What is the connection between the last maharaja of Mysore and music? Premium

Author Deepti Navaratna discusses the life of Maharaja Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar whose passion for music catapulted the town into a cultural capital

The life story of the last Maharaja of Mysore was riddled with commendable achievements and unfortunate tragedies. Maharaja Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar (JCW) is a king whose ‘kingliness’ was not only about the crown, as author Deepti Navaratna puts it.

Her 2022 biography of the maharaja is aptly titled The Maverick Maharaja and elaborates on JCW for the man that he was, aided by ruminations on his hold over genre-spanning music right from his childhood years. His Carnatic compositions were lauded for their western-influenced structure.

At a recent launch event by Madras Book Club at CP Arts Centre in Alwarpet, Deepti, while in conversation with historian V Sriram, set the context for the book through music. While shuttling between brief musical interludes featuring the maharaja’s popular compositions, the author, who is also a musician, neuroscientist and currently , narrated why his is a story that needs to be told. 

“The maverick maharaja is returning to Chennai after 57 years,” she chuckles, adding, “He left Chennai as the Governor of Madras in 1966.” Deepti believes that a piece of music is a million pages worth of history, sometimes. “It was the maharaja’s music that threw me into his exemplary life.” When Deepti was researching East-West encounters in music, she found herself looking at the police bands that performed in front of the Mysore Palace. 

“Their very anachronistic presence, with xylophones, clarinets and so on, in the Mysore Palace always intrigued me,” she says. Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar’s music was born at the fertile intersection of how a Western syntax can give birth to a raga, she adds. “He has explored new ways to engineer a kriti, new ways to think about a scale.”

By the time JCW was born, Mysore had already produced musicians like Phelomena Thumboochetty who had performed in front of the King of England.” The fact that the piano was a commonplace instrument in the palace court, and Mysore hosted a celebration of Beethovan all point to the city’s early tryst with Western music.

Interestingly the maharaja never formally learned Carnatic music until he was crowned. Later, he sought tutelage under Mysore Vasudevachar. “Until then, he was in the world of Wagner, Beethoven, Bach and so on. It was such a huge deal back then, for a prince from Mysore to have access to that kind of music,” Deepti says. “His antahpura (inner quarters) was filled with books on Western art music, music sheets and scores…”