I would like to share with you all about a real music lover, organizer, one of the early pillars for the growth of the Chicago Tyagaraja Utsavam at every stage .
Coming from traditional Palakkad families, he was very successful as a Real Estate person in Coimbatore and could feel in his conversation his business acumen. There are millions like him and it has no value for me or for music at large. He used to visit his sister Chellam Balakrishnan more or less every year and in one of those years we accidentally got to know each other sharing some music of Lalgudi, Balamurali etc. and I never had any inkling he had real musical interest beyond tape collection. Being a Real Estate person, he was able to design a nice Music Sabha in Coimbatore for the Carnatic music community at large and started organizing a series of concerts- called ragha Sudha-Gokulashtami series and son. The hall was well equipped with excellent recording facilities for thoise days and the greatest of veteran and prodigy musicians like Chemmangudi, Lalgudi, MSG, Ramani, Nedunuri, DK Jayaraman, TV Sankaranarayanan , Seshagopalan , Mandolin Srinivas and many many others were very happy to perform in his sabha as a prestigious place to perform. One year as a family we stayed for 3 days with him listening to some concerts of Aruna Sairam (?, Geetha Raja) and son. Over the years he decided to transplant the same Sabha into madras area and nothing could be better than a sabha of size (150-200 at most) fully air conditioned and even more than anything in the heart of music place- Mylapore close to Sastri Hall. There are many many sabhas in Madras organizing our music and in what se nse he was special.
He started believing in two things: 1. There should be no compromise on the traditional conservative music. 2. Ragas like Todi, Bhairavi, Atana, Kambhodhi must be part of any concert for the musicians to be considered worthy. 2. Once established musicians tend to demand more and he never liked the idea of compromising with quality concerts at nominal cost kind. This lead him to make a major policy change in his sabha concerts: Encourage young and upcoming musicians who won’t compromise their traditional music for box office. Thus many veteran musicians who are not in the box office market, but highly scholarly tend to perform in his sabha.
I used to spend 3 to 4 hours in his house talking to him about music and publications etc. He virtually treated his house as a godown for many music books that cannot be easily stored and I remember seeing the magnum opus book of TK Govinda Rao on Carnatic music book of 600 or 800 pages stored in his house. Any time a musician was coming to Chicago, I will call him and talk to him direct about: What do you think of so and so? He was very blunt and he was also enthusiastic about several musicians and wanted me to arrange their programs in Chicago as superb upcoming musicians.
One day, he wanted me to come to his house in Bhimasena Gardens and have dinner with him. The two girls Ranjani and Gayatri came in Pavadai Melakku with Mr Balasubramaniam (their father). SVK said, the highest of music you should get from these two girls. They played duet violin very beautifully, but having heard people like Lalgudi, MSG and so on, it did not leave the impression I should have had-for lack of understanding of the pracheena ragas.
When we now listen to Ranjani/Gayatri now we know where they stand and what people like him have done for them to blossom. One year I was struggling to find a suitable main musician for Utsavam. I had to entirely depend on Shashank’s father for help. All I had wa s a CD called Rasanubhavam by Sanjay Subramaniam. Shashank’s father suggested Sanjay and I was handling all these deals from Germany while on a research assignment. SVK said emphatically that “Raghavan- Sanjay and TM Krishna are two names that will be like solid rock in Carnatic music. Believe me. While I missed the concert, I felt happy for the very successful program. Same applies to Mysore Nagaraj/Manjunath concert. We buy many products based on LOGO. I could go by the words of SV Krishnan.
We were trying to make the silver Jubilee a grand festival. It had two aspects: Arranging concerts. bringing out a special brochure. I have never ever talked to
Chemmangudi or DKP or KVN . I wanted these veteran musicians blessing for our CTU. In fact I was very keen on blessings from MS, TN Krishnan, Lalgudi, Nedunuri and many more. In fact SVK promised to contact each of these musicians and get for CTU their blessing letters. Dr KS Rajan was willing to approach MS and Lalg udi. I was making phone calls after phone calls and when I received the first letter from Chemmangudi I was in tears. CTU has done nothing to many of them. It is documented in the silver jubilee volume where we have blessings from: Cehmmangudi, DK Pattammal, KV Narayanaswamy, Lalgudi, TK Govinda Rao. Time was running out. Otherwise SVK would have worked wonders on many more. When our CTU books were produced, SVK said, that your book will have no value without the stamp of a professional musician.
As you all know we give some token gift to core volunteers in the form of some Tanjore paintings. SVK will spend the money and buy them and pack them ready for some one to pick up. He was willing to mail them too. He would openly tell to audience in his Sabha at the end of some concerts that I attended- “Friends- Professor Raghavan and his core volunteers celebrate Tyagaraja Utsavam in Chicago and they do what I am doing here Raga Sudha.”
CTU has lost a permanen t and crucial musical contact once and for all. I have lost one of my best friends. Madras music community has lost one of the best organizers with clear musical vision. Chellam Balakrishna has lost her dear and loving brother. I tried to Mrs Krishnan in India. They are all busy with organizing the last rights .
In grief
TES Raghavan