Anthems for the Nation of Luobaniya • 罗巴尼亚国歌: Madurai Mani Iyer

Showing posts with label Madurai Mani Iyer. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Madurai Mani Iyer - Ganakaladhara
EMI India - 33 ESX 6058, - P.1974

Side A

A1 Thaye Yeshoda - Thodi
A2 Kapali - Mohanam
A3 Orajoobu - Kannadagowla
A4 Dhunmargasara - Ranjani

Side B

B1 Parimalarangapathe - Kamboji Ragampallavi
B2 Suki Evvaro - Kanada
B3 Maye - Tharangini

You have no idea how happy I am! More Madurai Mani Iyer and most likely 78 rpm's of old stock transferred to vinyl in the early seventies. It does not get so very much better than that!

Just a little while ago some more fruits from the latest excursion in Tamil Nadu by my good friends Costis and Arvind arrived! Since this record is by one of my absolute favourit singers I will post it right away without any delay whatsoever so we can all share this music as soon as possible. I am listening to the first tracks myself as I post this. Thank you both for this wonderful record!

Music ▼+

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Madurai Mani Ayyar - Classical Sanskrit Vocal

Madurai Mani Ayyar - Classical Sanskrit Vocal

EMI Columbia - 33 ESX 6010 - P.1967

Side A

A1 Thathvamariya (Reethigowla) 4'11

A2 Nija Marmamulanu (Umaparnam) 3'52

A3 Maa Janaki (Khambodji) 13'43

Side B

B1 Sarasa Sama Dana (Kapi Narayani) 6'53

B2 Saarasamukhi (Gowda Malla) 5'48

B3 Eppo Varuvaaro (Jonpuri) 3'49

B4 Note & Madhyamavathi 4'18

I see no over saturation of Mani Iyers music anywhere on the net, so here is the LP that came after the one I just posted yesterday. The preservation and digital likeness is this time a joint venture of the "south indian vinyl trinity" like we had before with an LP of the Sulamangalm Sisters. The good Arvind spotted it, secured it, and passed it on to good Costis who got down and made a real nice digital likeness that he in turn passed on for me to fiddle with a bit. Photos and rip are his! Twiddle and fiddle are mine. Slight de pop editing and slight photo editing. The music is for everyone who has heart and ears!

I like to point out the last piece on the B-side "Note" that goes into the Madhyamavathi. It is of course the least typical of the Carnatic repertoire and always stands out and seems still to be rather popular. It is a rather amusing and enjoyable relic of the British rule in South India. "Notes" can often be heard in Nagaswaram music and some vocalist like Madurai Mani Iyer did nurture the tradition of "notes" or "English Notes" as they were also called. The wonderful clarionet player A.K.C. Natarajan also has a very nice repertoire of "notes".

The influence from annotated english music, like march or dance tunes is obvious and speak of a time when indian musicians would have to also include western tunes in their repertoire to satisfy the English Raj. Some were played for formal functions and ceremonial reasons some for pure entertainment. Originally they were simply English tunes played on traditional South Indian instruments. In fact, some are simply Western tunes with Indian lyrics, but even though you can still sometimes here tunes like "God save the Queen" and "He's a Jolly Good Fellow", oftentimes it is however futile to look for the "english original" as there is none! Many "Notes" were composed by Indian composers and musicians in the vein of, or to resemble the original Notes. These are compositions often in the raaga shankaraabharaNam and created with swaras (some also have saahitya=lyrics).

Read some more about western influence on Indian Classical Music here...

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Friday, March 11, 2011

Madurai Mani Iyer - Carnatic Classical Vocal - 1965

Madurai Mani Iyer - Carnatic Vocal Telugu & Sanskrit Classical

EMI Columbia 33 ESX 6004 - P.1965

Side A

A1 Seethapathe Kamas 11'45

A2 Samjavaragamana - Hindholam - Telugu 9'10

Side B

B1 Kamalambam Hajare - Kalyani - Sanskrit 20'35

T.N. Krishnan, violin

Vellore Ramabhadran, mirudhangam

Another of my beloved South indian male voices is Mani Iyer, Madura in this case also indicating "sweet" and not only a reference to the city Madurai. He is indeed sweet and his intense glow is also something that feeds me a lot of energy! Hope you like him as much as I do! This post is in celebration of my new grandchild a boy born yesterday, he already has an older sister so I guess he will be fine even though it is a hard world! When celebrating life I think only Carnatic music works well enough for me so this is a very special album ;-)

The "sweet voice" of Madurai Mani Iyer in concert!

Madurai Mani Iyer (Tamil: மதுரை மணி ஐயர்) (October 25, 1912–1968) was a Carnatic music singer, who was famous for his unique style. He was one of the most highly celebrated carnatic vocalists during the first half of the 20th century. He was renowned for his adept skills at singing kalpana swarams, neraval, and raga alapana. His music continues to be highly regarded today.

Here are some links from this webpage, dedicated to him and his art and with lots of information and anecdotes!

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Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Festival of India Presents - The Great Tradition - Masters of Music

Festival of India Presents - The Great Tradition - Masters of Music

EMI HMV India - EALP 1453-54 [2LP] - P.1984

Hindustani

1-01 Bhopali [1911] 3.16 Zohra Bai

1-02 Bhairavi [1948] 4.22 Bhundu Khan [sarangi]

1-03 Shudda Kalyan [1949] 4.23 Abdul Karim Khan

1-04 Lalit [1940] 3.18 Fayyaz Khan

1-05 Nat Kamod [1946] 4.09 Kesar Bai Kerkar

1-06 Dev Gandhar [1964] 4.11 Krishnarao Shankar Pandit

2-01 Gujri Todi [1951] 3.11 Bade Ghulam Ali Khan

2-02 Hori [1962] 4.39 Siddheshwari Devi

2-03 Gaur Sarang [1961] 4.50 Mallikarjun Mansur

2-04 Ramdasi Malhar [1965] 6.35 Amir Khan

2-05 Asavari [1960] 4.12 Gangubai Hangal

3-01 Shree [1965] 6.25 Ravi Shankar & Ali Akbar Khan [Sitar & Sarod]

3-02 Tilak Kamod [1961] 4.09 Vilayat Khan [Sitar]

3-03 Bageshwari [1964] 2.55 Kishori Amonkar

Karnatic

3-04 Kasiramakriya [1950] 4.02 Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar

3-05 Saramati [1971] 3.15 Dwaram Venkataswamy Naidu [Violin]

3-06 Mohanam [1956] 4.01 Maharajapuram Viswanatha Iyer

4-01 Todi [N.D.] 3.36 T.N. Rajaratnam Pillai [Nagaswaram]

4-02 Kalyani [1965] 4.10 Madurai Mani Iyer

4-03 Adi Tala [1969] 3.53 Palghat Mani Iyer [Mridangam]

4-04 Mayamalavagaula [1975] 2.45 D.K. Pattamal

4-05 Vachaspati [1982] 3.31 Doreswamy Iyengar [Vina]

4-06 Nata [N.D] 4.04 M.D. Ramanathan

4-07 Sankarabharanam [1970] 4.04 T.R. Mahalingam [Flute]

Early on, also in the mid to later part of the sixties, an intellectual engineer that had been deported to the little community where I grew up, together with a few local students, and of course I was one of them, that had already been singled out as impossible to use for the footballteam, or most any other normal social activity like pair dancing, drinking and fighting, started a film club that graciously borrowed the local Movie theatre when nothing else was showing started to arrange screenings of movies by Fellini, Bergman and Bunuel and several Japanese and some Indian movies among them the Satjayit Ray movie Jalsaghar The Music Room witch had a big impact on me, I was more or less ignoring the underlying message of the movie and focused happily on the music and dance parts.

Well, it is a bit confusing to try to come up with a first post of Indian vocal music as there are so many wonderful singers!

How to choose, when each one of these singers has opened up a new universe to me. And as I mentioned in previous posts, I had, after indulging for some years in the instrumental music, more or less completely abandoned any other listening after I finally made contact with the vocal music.

The first I heard was really the greatest singers in all of hindustani music. Each absolutely phenomenal! The first records I remember came from two friends, that very quickly, one after the other, lent me some EMI HMV India LP's of Abdul Karim Khan, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, D.V. Palushkar, Amir Khan, Vilayat Hussain Khan and Kesar Bai Kerkar. Can you imagine anything to surpass this? It was impossible to choose one before the other, so I immediately fell in love with all of them! They very soon to be followed by Omkarnath Thakur, Bhimsen Joshi , C.R. Vyas, Dagar Brothers, Mallikarjun Mansur, Kumar Ghandarva, Amanat & Fateh Ali Khan, Nazakat Ali & Ustad Salamat Ali and Lakshmi Shankar. Even the then by the purists shunned Parween Sultana reached my ears and I found also her singing to be delightful but that was before she hooked up with the to Dilshad Khan who in my opinion were not at all up to her standard. It went further and a little later I was also listening to real obscurities like Mushtaq Hussein Khan, Rajab Ali Khan.

I tried to understand something about the different gharanas and must say that at my young age I failed. There was very little guidance and very hard to do any comparative listening, but it did not matter because my ears and heart was open and I was filled to the brim with this music, I was breathing it like someone that had been held under water for a very long time and finally came up for air!

This went on for a long while and I was far from satiated but then the Karnatic sky opened with another downpour of fantastic artists and much like I had been totally enchanted by the reeds of Bismillah Khan I was now blown to pieces by the exploding tavil and fantastic Nagaswaram of T.N. Rajaratnam Pillai and Karukurichi P. Arunachalam. And now and then when the tempo was getting too excited, I was mildly brought back into a state of peacful bliss by the mercyfull voice of M.S. Subbulakshmi and only quite a bit later did I find the male singers like Madurai Mani Iyer, Alathur Brothers, M.M. Dhandapani Desikar, Nedunuri Krishnamurthy, and my big favourites M.D.Ramanathan, and Madurai Somasundaram

I am only listing so many names to give balance to my first vocal post and I promise that in due time I will try to post any LP's by the artists mentioned here and still some more, as they surface or come in my way!

For my first posts I had selected one LP each by Kesar Bai Kerkar, D.V. Paluskar, Amir Khan, Abdul Karim Khan and Bade Ghulam Ali Khan but just now when I had a very fruitful conversation with one of my good friends at Panchamkauns editorial board, only some minutes ago, I came to mention this double LP compilation. While I read to him the track listings, I realized that tracks by most of the great artists I have mentioned above were included.

And when I remembered that almost half of the second LP of the compilation moved from the North into Tamil Nadu and Karnatic music with equally strong names it was suddenly very clear that this would have to be the next post. Not entirely vocal but in most parts a very good selection I decided to go with this one and I hope you like it!

The gatefold is rather surprising in it minimalistic information, so when you open the gatefold the two brown pages are left blank.

Fortunately, at least the artists and tracks are given on the back of the LP and with years of recording but no more.

I have seen several copies of this double LP and none of them had any accompanying leaflet. None of the photos of artists in this post are included on the LP's covers and is to be regarded as "extra decoration" only.

As there is no information whatsoever on the LP itself about the artists here is at least photos and dates and more details will follow as I start to post the individual albums later.

Hindustani