Remembering a legend

Sri Krishna Gana Sabha organised singer T Brinda’s centenary birth celebrations and felicitated her daughter Vegavahini Vijayaraghavan.

The works and contribution of the legend were remembered in her centenary birth celebrations held here on Saturday.

Many talented and popular Carnatic musicians such as Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, Aruna Sairam, Ravi Kiran  trained under her.  T Brinda, the veteran Carnatic vocalist and Veena player was the grand daughter of another Veena legend Dhanammal.

During her period when most of the Carnatic singers rendered compositions of Thyagaraja Swamigal, she preferred to sing rare compositions of Muthuswami Dikshitar, Shyama Shastri and Patnam Subramania Iyer.    She was one of the first artistes to perform on All India Radio. T Brinda worked in Chennai Music College and her contribution to field of music was recognised by Sangeet Natak Akademi in 1965. In her address, Vegavahini traced Brinda’s association with Krishna Gana Sabha and R Yagnaraman, founder of the sabha.

A documentary ‘Brindamma — Music Beyond Music’ directed by S B Khanthan, depicts the musical journey of Brinda through her rare song clippings. In the film, musicologist Venugopal says, ‘we can say Brinda’s style of  music is an art music than craft music. She absorbed both Dhanammal’s style and Naina Pillai’s fast paced masculine style and combined them into a single unique style. She preferred to be a slave than to be queen of music.’ Y Prabhu, general secretary, Sri Krishna Gana Sabha and Spencer Venugopal, a student of T Brinda, were also present on the occasion.