Tanikella Bharani is known for his multi-dimensional genius. He is a theater artist, playwright, film actor, director, poet, singer and many other talents blessed with. He came out this time with a book chronicling the lives of 50 music maestros. Mostly they hailed from Telugus and of course some exponents like Bhimsen Joshi and Swathi Tirunal from other states. All they were either vocalists or instrumentalists enriched the space of both Carnatic and Hindustani traditional music. These were written for a magazine named HASAM in a series and collected into a book in 2005 as "Endaro Mahanubhavulu" in Telugu. It has been received greatly by the readers and has six prints as of 2013.
Given its success in the vernacular version, Anivikshiki Publishers Pvt. Ltd brought it out into the English language to spread the fragrance of this book among a wider range of readers. It deserves such effort a thousand times. Because the book portrayed the creative mettle and immense contribution of musicians of yore and they are not alive to speak about them. Here writer Bharani has taken up the responsibility of elaborating the lives of such music maestros. Their practice, rendition styles, awards and rewards attained, anecdotes related to their lives and more interesting things were written in this book.
One must read it to know our heritage in music and how tough they get trained and dedicatedly disseminate their art before dignitaries and lovers of music. Tumarada Sangameswara Sastry (1874-1932) the great Veena player, how enthralled Rabindranath Tagore with his mesmerizing unique rendition makes us awestruck. He was invited to Santhiniketan to teach for some time. Sastry plays in concerts only after he rehearsed a keertana a thousand times at home. Can we imagine such precision and perfection at present? This is only one example I cited here and you can read the marvels of many musicians in the book.
Tanikella Bharani's style of writing is captivating and in bringing emotions from the lives of musicians, he showed his prowess as an all-rounder and nobody can imitate such quality from him. Translator Satya Bhavana did a stupendous job. The English version is in no way inferior compared to the original Telugu and I have an opportunity to go through both of them happily. Perhaps all the deceased souls of the music could have chosen the writer to speak on behalf of them, that's what I felt once I completed with the book.
----- Murthy KVVS
(Pages : 259 + 11, Price : Rs. 250/- For copies : All leading book shops & Amazon)
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