As a teenager in the late 1970s, S L Narasimhan had only a bicycle to move about in his city of Chennai to devour Carnatic concerts with an amazing appetite. And much of the kacheris those days were staged in the
Adyar area, from where returning home after the programme would be a problem. “By nightfall, the place used to seem haunted…not many buses, very few people too,” he recalls with a gap-toothed smile. Luckily for him, Sanjay Subrahmanyan, a peer-group boy next door, had a moped. Together they would set for sabhas animatedly discussing ragas and kritis,
unmindful of the chaos on the roads.
Today, Sanjay is a top classical vocalist. Narasimhan’s mission was a shade different: archiving. He went on to record many of the live concerts he attended, besides the vintage collections that All India Radio used to air
religiously. On a more passionate side, Narasimhan took the pains to collect old-time spools and gramaphone discs featuring south Indian musicians. And that’s one task that he still pursues — with the additional engagement of digitising each of them.
Narasimhan, now 44 and working with a digital marketing solutions firm, has music records measuring — if that’s the right word — up to 1.8 tb (terabyte), a chunk of it Carnatic. More intelligibly, here’s an archivist with a classical music collection spanning roughly 17,500 hours or 5,800 concerts — some of them dating back to the 1930s. “It’s a very pain-staking process…this digitising,” Narasimhan says, as he plays on his laptop a record of an evidently yesteryear musician — a rather loud, less ornate voice. “You know who this is? Thuraiyur Rajagopala Sharma. He taught Musiri Subramania Iyer (1899-1975). You can imagine how old this concert should be…”
From the early 20th century, Narasimhan has an awesome array of records: Palakkad Rama Bhagavathar, Veena Dhanammal, ‘Tiger’ Varadachari, T Balasaraswati and her mother-guru Jayammal, Ramanathapuram Sankara Sivam, Mudicondan Venkatarama Iyer, Palladam Sanjeeva Rao and Brinda-Mukta.
For Narasimhan, digitising involves refining the audibility quotient in its entirety. “I have to wipe out disturbances and edit informal talks of the artistes — unless they are interesting — during concerts. Plus, optimise the amplification level of the accompanist
vocalists and instrumentalists. All this, without compromising on the originality.”
It’s not as if Narasimhan began with little archival capital. His father, Saranatha Gopalan, was a government employee and a music buff. “He was posted initially in Tiruchy, where he had (maverick musician) Madurai Somu as a close friend. My father had already quite a good collection of spools, but he couldn’t bring them to Chennai on his transfer. But I managed to later gather all of them and digitise.” During his initial Chennai days, Saranatha Gopalan was part of the committee that ran the Triplicane Arts Academy. And that’s where Narasimhan used to listen to concerts as a toddler. “Those days, archiving was tough. Cassettes were the only means of recording, and they used to cost Rs 40 a piece,” he points out. But help came in the form of the benevolence of certain musicians. “Sanjay introduced me to (late) S Kalyanaraman, who never minded lending me whatever records he owned.”
This kid of broad-mindedness is what Narasimhan finds lacking among most new-age musicians. Of late, the gay abandon with which he used to record live concerts has slowed down with a whimper. “Frankly, I don’t have many records of concerts since the 2000s. The youngsters protest recording their kacheris…copyright issues, you know.”
That’s the irony. When Narasimhan had the liberty to record live music, he had unwieldy machines that weren’t high on the quality side. These days, when he has hi-tech gadgets, he finds it’s not easy to get permission to record. “Only my collection of the old masters continues,” shrugs Narasimhan, who runs yessel.blogspot.com. Clearly, the rare blend of being tech-savvy and an aesthete is not enough to be an archivist in the coming days.
sreevalsan@epmltd.com
