Discovering MDR
One usual compliment a singer gets after they sing something, is, “You have a sweet voice”. That means, the listener observes the pleasantness in the voice than the rendition. A corollary to it would be, a musician singing in a tough and/or base voice would be less pleasant to hear. At least I was looking at music with this perspective for sometime. Especially with respect to one particular yesteryear musician called MDR.
MDR
MD Ramanathan was a Carnatic musician and composer who lived in the 1900s, born in Palakkad, moved to Madras, studied and worked at Kalakshetra, student of Tiger Varadhachari.
He is one of the posthumously popular icons of today. Even other celebrities talk greatly about this genius. Check out this poem written about MDR by Prince Rama Verma of Travancore in his website.
I have not had the fortune of seeing him perform or knowing about him when he was alive, so if you are here for an anecdote or a reminiscing on MDR, this post is not about that. You can get back to google search.
From hate to love
Like I said, I used to hate listening to his recordings. Even when my uncle, Diwakara Tanujaha used to play MDR songs when I was around, I used to crink my face and run away from there. One day he said, “Vid, you will be able to fully appreciate Carnatic music only on the day you can appreciate MDR”. Though he never forced me to listen, that line kept haunting me and seemed to have stayed active at some corner of my mind all the time. That very line made me curious to go and explore a couple of recordings. I searched on YouTube for MD Ramanathan and listened to whatever I got. And I have to admit, I got hooked.
Listen to…
Here is a link of one of the most beautiful thillanas in the ragam Kapi composed by MDR himself. Irony is I had learnt this composition in my school days, completely unaware of its composer and to a completely different effect, and hence I didn’t connect the two immediately. Now I know better. Listen to the master himself sing it effortlessly. If you can notice in the last swaram, he would have interspersed a string of chathusram – 4 swarams – into a thalam that goes in threes (thisram).
An Enigma
He is an enigma. I read that he sings songs extremely slowly but I have listened to quite a few fast paced ones. And his voice is very misleading – a booming unintelligible sound that I had heard once, now seems like a voice that is one with the tambura and deep.
Unconventional Singing
In the recordings I have listened to (and I have only listened to him via recordings), I have not known one place where there was an unwanted kaarva or sangathi. Many a times while singing, we commit this mistake of adding ornamentation to music at the wrong places, just to show we can. That is probably what makes Carnatic music boring to the Muggles. MDR taught me not to.
This is also a man who is not afraid of his pauses. There are so many MDR recordings I have listened to online where occasionally, there will be an entire thalam left in silence, or there will be long pauses embellishing the diction thereby conveying the right meaning of the lyrics. To a commoner, pauses while singing could be scary, as it could convey that an amateur is gathering her thoughts, or as it could lose the already lax attention span of the listener. Not to MDR.
The above is a drawing of MDR with his guru Tiger Varadhachari.
Varadadasa
MDR has composed krithis under the name (mudhra) Varadadasa as a tribute to his teacher Tiger Varadhachari. Today, a group of MDR aficionados have a group on Facebook called Varadadasa (fitting name as a tribute to the tributer). These guys help me in my MDR discovery further. Thanks to them! Today, if I have to understand a ragam better MDR(’s online presence) is the first person I go to.
