Sundaram Balachander

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Sundaram Balachander (18 January 1927–15 April 1990) was a prominent Indian veena player with a unique style, remarkable as a classical musician in that he was self-taught. He is also known for his work in cinema, his writing and his polemics. Balachander was a true larger-than-life personality, yet always managed to combine his eccentricity with a musicianship that commanded respect from all quarters.

1 Life and music
2 Cinema
3 Feud with Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer
4 Notes
5 External links

[edit] Life and music

Balachander was born to V. Sundaram Iyer and his wife Parvati in Madras. The family were Iyer Brahmins hailing from the area of Tanjore, an important centre of the arts in South India. The elder brother, S. Rajam, is a classical vocalist with a concert career, and in Balachander's first performances he accompanied him on the kanjira, a sort of bass tambourine. Growing up, he taught himself to play a variety of instruments, most notably the sitar, on which, although it is a North Indian instrument, he gave concerts as a teenager playing Carnatic classical music. His platform for experimenting was All India Radio, where he had found employment.

However, the veena soon came to exclude all other instruments, and he taught himself to play it to the point of concert artistry within two or three years of first picking it up. In the world of Indian classical music, where long discipleships with exacting gurus are the norm, Balachander's development was unprecedented.

It also put him completely outside the established styles of veena playing (Kerala, Mysore, Andhra and Tanjore with its Karaikudi sub-style). He evolved what has been described as an exaggerated Tanjore style.^[1] It relied heavily on amplification and close-miking and was extreme both in dynamics and aggression and in the scope and level of detail of its meends, where Balachander would deflect the strings over the frets sometimes more than an octave, and play intricate phrases on the decay of a single stroke. The precision this requires to stay in tune probably makes his style the most technically difficult on the instrument. He also took delight in infusing his performances with unconventional phrasings and sound production techniques.

Although he had no guru to teach him the finer points of Carnatic compositions, and in spite of a veena sounding radically different from all others, Balachander played at a level where he was accepted across the board as one of the true greats. He travelled to play and record in Europe, America and East Asia, and received the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian decoration for service to the nation, as well as the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award and an honorary doctorate of literature from the World Academy of Arts & Culture. A milestone among his many recordings was a 12-LP set encompassing all the 72 melakartas of the Carnatic music system.

Balachander taught some students, among them Gayathri Narayanan and S.V. Madhavan, but not in his own extreme style, which may have died with him. His son, Raman, works on collecting his father's recorded legacy.

[edit] Cinema

In addition to composing film music, from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s Balachander directed a number of films, and also stood in front of the camera. However, he liked to exaggerate the non-musical side of his cinematic career: according to an S Swaminathan, who had read a book Balachander was working on when he passed away and reported to Usenet^[2], he went so far as to call himself "the Alfred Hitchcock of South India". Some of his movies are: Andha Naal - That Day - starring Sivaji Ganesan and Pandhari Bai - probably the first genuine film-noir movie in Tamil. Ivana Avan

[edit] Feud with Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer

In Balachander's last years, he embarked on an intense feud with vocalist legend Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, perhaps the most respected figure in all of Carnatic music – and his polemics were as extreme as his veena playing. Semmangudi had written a book on Maharaja Swathi Thirunal of Travancore (1813–1846), who was also a famous composer. Balachander claimed that Semmangudi was trying to ascribe his own compositions to a king to make them go down in history, but to argue this, he not only suggested the maharaja did not compose a note – he launched a self-described "crusade" to "prove" the king had never existed at all, even though Swathi Thirunal is a well-known historical figure, and a recent one at that. Balachander loved to stress how this was a much greater outrage than the then-current Bofors corruption scandal in India. A sample, from a letter to The Indian Express, March 26 1990:

THIS IS MY FINAL-MISSILE REGARDING THE SO-CALLED "SWATI TIRUNAL" ... WHO IS JUST A CONCOCTED-FABRICATED-&-MANUFACTURED "FACTORY-PRODUCT". [...]

THE "BOFORS" SCANDAL WHICH INVOLVED MONETARY-SWINDLE, IS ITSELF A BIG-BLOT ON OUR NATIONAL-POLITICS ... AND ... AN ETERNAL SHAMEFUL DISGRACE TO OUR COUNTRY. BUT ... IT DOES NOT AFFECT "HISTORY" IRREVOCABLY OR TARNISH "POSTERITY" IRREVERSIBLY. WHEREAS ... THE NON-PERSON "SWATI TIRUNAL-HOAX", THE ONE WHO-NEVER-EXISTED, THE FICTITIOUS-FIGURE FRAUDULENTLY FOISTED ON THE MUSIC-WORLD, NOT ONLY DISTORTS "HISTORY" BUT ALSO DEFRAUDS "POSTERITY". [...]

WHEN WE ARE SO MUCH CONCERNED ABOUT A "TEMPORARY" FRAUD & CHEAT LIKE THE "BOFORS", AND THUS ARE TAKING NATIONAL REMEDIAL MEASURES TO SET IT RIGHT, CAN WE EVER ALLOW A "PERMANENT" FRAUD & CHEAT LIKE "SWATI" TO EXIST AND SURVIVE???^[3]

Balachander's ability to go on like this while retaining respect as a classical musician speaks as much to his accomplishments as any award.