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In a country where musicians can be anything
from maverick stars to mercurial gurus, U Shrinivas is unique.
Like the legendary pied piper, U Shrinivas, wielding the mandolin
has become synonymous with his name. This genious, already
a Padmashri, has achieved a remarkable feet of retaining audience
interest and keeping pressure at bay. Uppalappu Shrinivas
is to Indian classical music what Yehudi Menuhin is to Western
classical music.
Born in 1969 in Palakol in Andhra Pradesh in an artists’
family, Shrinivas received his first mandolin at the age of
five, a birthday present from his music teacher-father. His
clarinet-playing father taught his son what little he knew.
His mentor Subba Raju, a vocalist and a disciple of famous
musical stalwart Chembai Vaidynatha Bagavathar discovered
Shrinivas’s genius. Shrinivas was accompanying his father
U Satyanarayana at a concert when Subba Raju spotted him.
Shrinivas was only 6 years old then. A natural prodigy who
learnt to play the mandolin before he was six and began his
formal training in Carnatic music at that age from Subba Raju.
With no experience of the mandolin, however, Subba Raju would
sing Carnatic music, which Shrinivas would then play.
Shrinivas is a rare phenomenon, and the music itself dates
back to the 15th century, rich compositions that are rhythmic
and allow a spontaneous musical dialogue during the concert
among all the musicians performing. Shrinivas is not erratic.
He has an uncommon sense of Tala. Shrinivas modified the mandolin
to enable him to play gamakas on it. This in itself is an
extraordinary achievement. Shrinivas not only discovered a
new instrument, a Western one that, for Carnatic music, but
he produces the most intimate nuances that is otherwise possible
only on the veena. To wide acclaim, Shrinivas has applied
the ethereal quality of the mandolin, a Western instrument
more associated with Mediterranean and Italian music, to the
intricacies of South Indian classical music.
Today, Mandolin U Shrinivas is one of India's premier musicians
and a household name in Chennai. He is a crowd-puller and a
“box-office wizard”. His audience demographic
ranging from Channel V-addicted college students, rasikas
- die-hard concert attendees able to detect the slightest
mistake, who shake their collective heads in disbelief at
this man's prowess - and even the Chennai mami, decked out
in silk sari and abandoning her family's dinner time to come
out and listen. He mixes with any genre that goes well with
his mandolin and his mind. Jazz fusion concerts with guitarist
John McLaughlin, Zakir Hussain, Vikku Vinayakaram and Selva
Ganesh, Dreaming music with Michael Brook, rocking Chennai
along with ghazal whiz Hariharan and merging belief and genius
into a CD-ROM on Adi Shankara
Shrinivas has the world at his feet. Innocence is writ on
his face. But the music that he produces on the little brittle
Mandolin is unbelievably Carnatic and classical to the core,
throwing into the shade even the top musicians. A money-spinner,
who at 30 has already zipped around the world,
If in his own country Shrinivas has captivated audiences with
his boyish charm and divine music, wherever he has traveled
outside India, from Berlin to Paris, Mexico to Barcelona and
Chennai, audiences have delighted in the inspired sounds of
one of India's most popular musicians. The Chennai based Mandolin
U Shrinivas has continued to amaze and be amazed ever since.
Who would have thought that a six-year-old boy, who was casually
strumming the mandolin at a musical party, would one day be
the youngest ever performing artiste at the Festival of India
in Paris at 16? Shrinivas did just that. At the festival of
India in Paris, France, in 1985 he was allotted one hour to
play on the instrument. But when the hour ended, the audience
forced the organizers to extend his recital by another hour.
Such is the irresistible pull of Shrinivas’s art.
At his performance for the Cervatino 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 Shrinivas’s music that she stayed back for a whole
hour.
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