The famously fastidious and sharp-tongued Carnatic veena legend Dhanammal, whose music salons riveted Chennai in the early 20th century, was once asked why she attended the Bharatanatyam performances led by the great dance guru Meenakshisundaram Pillai. “To hear Meenakshisundaram sing, of course, what else?” she retorted.

This was a time in Bharatanatyam’s history when its all-powerful gurus, or nattuvanars, were eclectic maestros – they taught, choreographed, sang, conducted recitals and articulated rhythm patterns on stage. Often, given the kind of spaces where dance was performed, they even moved with the dancer in the arena.

Over half a century, the radical evolution of Bharatanatyam changed much of this, separating roles and reformatting the stage. The musicians now sit on the sidelines, and this is where you are likely to spot Carnatic singer and dance vocalist Sudha Raghuraman – normally. But something unusual happened three months ago in Delhi, when dancer Rama Vaidyanathan staged her new choreography, Maalyada, a tribute to the rainbow moods in Andal’s bhakti poetry.

Raghuraman sat on a perch off centre stage as the dance unfurled with Vaidyanathan and her troupe switching between verses set to as many as 12 ragas by Raghuraman. And at one point, the singer even had a brief role when she held a quiet face and handed flowers to the dancers.

For Vaidyanathan, it was an acknowledgement that the vocal artistry and expressiveness of Raghuraman’s music are essential to the power of her dance. “I wanted her there, at that spot, interacting with us,” she said. “Because her music is such an integral part of the dance.”

Dance vocals tend to be dismissed as a lesser art form than solo performances. But listening to Raghuraman reminds you how hard it is to sing while remaining acutely mindful of another performer’s needs. And all this, while she takes unbridled leaps with her voice and imagination.

“Dance music is so much more than just about singing right – it needs grit,” said Raghuraman. “You have to reorient your vocal talent for dance, bring in bhava, have an almost telepathic alertness to what the dancer might want. Ultimately, I am answerable to another artiste on stage. But I have to also elevate my own performance. It all came with experience, trial and error, and hard training.”

Dual career

In dance circles, the vocalist whose work has evolved over three decades is known for being a no-nonsense stickler for perfection. “It takes a certain kind of pagalpanti (madness),” she said, resorting to her city’s patois, about her all-immersive engagement with dance. “At this point, the only thing I fear is my own conscience and the sanctity of my work ethic.”

Raghuraman’s list of exceptional thematic works is long and varied. There was her music for the stalwarts – Leela Samson’s ensemble Spanda, Geeta Chandran’s Pratidhwani and Kalidasa, and Justin McCarthy’s Kshetrayya and Naukacharitram. Among younger dancers, she has collaborated with Janaki Rangarajan on Draupadi and Kamayanil, Shruthi Rajagopal on Kaikesi, Meera Balasubramaniam on Kasi, and Vaibhav Arekar on Nhama Mhane. With Vaidyanathan, with whom she shares a special rapport, she did Mad and Divine, Ratnagarbha, Nimagna and Beyond Boundaries.

Unlike most of her peers, Raghuraman juggles a rare dual career as a sought-after solo vocalist and an accomplished dance musician. “I see myself as a bridge between these two forms,” she said. “I don’t see dance music as being taboo for a soloist.”

This idea of bridging divides also applies to her success as a Delhi-based artist. While Delhi sits a far distance from the Carnatic epicentre and making southern inroads is an intimidating task, the capital has a small but tenacious and gifted clutch of artistes who have found a foothold in both their home city and the south. Raghuraman is one of them.

Her dance music is eclectic, easily borrowing from Hindustani elements from khayal, thumri and dhrupad. For the young girl from the South Indian enclave of Karol Bagh in Delhi – once urged to take up the violin because her voice was deemed too robust for a woman – it has been a painstaking journey, sustained by the support and solidarity of the dance fraternity.

Devadasi tradition

At a 2012 dance conference in Chennai, when vocalist TM Krishna pointed out that far from being derivative, Bharatanatyam music was an independent entity that actually added to the Carnatic repertoire, it predictably led to a furore. But in the devadasi tradition, music and dance had indeed been inextricably bound together. The greatest dance gurus of the early 20th century, Kandappa Pillai, SK Rajarathnam Pillai and Dhandayudapani Pillai, were adept musicians as well.

In his book about the hereditary art clan of T Balasaraswati, Balasaraswati: Her Art and Life, musician and scholar Douglas Knight Jr documents the close ties between singers and dancers. He records how Mylapore Gowri, also from the devadasi tradition, would visit Balasaraswati’s grandmother, Dhanammal, and the women would share padams. These interactions included Balasaraswati’s mother, as well as her daughters, the highly skilled vocalist Jayammal and her sister Lakshmiratnam. Dhanammal herself is said to have performed for dance, and Balasaraswati would often sing at her own dance recitals, though her mother was the main vocalist.

Exactly as in the Hindustani system, which was enriched by the works of tawaifs, it was not unusual for Carnatic maestros to hear and absorb from renowned devadasis. The great vocalist Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar is one example cited in Knight’s book: he was a part of the Dhanammal inner circle and learned padams and javalis from her.

“I remember Semmangudi [Srinivasa Iyer] mama talking about how his seniors would go to listen to Jayammal,” said playwright, director and culture writer Gowri Ramnarayan. “And I remember Balasaraswati and Sharadambal singing when they performed padams, and that too without mikes because they were trained to sing for small settings.”

With the highly contested anti-nautch drive peaking in the 1930s, it was Rukminidevi Arundale who made sweeping changes to Bharatanatyam – also the subject of a vivid debate now – giving it the shape we now know. “She brought in the seniormost musicians into Kalakshetra to compose music for dance,” said Ramnarayan. “She also sat the musicians on a platform on the stage.”

With the great gurus passing, the dance vocals were handed to music professionals from outside the traditional performing communities. The idea of a regular musical troupe accompanying the dancer fell apart. Dance vocalists became a separate category of artistes. Occasionally, solo stalwarts like Krishna and Bombay Jayashri would collaborate with dancers like Priyadarshini Govind and Alarmel Valli in thematic projects.

Creative camaraderie

There is something of a joke in the dance circles – that Raghuraman is to Vaidyanathan what Kishore Kumar was to Rajesh Khanna, the perfect voice for a persona. They have collaborated more with each other than any other artiste.

Their camaraderie was at work in late July in the basement of the dancer’s school set in the verdant backyard of the Qutub Minar, where a Bharatanatyam recital was being scrubbed into shape. In about four days, the city was set to witness a tribute to the legendary Yamini Krishnamurthy. And Vaidynathan, her prime pupil, was readying Viriboni, the signature varnam of the great danseuse.

Viriboni, composed by 18th-century composer Paccimiriam Adiyappa, is tricky. It lends itself more to singing than dancing and it was only Krishnamurthy, with her famed chutzpah, who could attempt it. To make things more demanding, Viriboni is also an exacting Bhairavi, demanding supreme comfort with the complex tala and raga delineation. It took Raghuraman and Vaidyanathan an entire morning of work to bring it together, fixing the number of iterations, deciding the cues, and aligning the beats.

Raghuraman was born into music. Her grandfather, OV Subramanyam – a musician trained by the likes of Tiger Varadachariar – moved to Delhi in the 1940s to teach Carnatic music to the city’s burgeoning southern community. Her uncle, vocalist OS Arun, is famed for his work with dancers. Growing up, Raghuraman’s household rang with the sound of music the whole day, students streaming in and out, doted on by her grandparents.

At age eight, Sudha was asked to start on the violin because her voice was too open-throated by the feminine standards of the time. But, in about five years, she returned to vocal music, intrigued by its poetics. “I had a unique voice, so I decided to use it uniquely,” she said. “I would bus it twice a week from my parental home in Hari Nagar to Karol Bagh but not give up.” She started an early career as a soloist.

It was the much respected – and feared – dance and music critic Subbudu who suggested that she switch to dance music, citing the dearth of talent in the field. After that, Bharatanatyam dancer Kanaka Srinivasan signed her up for a recital.

“In those days I was okay with varnams but I was not very fond of padams and javalis,” she said. “I found them slow and they demanded an extremely strong grip on talam and I was too young to get their emotional content and rich musicality.”

She was introduced to the delightful universe of padams and javalis by Justin McCarthy, a Kalakshetra-trained, Delhi-based dancer. “He loved these forms and he really mentored me,” she said. “I was never one for chalta hai attitude, so I put my heart and soul into it. Whether it was Balavinave or Payyada, he knew exactly what emotional dimension was needed in music, the highs and lows.”

Raghuraman’s grip on music was strong enough to make room for experimentation. If you listen to her, you can hear whiffs of Hindustani influence in her music, especially in the slow passages. Part of this, she says, comes from working with a lot of artistes with eclectic tastes. Leela Samson, she says, was one inspiration. Others included Hindustani vocalists Madhup Mudgal, Meeta Pandit, Bhuvanesh Komkali, Shashwati Mandal and Kalapini Komkali.

“I always look for ways to transcend the form,” she said. “I take whatever is good and touches my soul. I call it Indian music, not northern or southern. And if it is a Hindi piece, then I have a lot of freedom to play with the music like Jhuk Aayee Re Badariya, a Meera bhajan that I worked into a varnam.”

In earlier decades, Raghuraman recalls how low in the hierarchy music troupes were – whether it was travel, payment or accommodation, they had to make do with the bare minimum. With her and the younger generation of dance musicians, a lot is changing.

“Those before us had it worse and it was on their gains that we stood tall,” she said. “And what we did raised the bar further, paving the path for more dignity for the younger dance singers.”

Malini Nair is a culture writer and senior editor based in New Delhi. She can be reached at writermalini@gmail.com.

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