Sanjay Subrahmanyan x Charsur Digital Work Station
Five Songs — 17
I was thrilled to discover some days ago that many albums produced by the label Charsur Digital Work Station are now on Spotify.
The albums produced by Charsur in the 2000s and 2010s were important to my listening journey into Carnatic music — opening up new artistes, ragas and compositions like never before. I’d argue that after the seminal Music Today albums of the 1990s, Charsur was the next and only publisher to produce high quality releases curated with care. Every detail was mentioned, and mentioned correctly (not something you could have taken for granted in the past) — the composition, the raga, the tala, the composer, the main artiste and all the accompanying artistes. There were little blurbs also introducing the theme of the album. And all of this using the limited space that CD packaging afforded. It was a sign of the times that they proudly had “digital” in their name, and the “work station” part of their name signalled that they were serious about their recording craft and the craft inherent in the music they produced.
At this time, I was a college going student and then a young professional. I was thrilled to be able to be able to shop for Charsur’s CDs, carefully selecting and then endlessly savouring their productions. It was also from listening to their December Season and Paddhatti series (featuring concerts of contemporary performers and past stalwarts respectively) that I grew into the habit of listening to full-length concert recordings.
For a long time, after I stopped listening to CDs, I did not have access to these works, and would often think back on some favourite pieces, seemingly gone forever.
My delight therefore at discovering most of their trove on Spotify is unbound. To mark the occassion, here is a sample of five songs rendered by Sanjay Subrahmanyam from five different Charsur albums. Sanjay was prolific with Charsur. The sheer amount of time I have spent listening to his music in these Charsur albums has undoubtedly shaped my relationship with the art form in a very significant way.
One: Saketa Nagara Natha — Harikambhoji — Mysore Sadashiva Rao
This piece is from the album Ashwaththa, which features compositions of the disciple parampara of Thyagaraja (who is in case the Ashwaththa or peepul tree under whose benign shelter they have thrived). The album is anchored by the majestic Ninnu Vina in Kalyani by Subbaraya Shastri.
There is no dearth of compositions in Harikambhoji, most famously from Thyagaraja himself, but this one has been a favourite ever since I heard it. The charanam line…Rajita-amara-pala, Ramachandra Bhupala…clearly made an impression on me, as it popped up very often over decades (and continues to do so) as a earworm at random moments. The anupallavi features a chitta-swara passage, and the charanam ends with a syllable-packed madhyama-kala passage (medium-tempo, or brisker relative to the base cadence).
Two: Darisittalavil — Latangi — Muttu Tandavar
Charsur had a thematic series labeled Kshetra. Each album in the series was dedicated to a single kshetra or temple-town, and the artiste curated songs dedicated to deities of the kshetra in question, by different composers. This song is from Sanjay Subrahmanyan’s album Kshetra: Chidambaram. I was instantly captivated by this rendition. The flowing, insistent pulse of the pallavi (Darasittalavil…), like unremitting ocean waves lashing against a wall of rocks, the unusual way in which the anupallavi (the next stanza) also began with Darasi…, and finally the compact, magical prosody of the charanam (beginning maayanai), with every line ending with the syllables aayanai, with the final word being Shivaayanai…connecting back to Daristtalavil of the opening line. Sanjay sings only one charanam — a common practice in Carnatic music — but a perusal of the lyrics shows that each of the other charanams has a similarly distinctive prosodic theme. Sanjay wraps up the piece with a delightful swara passage.
A couple of asides. First, I suspected that the composition had been tuned by Sanjay, but I was wrong. I found out though, from Sanjay himself, that it was in fact set to this tune in Latangi by the flautist Tiruppamburam Swaminatha Pillai. Since Covid times, Sanjay has been self-producing a lot of his music — publishing videographed concerts on Youtube (now also on Spotify) and through his social media accounts, publishing song lists of upcoming concerts. In doing so, he has taken great care to specifically mention who has tuned each of the pieces (if from a composer whose original tunes have been lost, like Purandara Dasa, or in this case Muttu Tandavar). It was from one such concert list that I found out about Tiruppamabaram’s tuning of this piece. I think this practice of Sanjay’s is a superb one. I have in the past advocated for such steps.
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Second, the composer most rasikas immediately associate with Chidambaram is Gopalakrishna Bharati, given the number of popular songs from his opus Nandanar Charitram (the story of the great Nataraja devotee Nandan’s quest for darshan at Chidambaram). Sanjay Subrahmanyan has another album with Charsur dedicated to the composer, titled Tillai.
Three: Geeti Chakra— Kannada — Muthuswami Dikshitar
This song is from a 1999 album titled Magic of the Trinity in which Sanjay takes on one composition each of Thyagaraja, Muthuswami Dikshitar and Shyama Shastri. I absolutely devoured this album, but especially this song. I first came across the raga Kannada through a LP recording of Ramnad Krishnan singing Thyagaraja Ninnada Nela. My second exposure to the raga was through a magnificent album recording of Dikshitar’s composition Shri Mathrubhootham by TM Krishna. By now, it was a favourite raga, and I had had my first inklings of the specialness of Muthuswami Dikshitar as a composer. I was therefore thrilled to discover the existence of this ‘brand new’ (to me) Dikshitar piece in the raga. It is the main reason I chose to buy the CD, among all the works on offer at the shop. It is a short piece, with only pallavi and anupallavi (sometimes referred to as a samasti charanam in such two-stanza compositions). The piece is preceded by a short alapana and there is a delightful chittaswaram passage at the end of the anupallavi.
Four: Kaalai Tookki — Yadukulakambhoji — Marimutta Pillai
Sanjay Subrahmanyan, over the past half a decade or so has become known for his promotion (if that’s the right word) of Carnatic compositions in the Tamil language. His annual Tamizhum Naanum concert during the December season in Chennai has become a Carnatic institution and created a big splash when it was first held in 2018. The splash was caused not just by the theme of the concert, but it was the first high-profile instance in recent times of a concert being staged during the music season but independent of the sabha system — of an artiste at the peak of their popularity having the confidence to directly monetize their own star power by producing an event themselves, marketing it widely, and welcoming new audiences to the Carnatic fold.
These efforts to promote Tamil compositions had a clear emphasis on those of the relatively lesser known Tamizh Moovar (Tamil Trinity) — Muttu Tandavar, Marimutta Pillai and Arunachala Kavi, who were all appartently from the Sirkazhi region, and pre-dated the better known Tiruvarur-centered Carnatic trinity of the mid-18th — mid-19th centuries. Perhaps the earliest effort in this quest of Sanjay’s was the 2006 album recorded for Charsur called Tamizh Moovar. It certainly had the desired effect on me. While I had picked up the CD on the basis of the raga selection, this was my first real exposure to these composers, and whether consciously or unconsciously, the fact that Sanjay chose to highlight them made me far more curious thereafter about Tamil composers and songs.
My favourite song of the album is Kaalai Tookki, which has become my favourite song in the raga. I was charmed by the accessibility of the language, at least in the pallavi line. I correctly guessed the gist of it’s — why don’t you, Nataraja, dancing with one leg raised, also just raise a hand and bless me?
Asked in the benign, graceful, languid phraseology of Yadukulakambhoji, it would be utterly churlish of the Nataraja, capable of literal balancing acts, of complex and energetic movement, of beautiful and inconceivable form, to refuse a gesture as simple as lifting a hand. A simple, ingenuous thought beautifully brought together in word and music.
The rest of the lyrics play on the word tookki (to raise, lift) to describe various attributes of Shiva.
Five: Vinayakuni — Thyagaraja — Madhyamavati
This song is from another Kshetra themed album — Kshetra: Kanchi. When I first heard it, I mistook it for a Shyama Shastri composition. Not only is the song dedicated to Kamakshi of Kanchi, the favourite of Shyama Shastri, but so many of the words are so typical of his compositions — brovave, birana, ninnu vina, Shankari, janani…
This rendition instantly made the song one of my favourites in the raga Madhyamavati. And the charnanam line Birana dayache, giralu makuni…, established itself as yet another earworm, one that I occasionally express aloud at random intervals, much to annoyance of those I live with!
Thank you for listening!
