No more notes to play on this violin
It was 1987 deepavali – when I remembered to have caught the glimpse of an ecstatic violin experience in doordarshan chennai. It was like violin heard never before. No slow and gentle strokes that reeked of utmost seriousness and devotion. It was a classical maestro Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan at his cheerful best on a happy day. He simply rocked and played devotional and film numbers in his ‘talking violin’. Talking violin because he could not simply play notes with the bow, use it like a guitar and make those interesting sounds that only a human voice can do in the “Aththaan en aththaan” song from “paava mannippu”. He simply changed my notion of music as just a purist’s medium – He reinforced the cheerful nature of music – uplifting and comic. Offcourse in a sabha kutchery he would mix the sombre numbers with his playful ones. In many a concert where the audience that would often discourage an experiment by a classical carnatic musician would extend all the patronising support for Kunnakudi for he experimented to enthrall and engage – not in self indulgence. Among Carnatic musicians he was the ‘rock star’ but not a rebel, for he was one of the most notable personalities who pulled together all the musicians for the pancharathna krithis recital in the annual Thyagaraja Aradhanai in Thirvayyaaru.
When it comes to aadi krithigai or thai poosam or any Lord Muruga festivity, an average thamizh hindu would recover the ‘Deivam’ film song cassette and immerse in the moving ‘Marudhamalai Maamaniye murugayya’ or the cheerful ‘Thiruchenduril kadalorathil’ a film that was scored by awesome Kunnakudi vaidyanadhan’s mass compositions that were pure carnatic at their heart!! I still get goosebumps listening to ‘Marudhamalai Maamaniye’ murugayya sung by the late Madurai somu – Kunnakudi insisted on filming the song on the legend himself and having it in the picture – The film was a silver jubilee hit and its music has withstood the test of time for more than 3 decades.
The violin of Kunnakudi that worked wonders and got an ignorant kid like me interested in Classical carnatic music has gone silent from yesterday and I have to live with the notion of december kutchery season without another entertaining and theatrical performance from the violin virtuoso of the masses of Thamizh nadu. A sad sad day for me personally and for all the carnatic – film music lovers of Thamizh Nadu in particular and South India in general.
Tags: Kunnakudi Vaidyanadhan, Thamizh film music
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
V.P.Jaiganesh: I remember Sivakumar singing Manadhil Urudhi Vendum in Sindhu Bhairavi when a layman tells him,” you sung really well”. Kunnakudi had the same effect on me. I being a lay man who did not understand carnatic music never switched the channel when Kunnakudi was playing. He was flamboyant and skillful. Sad day, indeed.
August 15th 2006, J.P.Nagar, Bangalore
http://madness-of-madras.blogspot.com/2006/08/fiddler-par-excellence.html
May his soul rest in peace.
I had listened to his cassettes and CDs before I did actually heard him live in a concert.
Even in the concert, he played few Thyagaraja keerthanas, Purandhara Dasa compositions and all of a sudden he smiled and said now I will play some English songs! He played Mary had a Little Lamb! :D
Last year I was one of the lucky people who saw him playing his eloquent tunes on his wizardry voilin early morning of Dushera on Sun TV. Really enthralling!! His pace, focus, diversity …all combined into tunes brought us close to Godliness.
My condolences to his fans. May his sould rest in peace.
Will miss you sure Sir!!
May his sould rest in Peace…VPJ very touching article…
Do we have any videos of him in concerts or on TV?
DD had released a set of DVDs last year on concerts in DD by maestros like MS, Semmangudi and MLV. that discette if I remember also included Kunnakudi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI2uUjC5Xao