Rama Sreerama

When the orthodox and conventional musical coterie of South India heard of a boy playing Carnatic ragas on the mandolin, they not only frowned in disapproval of the sacrilege but said it was an impossible feat. But at U. Srinivas’s very first concert in Madras at the age of 9 years, critics who came to scoff were so enchanted by the magical notes emanating from the mandolin that they stood in ovation and hailed the boy a genius.

If the musical die-hards in South India find no fault in Srinvas’s rendering of a difficult Camatic raga (and they can be a pretty forbidding lot), the general public hove been so carried away by the gossamer web of music that Srinvas weaves with his mandolin that they have listened to him enraptured.

Twenty five year-old Srinivas is one of the most popular music performers in India today, drawing larger audiences than many more seasoned musicians. Among crowds, varying from 500 to 10,000 people, it common to find a 16-year ­old college student, who would only listen to the MTV top 20, tapping his foot in rhythm the Srinivas, alongside a regular concert-attender (rasika) who can detect the slightest mistake but shakes his head in appreciation at Srinivas’s handling of a particularly difficult Thyagaraja keertana. Even the Madras mami for whom husband and sons come before all needs, has been known to abandon her husband’s 7 o’clock dinner time needs to wear her silk sari and attend a Mandolin Srinivas concert. She not only adores his music, but takes some sort of maternal interest in his well-being so that at the end of his concert she will knuckle her fingers to ward off the evil eye.

If in his own country Srinivas has captivated audiences with his boyish charm and divine music, wherever he has travelled outside India, from Mexico to Muscat, he similarly has won over audiences irrespective of vast cultural differences. In 1983, at the jazz Festival in West Berlin he was obliged by the audience to extend a 45 minute set by an hour-long encore and then the concert was broadcast unprogrammed and in its entirety on television and radio the next day.

At his performance for the Ceryatino Festival, in Mexico 1987, Paloma, the wife of the Mexican president, who had Intended to satisfy formality with a 10 minute appearance, was so captivated by Srinivas’s music that she stayed back for a whole hour. He also received widespread acclaim from the French public in 1985, when he played at the Festival of India in Paris; he toured London In 1990 at the invitation of the Asian Music Circuit and the British Arts Council; and in 1992 he was the only Indian classical musician to have played at the Olympic Music Festival in Barcelona, Spain.

It was in August 1992, while on tour with WOMAD, that Srinivas recorded this album of traditional music during the second Real World Recording Week in a candlelit studio.

Even Europeans are surprised that such magical music can originate from an instrument which is normally a rather inconspicuous member of a Western orchestra. Like fellow Indian musician Shiv Kumar with the santoor, Srinivas has revived and raised an unknown instrument and given it a respectable status in classical music. The mandolin, a 14th century instrument of Italian origin, is especially popular in Naples where it was used to play love and folk songs. It belongs to the lute family and looks like a cross between the violin and the guitar, though smaller than both. Four sets of double wire strings are tuned like a violin while frets guide the fingers of the left hand and a tortoise shell plectrum held in the right hand is used to play the instument.

Srinivas has four specially-made mandolins at his home in Madras, and these have only five strings as opposed to the usual eight strings. “With eight strings you can’t produce gamakas (the lengthy intonations of Carnatic music), so I started playing with four strings. Then my father suggested that I try out a fifth string for bass which is important in Carnatic music. The scale on the mandolin I use is the same as on an ordinary mandolin. Only there are five strings instead of eight strings,” explains Srinivas. Otherwise, his mandolin is similar to the Western instrument with the addition of a contact microphone to avoid the hollow rat-a-tat of a guitar-like instrument.

On concert tours (and there are many) Srinivas goes accompanied by his father, two mandolins and a suitcase full of gods. In the case where he keeps his mandolin, are photographs of Hindu deities, Hanuman, the monkey-god taking precedence over all others. At the beginning of every concert Srinivas chants a long benedictory prayer to Hanuman, and whether at home or on a tour, he will spend at least an hour in mediation and prayer. He is extremely religious and reverential.

“I have done well in life, only because of God’s grace and guru’s blessings,” he says with a smile.

The usually stern music critic Subbudu, who is known more often to pan than praise an artist, remarked recently that in the field of instrumental Carnatic music there is no one quite like Srinivas. “There is no other instrumentalist who has reached such dizzy heights in instrumental improvisation. He has got a computer-mind and can evoke and execute the most fraction-ridden swaro combination.”

Despite the critical acclaim Srinivas has won over the world, he says modestly that he still has a long way to go. “Where is the end to music? The more you learn, the more you want to know,” he says.