Voice Of The Veena: S Balachander

Of all the stars in the
Carnatic music galaxy from the 1930s through the 1980s, there was one star
that outshone the brilliance of the rest: the irrepressible genius, S.
Balachander, who stormed into the prim Madras music scene with a panache and
eccentricity that no contemporary of his could match. The veena maestro began
his music career at a time when stalwart vocalists ruled the roost and
instrumentalists played second fiddle to them. But being an independent
minded and self-taught artiste, balachander carved a unique niche for himself
as a veena soloist. He boldly changed the grammar of instrument music,
contemporized the veena and created a legacy known as the balachander Bani,
or style. But balachander’s iconoclastic and brash ways earned him the ire of
the Carnatic music fraternity. He was quick to pick quarrels with established
fellow musicians in his lifelong quest for perfection and truth. So was
balachander a beloved genius or a much-maligned maverick? The book attempts
to recreate the towering personality that he was- a lot of this researched
from his elaborate personal diaries. While his death in 1990 created a void
in the Carnatic realm, the issues he fought for remain relevant till date,
and his memory lives on in the minds of music connoisseurs. As the maestro
himself would have smugly said: ‘veena is balachander, balachander is veena.