scorecardresearch
Friday, Mar 29, 2024
Advertisement
Premium

The natural performer

‘Mandolin’ Shrinivas’s mentor in his early days in Chennai remembers the genius.

By: S.R. Vasu Rao

I still remember that night (in 1976) when U. Shrinivas, along with his father, arrived from his village in West Godavari district in Andhra Pradesh seeking to become a disciple of my father, S. Rajeswara Rao, who was a musician and composer. Observing the talent of his young son, Sathyanarayana had brought him to a maestro.

My father saw the talent in Shrinivas and told me about this seven-year-old child prodigy. My task was to introduce him to musicians in the cinema industry. I met Shrinivas the next morning at my studio in Chennai. He was hardly seven or eight years old, but very talented. His father was a clarinet artist.

Advertisement

My father saw himself in the talented young boy and believed Shrinivas would be a true disciple. He reminisced about how he was taken to K.L. Saigal in his childhood because he was talented and how Shrinivas had been similarly brought to him. Shrinivas and his family had come all the way from a small Andhra village solely for his music career, and they set themselves up in a small house in Kodambakkam.

At our first meeting, I asked him to play the Shankarabharanam raga. I remember being bemused at his performance, as this child knew all the kritis in Shankarabharanam. In the initial days, I recall being overwhelmed by his performance at my studio and I was hard pressed to figure out my role in moulding him. The moment I played a line, this eight-year-old boy would have begun the next on his mandolin.

Festive offer

One day, I took him to meet music director Ilayaraja. The maestro was reluctant to meet him as he was tied up with recordings. I requested Ilayaraja to spare two minutes and made Shrinivas play before him. The great musician was stunned and invited him home that evening to perform at a Ganapati puja.

In another instance, Shrinivas was taken to M.S. Viswanathan, the most popular music composer at the time. Delighted and surprised, Viswanathan took Shrinivas to actor Sivaji Ganesan’s house to perform at a function there. Performing came naturally to the child prodigy, as he was popular with music bands in Andhra and a preferred artist at weddings and functions.

Advertisement

He was also an all-time favourite of the late M.G. Ramachandran, former chief minister of Tamil Nadu. Their first meeting was at the wedding of my wife’s sister, where MGR was the chief guest. The moment MGR entered the auditorium, somebody asked Shrinivas to stop playing the mandolin so they could play songs about MGR. But MGR came on stage and asked him to continue. He sat next to Shrinivas and made him sing at least three songs. Before he left, he ensured that Shrinivas would be playing at all his public functions.

Traditional sabhas and Carnatic music itself have always been a limited world for instrument artists. I remember that several sabhas
in Chennai had denied Shrinivas an opportunity to perform and many ridiculed his instrument, the mandolin, which was also known as the mini-guitar. He successfully adapted the mandolin, an electric instrument belonging to Western music, to Carnatic music.

His contribution in popularising the mandolin on the Carnatic stage, which is otherwise dominated by lyrics rather than instruments, is significant. The only Western instrument to be accepted in the Carnatic tradition until then was the violin.

The writer is a guitarist and music director.

As told to Arun Janardhanan

First uploaded on: 23-09-2014 at 00:58 IST
Latest Comment
Post Comment
Read Comments
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
close