Sri Nilothpala nayike – Riti gowla – Rupaka - Dikshitar - BMK – ARS – KKR – Live at MMA 1975 (4/13)

Shrī Neelóthpala nāyiiké is the next rendition in this Muthswami Dikshitar (MD) bicentennial concert. This composition is in the rāga Reetigaula and is set to Rūpaka tāla. MD has immortalised Carnatic music with his compositions and this is one such gem. This composition is classified as one of the Nīlóthpalāmbā-vibhaki kriti. It is in the praise of Lord Tyāgarāja’s consort of Tiruvarur. It is in the ‘sambódhanā-vibhaki’ or the vocative case. Interestingly, all the Nīlóthpalāmbā-vibhaki kritis of MD are in the rāga names ending with “gaula”. When we were on our tour searching for vintage music recordings, we chanced upon two important documents penned by BMK’s guru, Sri. Parupalli Ramakrishnayta Pantulu (PRP) about this composition. PRP’s hand written notes is a list of songs, that are to be sung for an AIR broadcast, dated 11.02.1941. This list includes Shrī Neelóthpala nāyiiké and the name of the rāga written here is Reetigaula. Additionally, in one of the old music books of BMK, we observed, this composition with notations written by his guru PRP has d2 (Chatushruti daivata) and there is a good chance that PRP might have taught this kriti to BMK among the other several hundreds. There have been laments that BMK has changed the scale of this rāga for this kriti by introducing the Chatushruti Daivata (D2) in place of ShuddhaDaivata (D1) and which is not according to Sangeetha Samprada pradarshini. Many a time BMK has said that “mere scale is not a rāga but rendering it by connecting with the divine entity full of beauty, heavenly charm and adorability brings the form to a rāga.” Sri. Purnachander, in his introduction has also spoken about this point. Here is a link to Sri. Purnachander's introduction :    • An introduction to Muthuswami Dikshitar bi...