Navarathri Mandapam 🔹 Dr. M Balamuralikrishna 🔸 M A Sundareswaran 🔸 Guruvayur Dorai 🔹30th Sept 1998

✴️For this beautiful and auspicious Navarāthri 2022, we present you a special concert of Dr. M Balamuralikrishna (BMK) held at the celebrated Navarāthri Mandapam (NM), Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala sometime in 1990s.

💐We are very grateful to Prince Rama Varma (PRV) for his kind consent and also for sharing his reminiscences about this rare event, i.e., the only time BMK has ever performed at the mandapam.
The full concert presented here is restored from both the radio broadcast and from the recordings made by PRV.

🔹Music festival held at NM, as recalled by PRV, is one of the oldest festival, and probably dating back to a century in which most of the greatest musicians have performed. Some notable exceptions have been there of which one of the biggest name was BMK. Recognising this gap, PRV had championed to invite BMK to perform at NM and thus filled the void that existed in the history of NM music festival.

🔸When BMK agreed to perform in the festival, PRV briefed him about the routines that were followed in NM every year.

🔹For all the nine days of the festival in which the compositions of Maharaja Swati Tirunal are presented, the main piece that need to be rendered for each day is fixed. The concert would begin at 6.00 p.m. and end at 8.30 p.m. with a radio relay between 7.00 p.m. to 8.30 p.m. The dress code for men is limited to their lower garment (dhoti) and the entire place does not have electrical lights but barely illuminated by oil lamps.

🔸On listening to PRV, BMK got the lyrics of all the songs planned for the evet to be written in a silver coloured pen on the tablets of black card board so that he could read them in dim light.

🔹PRV also briefed BMK that he could sing some of MST’s compositions tuned by him for the first one hour and then the designated composition for the day “ Pāhi parvatanandini” in the conventional format only. That being the ninth day, the Mangalam “Bhujagaśāyinō” was also need to be sung, signaling the end of the festival. BMK agreed to comply with these, making an exception to render the compositions in the music that was probably not credited to the original composer.

🔸BMK arrived a day before of his concert and PRV took him for a tour of the venue and its setting. On that evening Sri. K V Narayanaswamy performed. BMK who was quite cool, had said that it would be a new experience to look forward to. Later BMK went with PRV to buy a special dhoti for the occasion.

🔹On the following evening, as the evening approached, the entire place was already full of audience much before the start of BMK’s concert. The people kept coming and the entire road outside the NM, on the bank of Padma Tirtha pond were also filled with music enthusiasts in anticipation of Muraligānam that was about to bloom like the lotuses in the nearby pond.

🔸When BMK, clad in his new dhoti with golden jhari border, entered, the entire gathering was extraordinarily impacted by his giant personality, though his physical stature was a contrast, short. The entire gathering stood up reverentially in silence. In NM it is not a customary to applause because the presentation of music is purely a devotional offering. Beholding such an awe inspiring moment, BMK had silently acknowledged the gesture and sat down to begin his offering.

🔹Sri M.A.Sundaresan (violin), backed by three generations of accompanying experience with BMK and the veteran Sri Guruvayur Dorai (mridangam) who played to Muraligānam for hundreds of concert were the accompanying artistes for that evening. They both accompanied BMK handsomely before the massive crowd.

🔸Whoever has attended the concert in live would not forget the rare experience of joy in their life time on that beautiful evening, reminisced PRV.

🔹PRV also mentioned an interesting trivia about this concert as to how the reports appear in newspapers, and media sometimes can give an inaccurate or incomplete account of what people, who were present there, have actually experienced.

🔸A local newspaper had said “Dr. M Balamuralikrishna sang at Navaratri Mandapam and there was no Neraval.” PRV called the music critic to enquire and found that the writer had not even attended the concert but wrote the review on a hearsay.

🔹BMK was happy in general and was also delighted with his experience of Navaratri Mandapam.
PRV said “the concert recording (of those days in such an ambience) would not do even 10% justice for the live experience we had experienced, but at least we get a taste of what BMK presented and offered at the divine altar.”

00:00 - Welcome to the Album
00:00:06 1️⃣ Paripālaya sārasiruhāsana - Sāraṅga
00:09:47 2️⃣ Sarasīruhanābha mudāraṁ - Dēśākṣi
00:24:45 3️⃣ Kamalanayana jagadīśvara – Vāgadīśvari
00:33:47 4️⃣ Pāhi parvatanandini – Ārabhi
01:35:19 5️⃣ Jaya jaya dēvi – Vallabhi
01:42:42 6️⃣ Āj āye śyām mōhan - Miśrapahaḍi
01:48:20 7️⃣ Jamunā kinārē – Miśrapīlu
01:56:59 8️⃣ Bhujagaśāyinō – Yadukulakāmbhōji

💐My sincere thanks to Sri T K Ramkumar for his support.

Видео Navarathri Mandapam 🔹 Dr. M Balamuralikrishna 🔸 M A Sundareswaran 🔸 Guruvayur Dorai 🔹30th Sept 1998 канала Music for Posterity : Sreenivasa Murthy