Nearly two decades after the death of Mysore Ananthaswamy, the singer-composer who popularised the sugama sangeeta concert format, his daughter Sunitha Ananthaswamy is all set to release a recording of one of his rare, forgotten compositions. And Chagada bhogada is not a modern poet's work that he has set tune to - it is a verse by the 10th century Kannada poet Pampa.
“My brother Raju (the late singer Raju Ananthaswamy) recorded about a hundred of my father's tunes, but somehow this one slipped all our minds,” says Sunitha, a Michigan-based musician.
Pampa’s verse was always the first song in Mysore Ananthaswamy’s book. “And even the meaning—it so beautiful. It says, if I were to be born again (as a bee or a koel), I would be born in this land.” So, when she started working on recording an album six to seven months ago, she wanted to begin with this composition. “My father would often ask me for inputs
as he composed—I feel that it represents his musical style,” expresses Sunitha, who with her sister Anitha has sung it for the album. “When (Shivaram) Karanth received the Jnanpith award (1977), there was an event to celebrate it at Vidhana Soudha. That's when he composed and sang this song,” Sunitha recalls.
The album, which comprises five of Sunitha's and Raju's compositions each, will be titled Kannada Ene Kunidaaduvudennede (My heart dances when you say Kannada), after a track sung by her Anitha, also lives in the US, and another artiste. “The other compositions will be sung by well-known sugama sangeeta artistes,” she says, choosing not to name them yet. While Sunitha doesn't expect to discover new spools of her compositions, she wants to work on professional recordings of Raju's compositions. “That's my goal now. Most of them, I didn't even know existed. What we have now are recordings of his classes, thanks to his students,” she declares.
Her other aspiration is to take forward her father's tradition. “There are so many new ideas now, but I don't want too veer too far away from what the original was — my father's style,” she says, adding that being a sugama sangeeta artiste has always been a struggle.
“In South India, if you go to the other states, there's either classical music or film music. In Karnataka, most lovers of music listen to one of the two genres. Most who listen to film music can't understand sugama sangeeta, where the lyrics — which are the works of a poet —are important. And classical music lovers often feel that this musical style is beneath them,” she explains. But, she adds, sugama sangeeta has a niche audience of poetry lovers.
As a journalism graduate who works for Detroit Public Television part-time, Sunitha believes that media coverage would help the art survive. “Even when my father had huge-scale performances at Kanteerava Stadium a couple of times, not one newspaper came to cover it. But Pink Floyd coming to town would make the headlines,” she rues.
Singer of modern verse
Mysore Ananthaswamy (1932-1995) is regarded as one of sugama sangeeta’s three most influential figures, the other two being Kalinga Rao and C Aswath. All three were singer-composers. Ananthaswamy made tunes for the poetry of Kuvempu, Bendre, G P Rajarathnam, G S Shivarudrappa and scores of other poets of his time. He also interpreted the modernist poems of K S Nisar Ahmed, giving musical expression to almost prose-like lines. He recorded extensively for radio and performed live, popularising full-length concerts featuring contemporary Kannada poetry.