A child’s angelic smile brings melody into the most dissonant of hearts. And this child? He brought heavenly melody with him at birth, and as he charmed millions across the world with his magical handling of the tiny mandolin, U. Shrinivas never lost that smile.
I remember, back in 1981, sitting way at the back of a packed Chennai auditorium, in the company of other breathless college girls and boys, watching a concert by a tiny little boy not much bigger than the instrument in his hand. He played like a pro and interacted with his accompanists like a man at least three times his age. And we were sure that what we saw performing on that stage was proof of reincarnation. How else could a baby have known ragas before he knew how to walk and talk properly?
Carnatic music is imbued with devotion, and listening to Shrinivas, looking at his adorable face that day, our sense of devotion increased. But if stories of the prodigious music knowledge he was born with circulated wildly, along with conjectures about his past life, among students and fans of the classical arts in the 1980s, they were soon eclipsed by the sheer power of his present. Who needed to delve into past lives when here and now, and growing all the time, was this terrific child prodigy whose music mesmerised the connoisseur and the lay listener without discrimination?
After a few years his size matched the maturity of his music. But what never grew was his ego. Celebrities are notorious for expressing in private the opposite of what they say for the benefit of public consumption. But on the topic of Shrinivas there could be no difference. On his personality as on his music, there was unanimity. The simplicity of his character provided just the foil for the grandeur of his music.
Veteran vocalist O.S. Thiagarajan hints at just how complex was the nature of Shrinivas’ music which had the kind of technical excellence that comes from rigorous practice yet was soothing to the ears. “He adapted a Western instrument to Carnatic music and used it to the best possible advantage,” he says. “The way he played vivadi ragas (containing vivadi or dissonant notes requiring careful handling) like Varali and Mukhari, which are difficult even ordinarily for Carnatic musicians to expound, was just remarkable. And he had outstanding control over rhythm. He would create tala patterns of such brilliance, yet the music was so seamless. There was no overt effort at creating something complicated.” All this, says OST, he did without ever once wavering from the lakshana or essence of the raga.
Shrinivas played classical concerts and jugalbandis, experimental formats and bhajans. Through it all he maintained the same unassuming, gentle persona and an unwavering excellence. “There was no such thing as failure with him,” says G.S. Srikrishnan, senior Carnatic flautist and retired station director of All India Radio.
“He was a perfect gentleman. And about his music, there simply cannot be two opinions. He was an avatar. His touch on just a single note was enough to lift us to Brahmananda .”
