Visit by Mangalampalli Balamuralikrishna to our campus


What makes me feel much more lucky is that I almost didn't go to the distinguished lecture that was organized at our campus. Because of my lack of background in Carnatic music, I had no idea of what I was about to encounter. I had heard about Balamuralikrishna and I had heard and appreciated his music without knowing that they was his compositions or that he had sung them.

Balamuralikrishna entered the seminar hall and with great humility greeted everyone. His greatness radiated from his eyes, and his gentle smile makes you instantly respectful of him. The event began with Prof. PJN introducing Balamuralikrishna, and he almost got emotional while doing so. One of the striking points in Prof. PJN's introduction was that neither Balamuralikrishnan nor his music carry a single identity. Also, in the field where the jealousy is prevalent, he admired his fellow musicians too.

His lecture was on "How to appreciate music". He said that any music anywhere can be appreciated if one goes with a blank mind. Some of the other striking features of his talk were

1. Anyone can appreciate any form of music. All one needs is to listen to a blank mind, and with the sole intention of enjoying the music. A person with some knowledge will start dissecting the song being sung and by them time they analyze it fully, the song would have been over. If a person goes without too much baggage on him and if the singer is good, then the listener is surely going to enjoy it. He gave a humorous example of a concert he gave in Italy where no one knew what kind of music he plays. And, the people there were spell-bound and even started dancing towards the end.
   
2. The responsibility of a song/concert being appreciated lies solely with the musician. The musician should compose or sing something that would touch the audience, and he should definitely not leave the responsibility of appreciation to the audience. He likened good music to sweet. If there is sweet around, the ants would surely flock to it.
   
3. The musician should change according to the times, in order to preserve a particular form of music . For the Indian classical musicians, one way of doing that was composing poetry that made sense in the modern times. He then sang some amazingly humorous songs, which left the audience in splits.
   

I recall only these points from his speech. But what made the session special were some pieces that he sang. There was magic in his voice. Even though, the songs that he had sung in this session were in classical telugu, whose meaning I didn't understand unless he explained the meaning later, they were heart touching. For the songs, whose meaning he explained, one could feel the depth of the words. And, these words were non-philosophical. Instead, they were humorous, contemporary, some of them were full of bhakti, some were satirical. I could see purest form of joy in most of the people sitting around me. Even to me, who is a novice to classical music, this was an experience worth preserving and motivating enough to resume writing my blog !