When ganjira V. Nagarajan passed away on February 4, 2004, mridangam vidwan Palghat Raghu said, “The mother of ganjira has gone.” Nagarajan’s admirer and ganjira wizard G. Harishankar too passed away within a week. “Now the father is gone” was the emotional comment from Palghat Raghu.
“My uncle Nagarajan and Harishankar were great comrades and they shared a lot on music, particularly in connection with ganjira and its styles,” says his niece Lakshmi Ramanan. Her son Anirudh Athreya has taken to playing the ganjira and is a busy artist today. The family is gearing up to celebrate his 85th birthday on July 29.
“Uncle was extremely good at tanning the leather and pasting it on the circular wooden frame. Scraping the leather without damaging it is an art. He was a master craftsman in that you can actually see through the leather. After pasting, he would tie the thread around pressing the frame against his stomach. All single-handed. Whereas, now, my husband pastes the leather and I tie the thread for Anirudh’s ganjira. Uncle was innovative in using metals for jingles instead of the quarter anna coins used traditionally. The German silver jingles sounded unique,” Lakshmi says showing some of his hand-crafted instruments.
Her brother Srikanth joins her. “My uncle started his career playing the mridangam. Thanjavur Ramadasa Rao was his first guru. Later, he joined Thanjavur Vaidyanatha Iyer. Within a short span, he had accompanied many stalwarts of yesteryear as an mridangam player. He could not continue playing the mridangam following a problem in his right hand. Totally He was devastated. But for the encouragement of Jayamma and her sons T. Viswanathan and T. Ranganathan(Vishwa), my uncle would have ended up a wreck. They gave him a ganjira and pushed him to play it.”
Lakshmi adds, “Alathur Subbaier was related to us and he took a special liking to my uncle. He had learnt the ganjira from Pudukottai Dakshinamurthy Pillai and taught Nagarajan all the sollus and kumkis. A lot of korvais too were taught by him. Subbaier insisted on organisers having Nagarajan as his ganjira player.”
Subbaier once refused to sing a contracted concert for All India Radio when they did not permit Nagarajan to play the ganjira as he was not a graded artist. By the time Nagarajan got his grade, sadly Subbaier passed away. An interesting fact that came to light during the course of the conversation was Alathur Subbaier’s ability to play the veena proficiently, thanks to his training under Karaikudi Sambasiva Iyer.
Nagarajan then took lessons in ganjira from Palghat Mani Iyer too.
Srikanth says that the bonding between his father and violin vidwan V. Thiagarajan and V. Nagarajan (both sons of violin vidwan Papa Venkatramaiah) was something rare. The love and respect they had for each other was truly amazing. Even on the day he passed away, Nagarajan was found lamenting for having asked his elder brother to run some errands and mentioning about the support of Subbaier and Vishwa, which was one of the main reasons for his successful career as a ganjira player.
