she heard Vid. Rajaratnam Pillai once play Todi through the night in a Bombay concert for some 6 hours. And in a quirk of our times, the same nagaswara chakravarthy was asked by M/s. HMV to condense his mastery into a few minutes for a plate. Let's listen to it now!
There are two good lec-dems on Todi, one by Vid. MLV and one by the young star Ramakrishnan Murthy. The URLs are listed at the end.
Todi is a multi-contoured raaga. You can do a lot with it, as you gathered from the Nagaswaram plate. Its heavy contours are demonstrated well by Vid. Sriram Parasuram here:
The Alattur Brothers had a trademark on the song Dachukovalena of Saint Tyagaraja in Todi. Recently Vid. Abhishek Raghuram rendered it at the Madras Music Academy and got rave reviews. Here it is. You get to hear the raaga aalaapana, the song, some superb niraval and swaras. Followed some tani aavartanam By the star Vid. Anantha.
Veena is the instrument that can showcase every gamaka of Todi. Here is a wonderful rendition by Vid. Emani Shankara Shastry (guru of Vid. Chitti Babu) accompanied by Vid. Umayalpuram Sivaraman. The soundscape is rich and lasts long in our mind. The tani avartanam actually plays out Todi. No wonder UKS is a Padma Vibhushan.
Here is now a beautiful Kalakshetra dance presentation of the Todi varnam in Telugu composed by Muthuswami Dikshitar. We know that his prime disciples, the Tanjore Quartet, laid down the foundations of what we call Bharatanatyam today.
And finally let me share one of the finest compositions in Todi, rendered by Bharata Ratna M. S. Subbulakshmi. Composed by Sri. Papanasam Sivan, it does full justice to the deity Karttikeya as well as the Raaga Todi. As was Sivan's penchant, the charanams (last few stanzas of the song) render Todi in new moods and colours.
As you heard in the lec-dem of Vid. Sriram, the Hindustani Todi, a major Thaat in its own right, has no resemblance to Carnatic Todi.
I do not want to say much more on Todi. Todi brings to me the rich cornucopia of the tastes and colours of Carnatic music. Let us enjoy Todi!
The idea of SAT - Sanskrit Auto-Translator has been brewing in my mind ever since our teacher Dr. Sowmya conducted an event to launch the Asthadhyayi Mobile app developed by Sri. Neelesh Bodas and the Vyoma Labs team.
The idea is to develop an app called SAT that instantly translates any English sentence of 12 or fewer words into grammatically correct and idiomatically elegant and easy-to-pronounce Sanskrit.
The second phase will have text-to-speech output in culturally inspiring voices.
The third phase would have voice recognition so one need not even type the English sentence input as long as one pronounces it correctly ๐
Now how to go about it? I think it involves like any large-scale Sanskrit project:
1. Enlisting a panel of Sanskrit experts who will give authentic inputs. They will be paid for their contribution.
2. Raising funds. I think we should raise about ₹ 1 crore in 2 phases through crowd-funding.
3. Enrolling volunteers who will give about 2 hours per week for 12 weeks to input the English sentences for AI engine creation.
4. Setting up a software team for development. This team will own the IP.
5. Utilising available software development tools.
6. Attracting project funding from donors who see merit in furthering the knowledge systems in Sanskrit in an English-controlled world order.
How to map the app development?
My simplistic idea is to collect 108,000 English sentences from about a thousand volunteers. The sentences would reflect our common usage at a personal, professional and social media level. It will also leverage automatic crawler-news-media analysers to acquire English sentences that would be relevant for a typical SAT app user.
This will be then organised into a taxonomy for language analysis and vocabulary data-base.
The Sanskrit expert panel will translate these 108, 000 sentences into Sanskrit.
The input for software development will be this English sentence data-base, English vocabulary, mapped Sanskrit sentence data-base, and Sanskrit vocabulary.
The first version of the SAT app will have a continuous-learning architecture by means of which it learn s new sentences and build its vocabulary and translation algorithm as it is deployed and used.
Do you think all this makes sense?
Please let me know. If I get any encouragement, I will make more efforts and start a survey to gather responses.
I am sufficiently motivated by my Sanskrit gurus to devote a good portion of my time and resources for this project.
