Subashree Thanikachalam and team bring back Tamil devotion music live at music festival

Film music (especially South Indian) plays a significant role in bhakti and devotion. The success of early movies was primarily due to their musical and bhakti/devotion content.

This was brought out live by Subashree Thanikachalam (QFR fame) and her team comprising Rishipriya, Samanvitha and Santhosh (vocal), Vigneshwar on keyboard, Rengapriya – violin, Ranjani Mahesh – veena, Venkat and his son Sri hari – on tabla/rhythm pad, Krishnakumar – extra percussion and Sivakumar assisting in audio on the fifth day of the Sri Sathguru Sangeetha Samajam 74th annual celebrations – music and arts festival.

The team commenced its program worshipping Goddess Saraswathi with few lines from Saraswathi Anthathi by Poet Kambar. They rendered many film songs of yesteryears which were mostly from Tamil cinema and in ragams like Kurinji, Sindhu bhairavi, Charukesi, Kalyani, Sudha Dhanyasi, Abheri, Kannada, Subha Pantuvarali, Anandha Bhairavi and in Ragamalika.

Majority of the songs were penned by lyricist Kannadasan. A few by Vali, Maruthakasi, Udumalai Narayana Kavi, Subramaniya Bharathiar and Poovai Senguttuvan. 

The extempore narration of the film, the song, the situation of the song in the film, how music was composed and the music directors were selected, how the lyricist wrote, how actors took pain to learn instruments etc., were detailed by Subhashree (who also hummed all the songs throughout), which was well appreciated by the audience (who were taken down memory lane of yester years) present in the hall.

Subhashree concluded the program with a Sai Bhajan and a song on Goddess Karumari.

Through her broader cinematic narratives, she made people understand how masterfully blended Carnatic elements with film scores can strengthen the bhakti movement further.

 Samajam secretary L Rajaram said that this project was a dream of Balamuralikrishna way back a decade ago and now Subhasree had fulfilled it.

Earlier in the day to coincide with the 179th Sri Thyagaraja aradhana, an utsavam was performed with Unja Viruti by Sri Prakash and Saint Thyagaraja Keertanas were rendered by vidwans and students of Sri Sathguru Sangeetha Vidyalayam.

S. Padmanabhan