Sree Ramaseva Mandali’s 86th anniversary celebrations usher melody to Bengaluru

Sree Ramaseva Mandali’s 86th year music celebrations will see vocal and instrumental presentations, with Grammy winner Ricky Kej giving one of the concluding performances of the season

There is a sense of supreme satisfaction for the Chamarajpete Sree Ramaseva Mandali Ramanavami Celebrations Trust as the centenary tribute for their founder, SV Narayana Swamy Rao, will see them honouring 100 musicians from Karnataka during their 32-day music festival from April 9 to May 10. There will be 64 concerts in the evening at the specially erected 40, 000 square foot pandal at the Fort High School grounds, with spiritual discourses in the morning, including Satyatma Tirtharu (April 29 to May 3).

“The pandal premises is home to me and my son Abhijith till mid-May,” says SN Varadaraj, a vocalist and mechanical engineer whose passion for music helped him continue the Mandali’s Ramothsava after the demise of his father in 2000. “As we are celebrating 50 years of renaming Mysore State as Karnataka, we thought the spirit of Karnataka Sambrama has to reverberate on our platform too. So, all the musicians participating this year have been asked to take up Dasa Sahitya as their mainstay in honour of Kannada.”

Though the Mandali’s commitment is towards encouraging local talent, there is always an equal measure of musicians from other states, eagerly looking forward to being part of secular Ramothsava celebrations. Guests have included nadaswara maestro TN Rajarathinam Pillai, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Ali Akbar Khan, Kadri Gopalnath, KJ Yesudas, MS and MLV, L Subramaniam, M Balamurali Krishna and Begum Parveen Sultana. “This legacy continues,” says Vardaraj.

The endeavour to start such an enterprising music mission had its modest beginnings when SVN as a teenager collected ₹20 for a Holi Kamana Habba in 1939. When he found an excess of ₹10 in his kitty, he decided the collective effort could help serve the cause of fine arts during Ramanavami. Thus, the Mandali was born the same year, with a few days of music on the 3rd Main Road footpath in Chamarajpet.

Within the first 10 years, the Mandali had seen young talents such as violinist T Chowdiah, the Alathur Brothers, Madurai Mani Iyer, TR Mahalingam and Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavathar participate, before the venue for concerts moved to the Bangalore City Institute Compound in the early 1950s, with the Mysore Maharaja Jayachamaraja Wadiyar taking part in several inaugural ceremonies with statesman C Rajagopalachari. The Fort High School Grounds of the Education Department hosted the music programme from 1967.

Abhijith Varadaraj says the Mandali will bring out a book Tanu Ninnadu, on SVN as a tribute to the violinist-organiser’s warm personality, fiery passion towards secularism and determination to bring oneness through music.

“The book will include details of how over the last 25 years, Vardaraj worked towards convincing youth to attend concerts in large numbers. My grandfather SVN too, would conduct concerts to welcome new audiences, making way for artistes such as Vani Jayaram who would base their shows with an underlying allegiance to classical music.”