When Yuko Matoba played the Veena at the Perumchellur Sangeetha Sabha in Kerala on Republic Day this year, the audience was left spellbound. She played Mahā Ganapatim, a composition by Carnatic composer Muthuswami Dikshitar.
Yuko is a vainika and musicologist and has written a research paper Flexibility in Karnatic Music: A Comparative Analysis of Mahā Ganapatim, in a series titled Music and Society in South Asia: Perspectives from Japan. In her paper she explores how variability, change and flexibility play out in Indian music, and she tries to show how they interact concretely within the music.
Yuko Matoba playing Mahā Ganapatim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-mgBqYibho
For the study she compared and analysed the rendering of Mahā Ganapatim by three vocalists and seven instrumentalists in Chennai. A veena player, Yuko has is naturally attracted to Dikshitar’s krithis. “Muttusvāmi Dīksitar is said to have composed 27 songs on the Lord Ganeśa, of which 16 compositions including Mahā Ganapatim are grouped together as Sodaśa (sixteen) Ganapati. It is one of his most representative compositions, very frequently performed and well known in South India,” writes Yuko.
The song is in ragam Nata which appeals to Yuko as a musicologist. “Nāta is considered to be one of the oldest rāgas. Gambhīranāta is assumed to be an older form of the present Nāta. Tamil Hymns of Tevāram, Todudaya Śeviyan and Tiruppugazh Kaitāla Niraikani are sung in Gambhīranāta. Mallāri, a special composition for nāgasvaram (oboe), has also been played in Gambhīranāta in the templesince ancient times.”
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