Tanjore is a city of over 200,000 inhabitants in southern India's Tamil Nadu State. Situated along the banks of the Kaveri (Cauvery) River, Tanjore, which is also known as Thanjavur, sits in one of India's most fertile agricultural regions. Highly regarded for its paintings, jewelry, inlaid copperware, silk brocades, and carpets, Tanjore is also recognized as a center for the unique and venerable poetic song form Padam.
On
Inde Du Sud: Padam, le Chant de Tanjore, the Carnatic diva
Aruna Sairam gives voice to this Tanjore-style song form. Sung as an accompaniment to the precise and exacting South Indian dance Bharatanatyam, the Padam is deliberate, slow, languid, sensual, and evoking of distinct moods associated with love. Accompanied on this CD by
Durai Swaminathan on violin,
K. Arun Prakash on mridangam (double-sided hand drum),
Shakuntala on tampura (drone instrument), and
Udupi S. Sreedhar on ghatam (clay pot),
Aruna Sairam recorded this album in order to pay homage to her Tanjore "style masters" and to raise awareness about the fact that Padam, for a number of reasons, is teetering on the verge of extinction.
Inde Du Sud's nine cuts take the listener through a wide range of emotional levels. From the aggravation a heroine has for her unresponsive hero to the feelings a young wife has when her husband returns from an extended absence,
Aruna Sairam is able to both gracefully soar into the ecstatic and dig deep into the lamentations of love lost. Descriptive liner notes written by
Jean-Paul Auboux provide a narrative and musicological context for each song, as well as lengthy text about Padam's relation to musical time, dance, and Carnatic history.
With a history stretching all the way back to early Sanskrit dramas that were performed within the inner of shrines of Tanjore's Hindu temples, the ancient Padam is currently in danger of being forgotten. Hopefully,
Aruna Sairam's
Inde Du Sud: Padam, le Chant de Tanjore will be able to raise public awareness about this amorous song form and consequently generate a renewed sense of interest in it and its dancing partner, the Bharatanatyam. ~ John Vallier
