What Dr Balamuralikrishna Meant For Telugu Cultural Heritage

The coastal Andhra Telugu community that I grew up in was marked by a few cultural signifiers –Devulapalli’s poems, Budugu Kathalu (stories) created by Mullapudi and brought to life by the great Bapu, and in fact Bapu’s Bommalu (pictures) themselves, celebrating Rama Navami and listening to the live broadcast of Sita Rama Kalyanam from the Bhadrachalam Temple every year. No one person exemplified this cultural ethos more than Mangalampalli Balamuralikrishna, the man with the evergreen voice, composer, scholar and musician extraordinaire. Balamuralikrishna (BMK) was born Muralikrishna, a child prodigy who earned the sobriquet Bala (young) Muralikrishna as he was performing in public from the tender age of seven, and an experience that must be akin to listening to a young Mozart.

BMK was a fifth-generation descendant of Saint Tyagaraja in the Guru-Shishya parampara (tradition). His renditions of Tyagaraja kritis such as Nannu Brovamani Cheppave and Nagumomu had a special resonance for Telugus. BMK’s humble mien hid his scholarly erudition and deep love for the Telugu language.

In Carnatic music, Telugu language occupied the status of Italian in the European classical tradition up to Mozart. Telugu, with its vowel harmony, alliteration and an entire vocabulary with words that end with vowels, is ideal for composing music. Most of the compositions sung in a Carnatic concert are written in Telugu. However, this is also one area the grand classical tradition, as exemplified by the Carnatic Sabhas in Chennai, diverges from the everyday experience of many Telugus. In the Carnatic Sabha tradition, homage is paid to the classical trinity of Tyagaraja, Dikshitar and Syama Sastry. Most of the compositions sung in Sabhas are the ones that emphasize the spiritual and transcendental dimensions of Bhakti. Nadopasana (practice of music) is seen as an integral part of the Bhakti tradition. The classical works of Tyagraja are celebrated in the Sabha tradition, along with the works of Dikshitar, with his intellectual emphasis on Sanskritic poetry and Syama Sastry, whose works are characterized by their rhythmic fluency. These compositions are celebrated as much for being a part of the philosophical tradition, and brought to life in the Sabhas by the dexterity of the performer in his/ her ability to improvise a range of melodic variations or Kalpana Swarams in the raga and theme of the choice Kritis.

For Telugus, on the other hand, there is less of a strict Carnatic tradition. Anyone who listens to old Telugu movie songs is proud of the trio of composers Tyagayya, Kshetrayya and Annamayya. Note how Tyagaraja Swamigal becomes the more approachable Tyagayya in Telugu tradition. One sees a schism between the Trinity celebrated in Carnatic Sabhas, where the spiritual and intellectual dimensions are celebrated, with the composers that celebrated the more mortal dimensions.

A marvellous translation titled “When God is a Customer” by A K Ramanujan, Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman explores how humour as well as Sringara Rasa is evoked in Kshetrayya’s compositions in the genre of padam poems. Annamayya or Annamacharya’s compositions are full of the quotidian details of every-day life. Tyagaraja in several compositions such as the marvellous Bantu Rithi illustrates a conflict-laden and personal relationship with God. In this composition, we see the use of colloquial language or Vyavahaarika Bhasha and the experience of the divine as it simultaneously manifests in both the spiritual and the physical. Telugu composers such as Bhadrachala Ramadas continued this tradition of not venerating intellectual sophistication but the beauty of devotion coupled with everyday life. As the poet Hopkins would have said, “all things counter, original, spare, strange.”

It was this tradition that BMK not only kept alive, but also reinvented and reinvigorated in his own inimitable fashion. His own compositions, as well as the other composers’ pieces that he included in his repertoire of performances, embody this distinct aspect of religious experience as it was interwoven into daily rituals, and one where worldly and physical preoccupations co-exist with the spiritual dimensions. In the tradition of Telugu composers, there was no mind vs. body problem. The Telugu composers were on the side of the corporeal, or even rejected this dichotomy.

T M Krishna in his recent piece on BMK mentions the texture in his singing that core traditionalists found unacceptable. What is difficult to articulate for a core traditionalist is probably this very quality. In BMK’s rendition, the very Bhava (meaning and feeling) of the composition is fused with the emotion of the singer till the Prasa and Yati of the composition find expression in the spontaneity of the melodic improvisation into revealing the true Rasa (mood) evoked by the Raga and the Kriti. This quality was apparent in the incredible range of BMK’s compositions, which were marked by his verbal dexterity in the Telugu language, as well as his mastery in intermingling the tonal structure of music with the formal syntax of language. In the formal Sabha tradition, emotion was not supposed to be expressed in its original form, but only through its highly formal rendering.

All Vedic hyms exist at three levels - Adhi-Bhautika or corporeal, the second is Adhi-Daivika or divine, and the highest Adhyatmika, which is transcendent and spiritual. It is to BMK’s credit, and a completely overlooked dimension of his great musical legacy, that his own compositions as well as the range of compositions he sang at his concerts emphasized these three aspects. T M Krishna quotes the music critic B R C Iyengar who said about BMK –“He does not believe in the pristine principles of the past, but has supreme confidence in the practical purview of the present. He is a paradox for the puritan, a bore for the conservative and an avathara for the neo-classicist.”

BMK was a radical, but a radical firmly rooted in the tradition of Telugu composers whose works syntactically fused the sacred and the profane. This is also more broadly the Telugu cultural heritage characterized by cultural syncretism and everyday experience imbued with a religious significance, such as the idiomatic language of Vemana’s poems or the Chatu poems, as noted by Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman for their “lyrical insight into the commonplace.” Even without understanding the deeper spiritual implications, through BMK’s performances, one could intuitively perceive the emotional resonance and the bhava of the composition. BMK compositions extolled the beauty of the Telugu language whilst also experimenting with the Bhava and Rasa of the Kriti and the mellifluous elaboration of the Raga. His compositions in the colloquial Telugu language not only kept the tradition of Telugu composers alive, but reinvented and reinterpreted this tradition in his own iconoclastic style. In addition to his incredible range of microtonal variations and the brilliancy of his Thillanas, BMK’s legacy needs to be celebrated by all Telugus for reminding us of this wonderful aspect of our cultural heritage.

References:

1. Benary, B. “Composers and Tradition in Karnatic Music,” Asian Music, Vol. 3, No. 2,

Asian Music, Vol. 3, No. 2, Indian Music Issue (1972), pp. 42-51

2. Petersen, I. “The Kriti as an Integrative Cultural Form,” Journal of South Asian Literature, Vol. 19, No. 2, THE LYRIC IN INDIA (Summer,Fall 1984), pp. 165-179

3. “Remembering M. Balamuralikrishna, Who Sang and Lived on His Own Terms”, TM Krishna. The Wire. Accessed: 29 November, 2016 [Link]

4 Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman, “A Poem at the Right Moment: Remembered Verses from Premodern South India.” University of California Press