Tucked away from the din and bustle of the crowded kutcheri zone, is the auditorium of Tamil Virtual Academy in Kotturpuram, Chennai. It was the venue of the two-day festival hosted by Sannidi Academy of Music and Arts. A lecture-demonstration of the 73-year old mridanga vidwan, Dr. Yella Venkateswara Rao, was part of the itinerary.
The mridangam maestro from Andhra Pradesh lauded the young mridangam artists and advised the Sannidi Academy to honour the talented ones in the name of his guru’s guru, the legendary Palakkad Mani Iyer. “ I learnt the art of playing mridangam from my guru Yella Somanna, disciple of Palakkad Mani Iyer. There were only two systems of mridangam playing then and the other notable vidwan in those days was Palani Subramania Pillai,” said Venkateswara Rao.
“I started the school for teaching mridangam in the Department of Music when I was the Dean of the School of Fine Arts in the Sriramulu Telugu University, Hyderabad. I have trained nearly 2,000 students,” he informed.
“There have been sessions on tani avartanam (solo playing) by ghatam and ganjira vidwans at various sabhas. That made me wonder why not have a tani avartanam session for mridangam,” said the aritst. Incidentally, Yella Venkateswara Rao’s name finds a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for playing mridangam non-stop for 36-hours. After the introductory session, Yella Venkateswara Rao presented his lec-dem on the mridangam. He played Adi talam (tisra gati) in varied nadais such as Chatusra Nadai, Kanda Nadai, Kandam Mel kaala nadai, Misra nadai and Sankeerna Nadai, with the volume deliberately set at a high decibel level.
As a result the entire auditorium reverberated with the naadam. Also at times, it created a metallic sound akin to thunder storm effect. His fingers wove magic, especially when there was speed at certain passages, but the clarity of mridanga sollu-kattus was not lost in the demonstration. It was a display of vidwat combined with imagination.
