Arabhi for a plaintive appeal? The genius of Tyagaraja and the versatility of Balamuralikrishna Saint Tyagaraja’s compositions portray the profoundness of devotion (bhakti) on lord Rama, his dispassion (vairāgya) towards the materialistic world and an elevated spiritual knowledge (jñāna) of the self-supreme. Parallelly, the scholar-musician in Tyagaraja can be seen in the compositions spanning from very simple kīrtanās, that can be sung by laymen to highly complex kritis that can perhaps be handled by scholars. Tyagaraja has composed many compositions using a single rāga and when we listen such compositions made in the same rāga, his genius of expressing certain emotions that are exclusive to a particular composition become evident. Tyagaraja’s mastery in bringing such subtle variations in the same rāga to express a given emotion in his various compositions is exemplary. The composition “Nā moralanu vini ” in the rāga Arabhi is one such example. When we listen to this kriti, we can observe the genius of Tyagaraja and versatility of Balamuralikrishna (BMK) in mirroring the emotions of the Saint composer. When we just consider reading the lyrics (sāhitya) of the song “Nā moralanu vini” and note that the kriti is in the rāga Arabhi, we might wonder, how could one actually adopt a “ happy rāga” like Arabhi to such a kriti in which Saint Tyagaraja says “ Oh Rama! You are the protector of whose devotion is enhanced by the knowledge of music, but having heard my plaintive appeal, should you forget me? Are my prayers hurting you like sharp arrows..?” But when we listen to BMK singing a detailed rendition of the kriti, adopting an appropriate tempo and an optimum level of emotion to reflect the mood of the composition, the effect of rāga Arabhi and its adaptation to the kriti creates a paradigm shift for an emphatic listener. I was captivated to this rendition and have been listening for quite a while; As I continued to listen, every time some new facet of Arabhi, voicing the emotion of the kriti was becoming evident. This curiosity took me to Dr. Nukala Chinna Satyanarayana’s monumental book on the works of Tyagaraja, in which he pointed out the following and I thought of sharing it with you. 1.Arabhi rāga has been brilliantly adopted here to bring the aesthetics of the composition. 2.Here,Tyagaraja, in a tone of demand, asks Rama to bless him. That tone has an emotion of valour and by using some clusters of notes such as “ ma-ga-riii”, “ da-da-pa-pa-ma-ga- riii” and “Sa-ni-da-pa-daa” the emotion is injected in to the rāga for the lyrics. These could be observed while listening to this recording, which is from AIR Hyderabad, aired sometime in 1970s and the same has been restored and digitally remastered. Please take time to enjoy listening to it and to dwell on the import of the kriti.

• published: 26 Apr 2017
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