Carnatic music is losing, one by one, great purists and instrumental soloists. The sudden demise of Sangeeta Kalanidhi Dr. N. Ramani, the renowned flutist, is a major loss to Indian classical music and especially instrumental music.
In 1971, I was contacted by the East-West society of New York trying, for the first time, to arrange a concert tour of the renowned Violin Maestro Lalgudi Jayaraman with Flute Ramani and Ramnad Raghavan on the Mridangam. Mr. V.K. Viswanathan, who was one of those early pioneers in this venture, wanted us to arrange private concerts as well as public concerts. Being that Flute Ramani was a classmate of Dr. S.T. Rao, the excitement was all the more for many of us in Chicago to look forward to their visit. Getting a suitable hall for the concert was quite a thorny issue in those days and it required a lot of help from various people. Luckily through Dr. K.S. Rajan , we could fix the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), Chicago Auditorium essentially for free through the Indian Students Association of IIT. Having picked up the artists in the afternoon from the airport, the Violin Maestro was very particular to do mike testing before taking his lunch. To me, Lalgudi’s mike testing in and of itself was a concert. The Mokashamu Galada, Na Jeevadara, and Nannu Palimpa were heavenly. I was doubly rewarded with celestial music from Lalgudi and the concert with Ramani. The Chicago concert was unquestionably the most memorable and I still treasure many of the reel-to-reel concert recordings of Ramani-Lalgudi across the USA from that tour.
While Ramani was happy to perform in Chicago, he was all the more excited to meet his schoolmate S.T. Rao and the rest of us.
In fact, even more than their music, association with the musicians and the pride that they imparted by staying with us was more important to many of us. We looked forward to the music related chats with Lalgudi and Ramani. A host of graduate students from Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan assembled in our one bed room apartment and people wanted to talk to Ramani the whole night after the concert. That night we talked to Ramani about many musicians and about Tyagaraja Swamy’s specialties and what not. S.T. Rao entertained us the whole night with his great sense of humor while the ladies were busy constantly feeding us with snacks.
The next morning we had to go and pick up graduate students staying with friends across the greater Chicago area for the private concert at Dr. K.S. Rajan ‘s apartment at IIT campus. The masterly beginnings of a Ragamalika Alpana in Begada, Arabhi, Anandabhairavi, Reetigoula etc. are yet to be matched for their depth and originality. When Ramani suddenly joined the solo part of Lalgudi with his solo BagayaNayya, in a raga totally unknown to many of us (Chandrajyoti), it was simply scintillating.
What a level of musical purity it was and just musical honey flowed through his flute!
Some of the ladies wanted a complete repeat of Lalgudi-Ramani-Venkatraman trio’s LP recording of Mohana Rama. Ramani’s Nagumomu, followed by his Punnagavarali (snake song) was suddenly interfered by a unique bow of Lalgudi. Their performance simply elevated us to a whole new musical plane. The private concert ended with a Thiruppugazh Ragamalika and everyone quickly moved to my apartment just a block away for the lunch. They had to catch a flight within two hours. In those days, it was quite normal for me to demand Usha to sacrifice listening to music for the sake of others. Usha was quite busy taking care of many small kids and feeding them before we assembled for lunch. Immensely pleased with the program, I called my friend Narayanan in London and requested him to invite Ramani when they toured UK right after their last concert in New York.
I along with S.T. Rao and Swaminathan of Madison, Wisconsin drove all the way to Detroit to listen to their Detroit concert. Each major city had a small group of music lovers. There was VK. Viswanathan, Sankaran and Nagarajan in New York; Sundaram, Balu and Chellappa in Cleveland; C.M. Venkatachalam in Detroit; Ananthanarayanan in San Diego; and Venkatraman in Toronto. Each was itching to listen to Carnatic music programs. Through Sony TC 560 (auto reverse, Scotch 203 tapes) etc, some of us were willing to make copies of these Ramani and Lalgudi concerts and did not mind a 300 or 400 miles trip to collect even a badly recorded concert of them or of some veteran musician’s vintage concerts of the bygone days.
The very next year (1972), when I went to India to celebrate my sister’s marriage to Narayanan, I went to meet both Lalgudi and Ramani. In Lalgudi’s house, they were busy doing some Thiruppugazh prayers and he was to quickly catch a train for a concert next day in Andhra Pradesh. When I met with Ramani, he was excited to talk to me about his Chicago visits and also about meeting my friend Narayanan and talked about the lunch he had with Narayanan. Ramani wanted me with Usha to join him for lunch next week in his house. He was staying on the open roof terrace of some house in Mylapore which was just covered with thatch and partitioned with korai sheets. Usha and I were deeply touched by his hospitality amidst clear poverty. He openly said with feelings and with a great sense of gratitude that it was the Jugalbandi with Lalgudi that made all the difference to his musical life and provided a real economic uplift. He told us that he would be moving to his own house being newly built soon. At that time, I asked him to suggest some suitable music party for my sister’s marriage reception. I told him my financial limitations. When I casually mentioned that my friend Narayanan was marrying my sister Daya, he simply said that he himself will play for the reception on one condition. He would not accept even a token honorarium from us.
He is one of those rarest of musicians with a true love for music loving friends.
Later, when I attended Thiruvayyaru Tyagaraja Utsavam, I was expecting the Pancharatna Kritis first. To my surprise, Ramani’s solo Chetulara in Bhairavi simply filled the Utsavam with tranquility. This was the inspiration years later to implement an instrumental Chetulara group during Day 1 of the Utsavam prior to the Pancharatnam group performance. To date, Ramani’s Chetulara lives on through this tradition.
Although Ramani has visited USA many times for many concert tours, and performed under different organizations, I very much wanted him to perform with Srimushnam Raja Rao for CTU. We had to wait a long time. In 2007, the concert of Ramani with Nagai Muralidharan and Srimushnam Raja Rao at CTU is a musical treasure for all of us.
More recently, I met Ramani and his wife for the last time at my niece’s wedding in Chennai. To this day, no musician can match Ramani for the souseelyam and soulabhyam. This purist of purists is living in my house through his many music concerts with Lalgudi, with MSG, with KVN with Chowrasia and many others.
We have lost one of the greatest flutist, a musical purist and above all a great man with simplicity and modesty. I will miss this great musician and his live music. .
T.E.S. Raghavan