The flute is perhaps the most endearing of all instruments.
From Lord Krishna with his hypnotic tunes to the rustic semi-literate
piper whiling away his free time, to the flute seller in Connaught
Place whose plaintive reproductions of romantic film hits attract
children, curious tourists and the occasional buyer, players of
this most simple of all instruments have always had a meditative
aura about them. The heat and dust of everyday life does not seem
to touch them, and the notes they produce seem to be simply the
unadorned language of their souls. No wonder any and every flautist
can command a swooning audience.
The Indian flute is a simple bamboo cylinder. Unlike
its counterpart in the West, which has evolved into a sophisticated
metal instrument with finger keys to control the notes, the Indian
flute has hardly changed from the days when the cowherd Krishna,
or even his ancestors before him, used it as a sweet pastime in
the fields. The music and techniques of playing have however evolved
over the centuries, and in Carnatic music, two distinct schools
have emerged.
In the recent past, the one flautist who swept listeners
off their feet was the legendary Mali, or TR Mahalingam. Any rasika
worth his or her salt quotes his name with reverence. But much before
this musical genius left his indelible stamp on flute playing, it
was the contribution of a young blind boy of Kumbhakonam that led
to the introduction of the lowly bamboo flute into the realms of
pure classical Carnatic music, back in the nineteenth century.
Sarabha Sastri was born in 1872 in Kumbhakonam in
present-day Tamil Nadu. His misfortune of being blinded in childhood
could do nothing to blunt his musical genius. Experimenting with
the flute, he evolved a fingering technique by which he could produce
the entire range of Indian ragas on it.
The fingering technique invented by Sarabha Shastri
was highly scientific, and accurate as a keyboard. Even the minute
oscillations required for the intricate gamakas of Carnatic music
were covered by this fingering system. In graduating from playing
only simple tunes to the capacity for producing full fledged kritis
complete with the nuances of every raga, the flute came on par with
the veena as a concert instrument. Sarabha Shastri, like many a
great genius, lived a short life. After his death at the age of
32, his work was carried on by his most celebrated disciple, Palladam
Sanjeeva Rao, who perfected and elaborated the fingering system
and popularized the flute as a solo concert instrument. Palladam
Sanjeeva Rao was the unrivalled king of the Carnatic flute for six
decades.
Towards
the end of Sanjeeva Rao’s career, the flute wizard Mali blew mesmerizing
winds of change into the flute playing technique. A parallel baani
thus emerged, but Mali’s style was definitely more popular, since
he brought the flute closer to the human voice, while Sarabha Shastri’s
keyboard like technique was of a staccatto variety.
Mali’s intuitive methods like shaking the head to
produce gamakas and changing the position of the flute for different
tones, produced more subtle, soft and soothing results, and just
about all his contemporary flautists blissfully rode this new wave.
One staunch devotee of his guru’s tradition was
H Ramachandra Shastri, the foremost disciple of Palladam Sanjeeva
Rao. When Ramachandra Shastri was already a soloist of note, the
Mali wave all but erased the Sarabha Shastri baani from public memory.
But unwilling to foresake a tradition and a lifetime of devotion
to his guru, with whom he had spent 25 years of gurukulavaasam,
Ramachandra Shastri refrained from changing his style of playing,
much as he appreciated Mali’s music.
This strength of character was not understood by
the mandarins who hold sway over culture in this country, and to
a large extent Ramachandra Shastri was confined to the sidelights
till his death about five years ago in Chennai. He was the last
living exponent of the undiluted Sarabha Shastri baani, and a repository
of many rare ragas and kritis.
The only official awards that came his way were
the Venu Gana Siromani in 1937 and the Tamil Nadu Sangeet Natak
Akademi Award in 1967. The government bodies which conduct many
schemes to preserve little known art forms could do nothing to prevent
Ramachandra Shastri’s art from dying with him. There are hardly
even any recordings of his concerts, and the few existing ones remain
in the hands of private institutions who are not necessarily driven
by altruistic motives.
Till the end of his years, H Ramachandra Shastri
taught at Kalakshetra, Chennai, commuting long distances for the
sake of a few students, with an upright frame and stentorian voice
reminiscent of his days as a wrestling champion, and a joke always
ready on his lips. In keeping with his principles,he taught the
style of flute playing of his gurus, though he had the generosity
never to question his disciples when they changed their technique
to suit the modern trend. It is a pity that even in this institute,
where the founder Rukmini Devi placed so much importance on preservation
of genuine arts and crafts, his adherence to the original Sarabha
Shastri baani was not appreciated, and his students were marked
down by the external examiner, who apparently wanted to judge the
popularity ratings of the style instead of evaluating the students
on the basis of what they had been taught.
All this is history now, and only a handful of people
remain to regret the disappearance of a baani or smart at the insults
meted out to Ramachandra Shastri. Indeed, if compared, there are
positive and negative points in both the styles. The major difference
is that in Mali’s style of playing, there is no technical difference
between the sahitya, swara and neraval portions of a composition,
because the tuttukaaram (technique of giving stress to each individual
syllable) has been dispensed with, and the playing consists of extended
blowing.
Perhaps the loss is more academic than otherwise,
since evolution is but a natural process. The original contribution
of Sarabha Shastri in bringing the flute onto the concert platform
remains immortal.