Kalamandalam Hyderali used to hold T N Seshagopalan in high esteem, particularly praising the Carnatic icon’s skills in delivering bhrigas. The Kathakali vocalist himself possessed mastery over those brisk phrases that used to embellish his art, yet their application had subtle differences vis-a-vis that of the fellow Deccani classical musician who Hyderali admired.
TNS, as Carnatic buffs fondly refers to the musician, is two years young to Hyderali, who is no more. Both were born on September 5, respectively a year before and after their country’s Independence in 1947. That means TNS turned 70 this week.
Seshagopalan has been a towering presence in Carnatic circuits for half a century, with many scholars rating him as arguably the greatest vocalist to have graced the art in its 500 years of history. TNS was an early rise in his field when it was bustling with legends; he was only in his early 20s when the Carnatic world took special notice of him.
Hyderali, too, enjoyed his share of celebrity status as a revolutionary musician (with fair share of criticism) till his untimely death in 2006. His historicity, though, was on another count: the first non-Hindu to have made it big in the Kerala classical dance-drama that traditionally derives themes from the Puranas. True, Hyderali did occasionally recount his existential pangs as a Kathakali vocalist, but the degree of recognition he received far outweighed the streaks of insult he suffered (especially at the start of his career).
The tutors
September 5 is also Teacher’s Day in the country. Proceeding with the compare-and-contrast bid from the guru point could be interesting. TNS’s main teacher was undoubtedly eminent, but not a pivotal figure in his field as was the musician who taught Hyderali. Ramanathapuram C S Sankarasivam (1905-93) was a traditionalist, having been a court musician in the local palace before he taught in a college affiliated with Madurai University.
His younger brother and disciple C S Murugabhoopathy was a more famous figure in Carnatic, where he (1914-98) specialised in playing the mridangam. Sankarasivam had an accomplished pupil in Ramnad V Krishnan (1918-73), yet there is no doubt that the guru’s name more invoked in association with TNS. “Sankarasivam? Oh, Seshagopalan’s teacher!” is the common refrain. It’s another matter that TNS went on to make his music a baani of its own, what with his genius and eclecticism.
Hyderali’s teacher, on the other hand, was a big flame from whom several wicks caught fire in the second half of the 20th century to light up Kathakali stages eminently. Kalamandalam Neelakantan Nambisan (1919-85) can boast of a dozen renowned disciples. Among whom comes Hyderali. Like TNS, he too veered a lot away from the style of master — Nambisan, adding to contextual relevance here, was trained under a Tamil vocalist whose family had immigrated to central Kerala. Hyderali’s was a stream novel to Kathakali music, to the extent that it, too, became a school. Only that Hyderali’s Kathakali music has no exponents today, though some of the vocalists in the circuit do bring its beauty in streaks. That’s it, unlike with Seshagopalan, who has a handful of followers (including his son T N S Krishna) who are sticklers for the TNS style to their core.
Rich nurseries
Nativity often matters in Indian classical performing arts. Hindustani music getting someone as titanic as Pt Jasraj (now 88) from the predominantly pastoral belt of Hisar in today’s Haryana or Bombay-raised Jhaveri sisters from a Gujarati household gaining an impression on the Manipuri dance from a diagonally opposite part of the country are somewhat exceptions. That way both birthplaces of TNS and Hyderali have a socio-cultural history associated with the art in which they excelled.
Seshagopalan was born in Nagapattinam along the Caurvery belt, which is synonymous with Carnatic music. It’s from there he moved to Madurai, 270 km southeast, to take advanced lessons under Sankarasivam, who taught at the Sathguru Sangeeta Vidyalayam. The temple city enabled the musical bloom inside the young vocalist, so much so he is often called Madurai T N Seshagopalan even after his subsequent tryst with Madras (Chennai today) where he resides.
Hyderali’s native place in central Kerala was in a taluk that massively contributed to Kathakali. Semi-hilly Wadakanchery that headquartered Thalappilly in present-day Thrissur district is a mere 12 km south of Kalamandalam, where he took classes for eight years from 1957. Quite a few of his contemporaries during student days later shone in their career. One of them, Sankaran Embranthiri, became a colleague of his as a Kathakali music teacher in FACT, north of Kochi.
That apart, the childhood years of Hyderali and TNS would completely contrast in the ethos that was to later become their profession. Seshagopalan, a Tamil Brahmin, was born into a musical family, where his mother Thiruvenkatavalli Iyengar initiated him into saptaswaras, the basic seven notes. The temples around lured little Seshagopalan to devotional music, as the boy would miss no chance to sing at the frenzied evening bhajanas in the local kovils.
Hyderali, on the other hand, was completely blank about Kathakali when penury in family led the boy to be taken to the premier performing-arts institute of the state born a year before his admission. The boy did posses a flair for singing, as his pre-Kalamandalam records show: he topped a local-level cultural event’s music competition by crooning a film song. ‘Kalle Kaniville’ was a hit number, known for its poignancy, from the 1956 movie Rarichan Enna Pauran.
Lean and dusky Hyderali, as an early teenager from the Muslim community, invited curiosity as well as bouts of ridicule from fellow students and even some of his teachers. Almost none of them stemmed from malice. Much of it were mere pranks, as the artiste would himself analyse when he looked back in wisdom and magnanimity gained towards middle age. If anything, certain instances of religious discrimination he faced later hurt him more than those which punctuated Hyderali’s formative years.
Vocal textures
Both the musician’s voices are etched as melodious in the hearts of listeners, but that doesn’t mean much of a similarity in closer analysis. TNS has a timbre that is essentially weighty and with a rasp often bordering on grainy, while Hyderali managed the high-decibel Kathakali stage (booming with the drums, gong and cymbals) with his a light voice, thanks to the era of mikes that had set in well by when he rose through the ranks in the 1970s. If Seshagopalan’s throat traverses a whole range from baritone to the nasal, Hyderali’s too did but it wasn’t that pronounced because he was softer in his negotiations with the notes. Melody, the Kathakali musician believed, should never be a casualty.
TNS has expertise in gamakas, those microtones typical of Carnatic, which seldom came from Hyderali. The Kathakali vocalist had an inexplicable flair for Hindustani classical and film songs that his Kathakali songs sought to revel in slippery taan-like modulations typical of north Indian music. Even so, like it’s with Seshagopalan, versatility was a highlight of Hyderali within the system. If TNS is adept in alapana, kriti rendition, neraval singing, ragam-tanam-pallavi and swara prastara among others that enriches his kacheri from the varnam to the centrepiece to the tukadas to mangalam, Hyderali could anchor both versions of Kathakali plays: the medium-paced melodramatic and the stylised stories dense with extremely slow choreography. Thus, when Seshagopalan refreshes audiences with both the straitjacketed varnam as well as the free-flowing swaramalika, Hyderali was trusted for both his rendition of a romantic Nalacharitam and the much-soberer Kalakeyavadham.
Branch-out parallels
Both have been music composers. Interesting when it came to that role, it was in Carnatic that Hyderali conceived pieces. A varnam in Saramati raga he wrote and notated, for instance, won the appreciation of a classical no less than M Balamuralikrishna. In fact, Hyderali occasionally gave Carnatic concerts and, in the middle of his career, sang for Mohiniyattam, Kerala’s classical dance. In his more introverted hours, the vocalist renewed his trysts with literature and painting: he would write a short story or give final touches to a picture he had been working for a while.
Within music, it was in another way that TNS has made several parallel forays. He has been an accomplished veena player, while also gaining reputation in his handling of the harmonium and even keyboards. Besides Carnatic, Seshagopalan is known for his expertise in Harikatha, a three-century-old art that delves into narrating stories from Hindu Puranas in a format interspersed with music and sometimes dance.
Both, having widely travelled round the globe, did develop a worldview of music. And, back home, cherish(ed) a liking for mainstream film music. Seshagopalan would talk, for instance, nonstop about Ilayaraja’S acclaimed background scores. What’s more, TNS even acted in a (Tamil) movie: as the hero in Thodi Ragam (1983) opposite Nalini Ramarajan, but without success.
A story that keeps doing the rounds Kerala’s cultural circles is about musician K J Yesudas identifying Hyderali in an open-air crowd one late evening and beckoned him to the roofed stage “lest you’d catch cold”. The Kathakali vocalist definitely attended many a TNS kacheri, but if no such invitation happened it was perhaps because Seshagopalan wasn’t that familiar with Hyderali. Despite them being from the same part of the country, heavily into classical music and even sharing dates of birth.
