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| Wednesday, 19 May 2004 |
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Sangeet Praveen Dr. Karunaratne Kiriwattuduwe : Our own maestro of the Santoor by Kingsley Heendeniya
About three months ago I wrote a piece on a German doctor of music who plays the Santoor. This article is about our own maestro of this difficult instrument in ragadhari music. Sangeet Praveen Dr. Karunaratne Kiriwattuduwe, bachelor, in his early 50s, is the only Sri Lankan, so far, who has learnt and mastered the art of playing the Santoor from none other than the world renowned Pundit Sivakumar Sharma. Karu, as I have now begun to call him, comes from a family of traditional artistes. As a child, he first learned Low Country dancing and drumming from his grandfather in the village of Navimana, Matara, and made his debut at the age of 14 years. He was then taken in as a pupil of the late Dr. Lionel Edirisinghe, the acknowledged leader of classical oriental music in our country. He learned from him the theory of ragadhari music and studied vocal and tabla when he won a government scholarship awarded by the Indian Government, the ICCR, in 1972. That was the beginning of his life. The good looking Sinhala young man soon began to grow into an Indian, fluent in Hindi and Bengali, in the Vedas that inspired the culture of the lush valley of Kashmir in the Himalaya Mountains to the dry sands of Tamil Nadu. Karu lived most of his adult life in Bombay and Calcutta. Panorama He told me that he spent the happiest time of 30 years roaming about the cities, villages, lanes and by-lanes learning, watching and enjoying like a native, the panorama of music, painting, sculpture, folk drama and singing spread out in that sub-continent for nearly 3000 years. He was a hard-working committed young man. Nothing mattered to him other than music. He set about shaping his career in a systematic way (guru shihya parampara) under the personal guidance of some of the famous gurus of vocal and instrumental ragadhari music in their various schools or garanas. He learnt tabla from the late Ustad Ahmed Jhan Tirikuwa, Ustad Gulam Razul Khan, Pundit Jhan Prakash Jhose and won two Gold Medals in open competition. Next, he thought to master the pakkhawaj, a drum with a treble on one face and a bass on the other, very different to the tabla he had learnt. The playing technique is not the same. But he naturally adapted to this ancient instrument played more or less exclusively at religious events in temples and at the Holi festival in March. The pakkhawaj is the chosen drum to accompany the veena. And soon, as before, Karu won two Gold Medals in pakkhawaj! The time was ripe to learn the Santoor, he thought. The Santoor is a string instrument that is played by hitting them with specially curved slender wooden tongs gently held and balanced in both hands between the fingers. The trapezoid box, on which 87 steel strings of varying length from about one and half to two and a half feet are stretched, is hollow to give resonance. Resonance It is made from a particular wood grown in the Kashmir valley. It is an adaptation of the veena, of which there are several kinds such as the Saraswati, Brahma, Mahati and the Sathatantri with 100 strings. Unlike the sitar, the Santoor has no underlying resonating strings but it is sometimes plucked with the nail. Master Sangeet Praveen Dr. Kiriwattuduwe now decided to excel in it. He learnt it from the master himself, Pt. Sivakumar Sharma. When I asked how long he studied and practised it, he did not directly answer. Instead he told me that he is yet learning! There is no time, he said, when one dedicated to music can say Now, I know. But he admitted it was a hard grueling training. He played the Santoor morning, noon and night in his modest apartment, seated on the floor and meditating to the lilting shimmering sounds of the ragas he produced from it. He practised alone up to 14 hours a day. And finally, the struggle to learn succeeded. As before, he won two Gold Medals in Santoor! A man, now in middle age, had thus won a total of 6 Gold Medals - a feat so far no one from our country has equaled or bettered. But just as it happens to talented persons, in whatever endeavor, Dr. Karunaratne Kiriwattuduwe is not recognized in his own homeland. Dr. Karunaratne has performed on the Santoor and pakkhawaj in London, Japan, the Middle East and in Africa before coming to settle down here and teach it. He has only one student since arriving two years ago and lives the typical Spartan life of the true artiste in his modest home at 3, Saddharmarama Mawatha, Nawala, Colombo 5. He can be contacted on his cellular phone 077-6003586. He plays common ragas such as yaman, kamaj, bhahiravi, keervani from which he has composed music for meditation. Those interested should await the CDs that are currently produced in Switzerland and available in the country soon. **** Back **** |
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