A musician of immense versatility

An era ends : Balamuralikrishna was an innovator of ragas, taalas

Mangalampalli Balamuralikrishna was a child prodigy who rose to become a musician of immense versatility in all fields and held sway over ‘rasikas’ with his mesmerising voice and unique way of rendering compositions.

With a voice magnificently rich and instantly recognisable, Balamuralikrishna excelled not only as a singer, but also left his imprint as a composer, poet, multi-instrumentalist and an innovator of ragas and taalas.

He took the musical plunge at the tender age of six and became a composer when he was just 15. Balamuralikrishna also played various instruments like violin, veena and mridangam.

He could also sing perfectly in three octaves. He has 400 compositions to his credit in his decades-long career.

Known for his non-conformist and boundless creativity, Balamuralikrishna participated in over 25,000 carnatic music concerts across the globe.

Contribution to music
He made rich contribution to Indian classical music, especially sustained efforts towards resurrecting ragas which were not in vogue.

He featured in the popular national integration song ‘Miley Sur Mera Tumhara’ in the 1980s in which he sang Tamil lyrics.

Gifted with a stentorian voice, he could sing perfectly in three octaves. He was not content with the fame and recognition gained by performing concerts and composed new raagas known as ‘raganga ravali’, ‘lavangi’, ‘mahati’, ‘manorama’, ‘sarvashri’ and ‘sumukham’, and also taalas.

After mastering 72 melakartha ragas, Balamuralikrishna also composed krithis in the same, besides developing his vocal skills and rhythmic patterns of classical music.

After working as a music producer in All India Radio (AIR) station at Vijayawada and Hyderabad, he was transferred to AIR in Madras (Chennai) where he settled from then and lived till his death.

Balamuralikrishna had carved a niche for himself in rendering the Tyagaraja kirtana ‘nagumo ganaleni’.

Though his native tongue was Telugu, he could sing effortlessly in many languages, including Tamil, Kannada, Sanskrit, Malayalam and Hindi.

Hindustani music, too, was not out of bounds for this musical genius and his ‘jugalbandis’ with eminent exponents like Pt Bhimsen Joshi and Kishori Amonkar, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Pt Jasraj and Zakir Hussain drew wide acclaim.

He also left his imprint in the field of cinema, where he tried his hand at acting and playback singing.

Balamuralikrishna made his acting debut in the 1967 Telugu film ‘Bhakta Prahlada’. Later, the movie was dubbed in Tamil, Kannada and Hindi.

Among his notable film forays was the song ‘Oru Naal Pothuma’ in Sivaji Ganesan-starrer Thiruvilayadal. Balamuralikrishna did full justice to the song, with his voice bringing out the arrogance of the character.

Besides numerous cities and towns in India, he gave concerts worldwide, including the US, the UK and France, leaving audiences spellbound.