Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Selvam, A Christian, Gets Prize Named After Father
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Chennai: The general perception that Carnatic music remains a preserve of Brahmins was, to an extent, dispelled on Wednesday when F Selvam, a dalit Christian and maker of mridangams, was conferred with the Fernandes Award For Excellence.
Incidentally, Selvam got the award named after his father Fernandes, who made mridangamsfor many a maestroof yesteryear,including PalghatMani Iyer.
The award was instituted by Parivadini, a virtual sabha formed in October. “We wanted to get into the root of Carnatic music andbasedon thesuggestion of Balaji, a mridangam player,wedecidedtohonour Selvam for his work and that of his father,” said aerospaceengineer T N Ramachandran, one of the twofoundersof Parivadini.
Usually, awards are given to artists,butthis appearstobethe firsttime an awardhasbeen given to an instrument maker. “An awardto peoplelike Selvam will really make them proud and enthuse them,” said musicologist B M Sundaram, who presented thecash awardof 10,000.
Selvam, who lost his right hand in a bus accident in 1995, says he learnt the art in the house of mridangam great PalghatManiIyer in Thanjavur. “I learnt to tune the instrument based on the small paper bits left on more than 60 mridangams in Mani sir’s house. The bits had details of the sruthi and other technicalities. After my father’s death, I started tuning the instruments for Mani sir and others,” he told TOI. Overjoyed on receiving the award on Christmas, he thanked ‘Velankanni Matha’ for hissuccess.
‘Parlandu’, as Fernandes was called by people like Palghat Mani Iyer and Palani Subramaniam Pillai, was considered one of the reasons for their success. He was known to tune the mridangam according to the concert of the day. “We would only need to tell the name of the vocalist or instrumentalist who was going to perform and the mridangam would be set exactly as needed by Parlandu,” said mridangam maestro T K Murthy, who presented a citation to Selvam and thanked the family for having made him what he was.
Palghat Mani Iyer’s son M Rajaraman said his father had so much faith in ‘Parlandu’ that on one occasion he gave him a sovereign for tuning the instrument to perfection. “They used to fight often but rejoin almost immediately,” hesaid.
Virtual sabha a hit among music fans Chennai: Parivadhini, a ‘virtual sabha,’ does not have a hall or big parapernalia but uploads concerts on YouTube and organises concerts. It was formed by Bangalore-based aerospace engineer T N Ramachandran and his friend S Venkataraghavan in October. “Both of us are music lovers and don’t have a music background. We wanted to encourage many unknown artists. The idea is to upload live the concerts of the likes of Injikudi Subramanian (nadaswaram) during the season for thousands to watch,” said Ramachandran.
Named after an old veena mentioned in the scriptures, the portal has become a hit with music lovers across the world. “So far we have around 2.5 lakh views of the concerts and many viewers are from India, the US, Dubai and Australia. We are yet to get into the economics of managing the virtual sabha but in due course we will do it,” said Venkataraghavan. TNN
