Dikshitar and the English connection
| ‘Vismaya’ features the composer’s songs inspired by the West |
More to Dikshitar Kanniks Kannikeswaran and his daughter Vidita at the launch
You could call it ‘colonial fusion’. Nearly 200 years ago, a collection of Celtic folk songs, English waltzes, marches, jigs, and reels were set to Sanskrit verses by the well-known composer Muthuswami Dikshitar (1775-1835). Now this fascinating but virtually-unknown part of our cultural heritage has been brought to the fore by U.S.-based Kanniks Kannikeswaran with his new CD, Vismaya — Nottusvara Sahityas of Dikshitar.
Recently released in India, the CD is the first complete recording of Dikshitar’s songs, collectively known as the Nottusvara Sahityas. Kannikeswaran spent three years researching these old compositions, putting together 39 of them for this CD.
“While growing up in Georgetown in Madras, I heard the temple bands playing these songs, and was charmed by them,” says Kannikeswaran. “I even learnt five of them when I learnt Carnatic music as a child.”
Delightful
But it wasn’t until he began teaching these songs to his own daughter and other children in his neighbourhood in the U.S. that he realised just how delightful they were.
“I found that regardless of their mother tongue, all children enjoyed these lively waltzes and jigs,” he recalls. “I realised they needed to be recorded, so I began to research them.”
What he found was that Dikshitar had written Sanskrit lyrics to 39 Western tunes that had arrived on Indian soil (‘God Save the King’ for example, became ‘Santatam Pahimam’), a handful apparently at the behest of a British collector. “It’s not clear why he wrote the rest, but when you look at his lyrics for these compositions, they’re in no way inferior to what he wrote for heavier kritis,” comments Kannikeswaran.
Fittingly, the songs have been recorded by his 12-year-old daughter Vidita in the U.S. with Celtic orchestration. “It was a great learning experience,” he says. “The Celtic musicians especially were fascinated — they were like, how did these tunes get to India?”
That, indeed, is the most interesting aspect of it all, says Kannikeswaran: “‘Kamalasana Vandita’, for example, was originally a European tune that migrated to the U.K. before travelling to India and also to the U.S., where it became part of the Apalachian music tradition. The whole thing is a study in inclusion and globalisation.”
These are themes this alumnus of IIT-Madras has long been interested in. A business intelligence consultant and the founder of The American School of Indian Art in Cincinnati, he’s worked on other cultural projects such as ‘Shanti’, a raga-based choral work performed by the community choir of 150 voices, and temple.net, a website that provides information on some 2,000 Indian temples he’s researched on.
But Vismaya is particularly close to his heart. “The question I keep asking is how did I not know about these songs all along? I lived right there in Parry’s Corner where temple bands played them all the time,” he says.
“They are a chunk of our cultural history that’s simply not thought about.”
Vismaya is available at various retail outlets. Kannikeswaran can be reached at 98404-59225 or at kanniks@yahoo.com.
DIVYA KUMAR
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