BENGALURU: Two mridangam artistes from the city are being honoured at an ongoing five-day music conference at Belur.
Jointly organised by Karnataka Ganakala Parishat and Brand Beluru Trust, the event combines the 46th edition of the senior music artistes’ summit, with C Cheluvaraju as president, and the 28th youth music artistes’ summit, where Renuka Prasad will preside.
The age of bhajane manes
C Cheluvaraju will present a session on bhajan troupes, where his roots run deep. His father C Cheluvaiah was the head of the troupe in Kodanda Rama Bhajane Mandira in Cottonpet, and he and his harmonium artiste elder brother C Ramadass picked up music to contribute. “We had greats like Pollachi Shankaran, Lakshman Shastri, Mallikarjunaiah, Shyamala Bhave, Shailam Desikan, Honappa Bhagavatar and Satyuktaiah visiting,” he says.
He began learning mridangam from an acquaintance of his father’s, Srinivas, and later trained under C Subbu. “I first started playing for harikathe sessions, and later got called for kutcheris,” he says.
The brother bond
His brother C Ramdass holds a Limca record for the highest number of solo harmonium performances – 590. “Now, he has over 600 such kutcheris to his credit, and I’ve accompanied him for a majority of them,” says Cheluvaraju.
He has also played alongside Balamurali Krishna, Yesudas, ‘Mandolin’ Srinivas, ‘Saxophone’ Kadri Gopalnath, T V Shankarnarayan, Lalgudi Jayaraman, Kumaresh and Ganesh, M S Sheela and Ustad Amzad Ali Khan.
Raised into music
Renuka Prasad began playing the mridangam when he was six-and-a-half. “My parents were into business, but I was raised by my uncle P Bhuvaneshwaraiah, who was a violinist,” he says. The musician has for years played alongside violin maestro T Chowdaiah, after whom one of the most popular performance spaces in the city is named.
Like Cheluvaraju’s, Prasad’s childhood home too was peopled by musical stalwarts. And he would play the tamburi for each of his uncle’s concerts. “The accepted behaviour while amidst other musicians or on stage came naturally to me,” he says. Prasad has learnt mridangam from ghatam artiste K N Krishnamurthy. “Mridangam is considered the king of percussion. To learn any other instrument, you first need a foundation in mridangam,” explains Prasad.
Going solo
Cheluvaraju and Prasad, though established, don’t get to perform solos or tala vaadya kutcheris as often as they do as accompanists. And each style of performance calls for a customised approach, they say.
“Even with vocal performances, you need to keep in mind their pitch and manodharma, musical improvisations,” says Cheluvaraju. And playing for another instrumentalist is completely different. “You usually have to ensure you play softly,” says Prasad. “If you’re familiar with the compositions, it makes it simpler to keep to rhythm. Vocal artistes indicate the tala with their hands, not instrumental artistes.” Tala vaadya kutcheris have become more common over the past the past couple of decades, he observes. “On an average, a percussion artiste gets to play in conferences like these once or twice a year.”