N Ravikiran - Smara Janaka

N Ravikiran with chitravina. Photo courtesy of Google Image Search (yeah, I'm lazy).

Smara Janaka by N Ravikiran, a master of the chitravina (pic above).

Ravikiran is an interesting character. This track is recorded when he was twenty-five, which seems relatively young for an Indian classical musician... until you realize he had been playing for twenty-three of those twenty-five years. Ravikiran had his first professional performance at the age of two, making him perhaps the world's youngest professional musician. (At that recital, Ravi Shankar was purported to have said: “If you don’t believe in God, just look at Ravikiran.”)

Ravikiran's mature phase has been quite distinctive as well: He has taken on world peace as his cause celebre, and now gives "Gandhian" performances where he plays, without eating, drinking, or taking breaks, for up to 24 hours at a time, putting the ticket sales to charitable causes and usually leading off his concerts with an expressions of his concerns at a particular ongoing conflict.

Ravikiran's biography aside, his playing comes through with power and authority on this piece, written by the medieval Carnatic composer Dikshitar, supposedly when Dikshitar was undergoing an agonizing crisis of faith. Whether that crisis of faith is visible in the music is for to you to decide, but it is certain that some of Dikshitar's most energetic compositions came from this period. It's particularly worth paying attention to the gamakas (literally "slides"; flourishes caused at the end of the note by bending the strings to move pitch up or down a quarter-step) in this tune.