The Musical Legacy of T Balasaraswati

Vaak: You are the 9 th generation descendant of a 200-year old family of dancers and musicians.

Aniruddha: Yes. My ancestors learnt music from the disciples of various composers such as the disciples of Tygaraja, Muthusvami Dikshitar, Shyama Sastri and the Tanjore Quartet. The cynosure is Veena Dhanammal who gave a new life to this tradition by adding a lot of Padams and Javalis from many sources, including from her own repertoire and from Veena Baldas’. After Dhanammal, slightly more contemporary composers and approaches to this music have been added to the repertoire.

Vaak: This musical tradition has never been stagnant and in your family,music was also an inherent part of the dance curriculum.

Aniruddha: Certainly. I was trained in music by my mother Lakshmi Knight.My mother learnt her music from her mother (Balasaraswati).

T Balasaraswati and Aniruddha Knight at GK Vale Studio (1982) Balasaraswati institute archives

Balasaraswati Institute Archives

Vaak: Your grandmother also introduced a lot of unique musical piecesinto the dance tradition. For example, she added Ka Va Va in Varali to thefamily’s dance repertoire.

Aniruddha: That is correct. But more than a singular piece, I would say that she introduced the genre of dance music. I am not talking about music as a dance composition here, but I am talking about her approach to the music itself.

Vaak: And Jon Higgins’ wrote his PhD thesis (at the Wesleyan University)on dance music.

Aniruddha: Indeed. His thesis captures the essence of Balasaraswati’s and Jayammal’s greatness. In the Andhra system, music was more folkish. It was Veena Dhanammal who rearranged and recodified this music. Jayammal and Balasarawati then worked with the tradition of Padams and Javalis to build a dance music curriculum. They designed this music in such a way that emphasis was given only to certain phrases in the Padams. They understood how to work with music for a dance performance. This was not a one-off construction, but it was a particular way of singing. Also, we must recognize that Balasaraswati’s musical inspirations went well beyond South India. She was very much influenced by the North Indian style. I would say that she took a conservative approach to presenting music, but that conservative approach did not deny including other streams of music.

Vaak: This is very important. In one of our earlier conversations, youmentioned that Yen Palli Kondeerayya is not sung in the same way for adance recital as it would be sung in a music-only concert.

Aniruddha: Absolutely. Whether Balasaraswati was a great dancer or not is a totally different thing but one cannot deny that she created another genre of music, which dance music literally is. For example: Payyada is sung differently for a dance recital. This is what she created. This is a separate genre. The approach to this is completely unique. They not only cut these pieces and made them dance ready, but they also created new sangathis for dance.

Vaak: Has this tradition changed in the last three decades?

Aniruddha: Of course. If you look at my mother’s work, she added Ashtapadis, Krishna Karnamirtham, and a lot of Tumris to the repertoire. The musician K.V. Narayanasamy used to give songs to my grandmother and ask her to make my mother dance for these compositions.

T Balasaraswati, Walnut creek, California. (1965)

Balasaraswati Institute Archives

Vaak: How different is the music even within the family?

Aniruddha: Everyone in my family had distinct ways of musical expression. Veena Dhanam’s alapana was explorative whereas her renderings of compositions were very straight forward. The nuances were easy to miss. In Jayammal’s singing, one can sense courage. She was asthmatic, her pitch was low, but she had a lot of vairagyam. She and Balasaraswati had a great range. What made Balamsaraswati’s music different was also the way she utilised the jeevaswara to explore a raga. It’s very very unusual, perhaps she was influenced heavily by the Hindustani system. She gave a new sound to the ragas. My mother Lakshmi used dance to teach musical nuances to her students. Her hand gestures were very useful for her students to understand the gamakka movement. As for me, I learnt music from my mother. I also studied under T Viswanathan, Vegavahini Vijayaraghavanand T Muktha.

Vaak: As the grandson of T Balasaraswati, your role as a flagbearer of thistradition must be very challenging.

Aniruddha: I think my challenge has been to maintain and expand the repertoire at the same time. My focus is on reviving some interesting Padams. As an example, my mother and my grandmother did not dance for Mora topu in (raga) Sahana, but I have set a dance music for this. I think of it as my job to take all these things that my ancestors had the luxury to miss out on, but I cannot afford to do it. My other real issue in trying to revive this tradition has been to ensure the we have an active ensemble to accompany our dancers. It is challenging today to find trained musicians who want to be a part of this style. We have resorted to quick fixes. Balasaraswati used to dance for Thayumaanavar’s songs. It is difficult to dance for such pieces today because you must really understand the philosophical purport. In Balasaraswati’s case, she was very fortunate to have had a great ensemble to support her. But today if you look at my students, what ensemble source are they going to use for their dance a few years down the line?

Vaak: How about Nattuvangam?

Aniruddha: The open-close technique of Nattuvangam that contemporary dancers do today comes from the Therukoothu tradition. But we follow a different style of Nattuvangam that came from chamber concerts. Now this style of Nattuvangam is rare, I would say that they are extinct even. In our style, we use both the hands to create a high-pitched tone, instead of the open-close method. Voice modulation during Nattuvangam is also very controlled and straightforward. The intonation is more subtle. For us Nattuvangam shouldn’t sound like music. Musicality is layered, and this layering starts from Nattuvangam. This was important because music played in the background during Nattuvangam in a dance concert, and we must show the contrast.

Vaak: Balasaraswati is popular for her dance, but her music is not wellknown.There are also only few recordings of her music that we have accessto in the public domain.

Aniruddha: Balasaraswati never released any commercial records of her music. It was a conscious decision. They did not release anything because they were worried about the abuse of their music. Today, we have small recording companies and Instagram artists releasing music for a particular niche sector, but I would prefer that we released these archives in a way that everybody has equal access to it. One or two individuals have been releasing this music as if it’s their own. I don’t appreciate this at all.

From left: T Balasaraswati, MS Subbulakshmi and Lakshmi Knight, at Music Academy's Sangita Kalanidhi event (1973)

Balasaraswati Institute Archives

Vaak: Was Balasaraswati okay with the fact that her music will be gone afterher time?

Aniruddha: I don’t think she cared about all of that.

Vaak: We often wonder what inspired Balasarawati’s art. The obviousanswer is that it was very internal, and that inspiration came from her innerworld. Was she also influenced by her contemporaries?

Aniruddha: Very much so. For starters, she was influenced by ShambuMaharaj. She appreciated the music of K.V. Narayanasamy, Semmangudi

Srinivasa Iyer, M.S. Subbulakshmi, M.L. Vasanthakumari and Ramnad Krishnan. There was a great camaraderie that existed between these musicians. They used to share ideas and there was a certain exchange of something that was always happening between these musicians. She also listened to Amir Khan, Girija Devi and Gangubai Hangal. She respected Alla Rakka as a percussionist. She really doted over Birju Maharaj. She had it in her to be curious. This family’s tradition is what it is because these women appreciated anything that bore a stamp of quality. They were very open to influences. Dhanammal used to listen to Quartets and Trios of western music.

Vaak: You once mentioned to us that Balasaraswati’s pain fed her creativity. Both in her dance and in her music, there is something more than what meets the eye. Her dance repertoire was more focused on expositions of the rich internal as opposed to the geometrical external.

Aniruddha: Yes, there was a lot of emotional pressure in her dance and this really changed the magnitude and intensity of her performance. You can choose to either take these emotions and shape them for yourself or drop them and let them go. Balasaraswati’s art was fuelled by sacrifice. This idea of sacrifice – just like a deal with the devil – made her art so beautiful. Her dance was very dense, it was on your face.

Vaak: Her ensemble was also terrific.

Aniruddha: Oh yes. Kuppusamy Mudaliar accompanied her on the mridangam from her arangetram till his death; K Gnani, Jayammal and K Narasimhulu sang for her; Ramaiyya did the Natuvangam and Radhakrishnan Naidu played the clarinet. We also had K Ganesan, T Vishwanathan, T Ranganathan, and my mother Lakshmi accompanying her at different periods of time.

Vaak: Surely this tradition has a lot to offer to serious connoisseurs andstudents of music.

Aniruddha: For students of music, this tradition gives them a lot of scope to explore the emotional quality of their music. This tradition can offer a very essential kind of jeeva. We are not dismantling the music intellectually here, but we are feeling our way through these phrases. And sometimes, you are even forced to feel this music. You have the option of engaging with performance music in various ways, but dance music is not merely about the technique, or the sangathis, or the brighas. This is a lot about how can you add emotive value to a piece of music. It can revive something within someone. It’s an inner journey.

Aniruddha Knight is a Bharatanatyam dancer and the Founder& Director of Balasaraswati Institute of Performing Arts. He has won several grants and awards for his excellence in Bharatanatyam.