NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/rec/music/indian/classica/2247

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-26 | 1.8 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!caen!kuhub.cc.ukans.edu!wsuhub.uc.twsu.edu!sriram
Newsgroups: rec.music.indian.classical
Subject: chintamani, kalgada and manji
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
From: [e-mail]
Date: 26 Dec 92 13:37:23 CST
Organization: Wichita State University, Wichita, Ks
Lines: 26

I did some poking around about Chintamani, Kalgada and Manji after
reading a posting that these were creations of Shyama Sastry. The
search revealed that Devi Brova appears to be the only song in
Chintamani - but the ragam itself has several definitions depending
on who you want to believe. However, Kalgada and Manji are not
in the same class. There are at least two other songs in Kalgada,
one by Thyagaraja (samayamu yemarake) and one by Vedanayagam Pillai
(seelam nee taa devanaathaa). Manji is even more visible with
compositions by Dikshithar (2), Swati Thirunal, Vedanayagam Pillai,
Gopalkrishna Bharathi (varugalaamo) and Kavi Kunjara Bharathi. For
those who are interested in these kinds of details, let me suggest
a wonderful book titled Index of songs in Carnatic Music. It is
compiled by Gowri Kuppuswamy and her son Hariharan. It has a list
of over 10,000 songs, each song described by a five line entry. Each
entry consists of the first few words of the song in english and
devanagari, followed by ragam, taalam, composer, language and a book
(with page number) where the entire sahityam can be found. What makes
this book even more handy is that it also contains further listings
where the index entries are re-arranged by composer, ragam, talam and
language. Of course, as is bound to happen in any venture of this
magnitude, there are a few gaps and a few errors. For example, I found
that not all 72 of Kotisvara Iyer's melakarta compositions are included.
The book was published about 10 years ago and I paid Rs. 500 for it.

Sriram.