‘If you can speak, you should sing,’ says T.V. Gopalakrishnan

The veteran musician feels music is for everyone and for every occasion

Gopalakrishnan was barely eight when legendary Carnatic vocalist Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavathar asked him to accompany him on the mridangam at a concert in Thripunithura in central Kerala in 1940. His father, hailing from a family that had been palace musicians for two centuries, was obviously reluctant, thinking that Gopalakrishnan was too inexperienced to play with a musician of Chembai’s calibre. But Chembai insisted. Although there was another mridangist on stage, at the pallavi, Chembai asked Gopalakrishnan to take over. And the boy fearlessly played a four-kalai pallavi without a stutter. Chembai was impressed and asked Gopalakrishnan’s father to send him to Chennai to pursue a career in music, but his father wanted him to finish his studies first. The boy stayed back but played for the veteran musician whenever he came to town. Under Chembai’s wings, he blossomed not only on the mridangam, but also in vocal music. By the time he was 14, he was performing vocal concerts too. And it was a few more years before he joined Chembai in Chennai. What followed was a remarkable career and the emergence of an institution in his own right. Dr. Tripunithura Viswanathan Gopalakrishnan, fondly called TVG, has traversed different genres and forms, and, perhaps most importantly, is an inclusive and secular teacher who has created a legacy that’s held aloft by top-class musicians ranging from Ilaiyaraja and A.R. Rahman to Ghatam V. Suresh and violinist S. Varadarajan.