Early history and evolution
Origins: The first sabha, Sri Parthasarathy Swami Sabha, was founded in 1896 by Manni Tirumalachariar to promote Indian culture, starting with bhajans and harikatha.
Official establishment: It was officially registered in 1900, and the name was changed to honor the presiding deity of the Triplicane temple.
Growth: The sabha movement expanded over time, and by the 1920s, classical singers became prominent, followed by the rise of Tamil drama in the 1940s.
Legacy: The sabha movement was instrumental in preserving and promoting both classical and traditional performing arts.
Key organizations
Sri Parthasarathy Swami Sabha: Chennai's oldest sabha, founded in 1896, it has hosted legendary performers and is considered an auspicious venue for maiden performances.
Music Academy: Established in 1928, it played a key role in modernizing the kutcheri (Carnatic music concert) format.
Indian Fine Arts Society: Founded in 1930 by violinist Chowdiah, it emerged from a disagreement over the Music Academy's rules and became an important cultural institution.
Modern significance
Cultural hub: Chennai's sabhas remain central to the city's cultural identity, especially during the annual Margazhi festival.
Continuing relevance: Despite challenges like changing audience habits, sabhas continue to be vital for the arts, with many still in operation today.
Community impact: Many sabhas also support community initiatives, such as providing scholarships to students in need.
Key takeaways
The sabha movement began in Chennai in the late 19th century as a way to preserve and promote Indian culture, music, and performing arts.
Sri Parthasarathy Swami Sabha is the oldest sabha in Chennai, founded in 1896 and officially registered in 1900.
The movement grew significantly with organizations like the Music Academy and the Indian Fine Arts Society, which helped shape modern Carnatic music and dance
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chennai’s oldest sabha still going strong
A curtain-raiser for the December Music Festival 2019.
Sri Parthasarathy Swami Sabha of Triplicane is the oldest sabha in Chennai. The records of the sabha reveal that it was launched in 1896 by Manni Tirumalachariar, a prominent resident of Triplicane, to foster the performing arts. It was then known as the Sangita Vidwat Sabhai. When the organisation was officially registered in 1900, the organisers sought the blessings of Sri Parthasarathy Swami – the presiding deity of the temple inTiruvallikeni and hence the sabha was named after the Lord. It is said that this was the first sabha where the public came forward and participated in its activities. The Parthasarathy Swami Sabha has played host to several music legends in its nearly 120 year-old history.
From 1900 to 1905, performances were conducted at the residence of Tirumalachariar who had also lent his hand in launching The Hindu. In the 1930s, GNB’s father G.V. Narayanaswamy Iyer took over as secretary of the sabha. “In the initial stages, retired diwans from the Mysore and Travancore durbars, High Court judges and members of the Madras Presidency were part of the executive committee. Former Chief Ministers M.G. Ramachandran and J. Jayalalitha have also been members of our sabha,” says M. Krishnamurthy, the current secretary of the sabha.
“We are proud that over five generations of musicians, dancers and dramatists have contributed to the growth of our sabha. Believe me, even in 1939, during World War II, our sabha had regular programmes for our members!” Krishnamurthy recalls with nostalgia how the grand old man of Camatic music, Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, gave a two-and-a-half hour concert during the centenary celebrations.
Harikatha was very popular at Sri Parthasarathy Swami Sabha, dating back to almost a hundred years, drawing large crowds. In 1905, Prof. (Rau Bahadur) M. Rangachari presented a discourse on the Bhagavad Gita and the entire lecture series was published in three volumes. A significant event in the history of the sabha was a lecture in 1906 by noted scholar Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya.
Krishna Bhagavatar, Panchapakesa Sastrigal, Mangudi Chidambara Bhagavatar and Gayaka Sikhamani Muthiah Bhagavatar were some of the prominent artists who delivered discourses here besides music concerts by well known vidwans. Srirangam Satagopachariar, Karappanangadu Venkatachariar, Embar Vijayaraghavachariar and Sengalipuram Anantharama Dikshitar were notable pravachana-kartas who drew big crowds.
“I can give a list of stalwarts of those days, like Maha Vaidyanatha Iyer, Konerirajapuram Vaidyanatha Iyer, Poochi Srinivasa Iyengar, Bidaram Krishnappa, Tiger Varadachariar, Ariyakudi, Maharajapuram Viswanatha Iyer, Musiri, Chembai, Sarabha Sastrigal, Tirukodikaval Krishna Iyer, Govindasamy Pillai, Kanu Chinnasamy Iyer, Azhaganambia Pillai, Dakshinamurthy Pillai, Gottuvadyam Sakharama Rao, Veena Seshanna, Rajamanickam Pillai, Mysore Chowdiah, T. N. Rajaratnam Pillai, who have performed for us. Ariyakudi performed more than a hundred kutcheris in our sabha!” says a proud Krishnamurthy.
Top Hindustani music maestros like Ravi Shankar, Omkarnath Thakur and Bismillah Khan deemed it an honour to perform at Sri Parthasarathy Swami Sabha. In 1950, Sir C.P. Ramaswamy Iyer once said, ‘”Sri Parthasarathy Swami Sabha continues to grow as a premier sabha. Hence, it has all the support for continuing and maintaining the growth, except financial resources.”
The main objective of the sabha was to promote music, dance and drama. It was fortunate to have the invaluable support of artists like M.S. Subbulakshmi, Vyjayantimala Bali, Hemamalini and the Travancore Sisters Lalita Padmini-Ragini in garnering resources for the sabha.
To quote C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji) in 1955: “Sri Parthasarathy Swami Sabha has been one of the pioneers of the renaissance of Camatic music and Bharata sastra in south India and during its long continuous career of usefulness, it has taken every opportunity to cultivate sound taste and to encourage worthy exponents of the musical and dramatic arts.”
The Tyagaraja aradhana, the Purandaradasa music festival and Annamacharya festival have become regular features. The sabha has been paying musical homage to Muthuswami Dikshitar at Ettayapuram every year on his anniversary, inviting musicians to participate in the tribute. Apart from presenting lecture demonstrations to highlight the salient points of Camatic music, the sabha has also been running a music school.
The sabha confers three awards every year – Sangeetha Kalasarathy on a musician, Natya Kalasarathy on a dancer and Nataka Kalasarathy on a dramatist. It presents awards to talented young vocalists, violinists, and mridangists based on their performance during the December music festival. The sabha also honours artists with the Palghat Mani Iyer Centenary Award instituted by Nithyashree Mahadevan and the M.L. Vasanthakumari Award by Sudha Ragunathan.
The activities of the sabha are planned and conducted by an eminent and enterprising team led by Nalli Kuppuswami Chetti (president), with Mohan Parasaran, P. Vijaykumar Reddy, Dr. Jaya Arunachalam, M. Balasubramaniam (vice presidents), R. Vijayaraghavan, M. Krishnamurthy (secretaries) and M.P. Varadan (treasurer).
Nalli, president of the sabha, says that Sri Parthasarathy Swami Sabha is probably the oldest sabha in south-east Asia. “I was invited to be its president succeeding Prof. K.A. Manavalan. Both of us had the pleasure of conducting many events including Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer’s concert when be was 92. It was a memorable performance. Those days the Sabha used to conduct its events in February.”
He recalls an interesting incident. Many years ago, before the music season, the Times of India had mentioned that thirty sabhas would participate in the annual December festival. Nalli was shocked to find Parthasarathy Swami Sabha missing from the list; the reason was the non-availability of a proper venue to conduct the annual festival. It was at this juncture that Jaya Arunachalam, noted social worker and vice president of the sabha, came forward to offer Vidya Bharathi Kalyana Mandapam as a venue for the season concerts which are now held here year after year.
It is remarkable that a sabha founded in the 19th Century continued to thrive in the 20th and is still going strong in the 21st Century. – (Courtesy: Sruti.)
________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Sabha-s at the crossroads
Date: December 1, 2022
Author: sriramv
Inside the Music Academy auditorium
A live December Music Season again! After two years of uncertainties, the Carnatic Music-loving public, the artistes, and the organisers are gearing up to celebrate their art in the way they did pre-Covid. But is it back to business as usual? Unlikely – things rarely ever go back to being what they were after a catastrophic change, which Covid undoubtedly was. Perhaps the most affected is the organisation called the Sabha, which over a century had come to be identified closely with Carnatic Music and Bharata Natyam.
The Sabha itself was a product of colonial times. When the patronage of royalty and aristocracy was vital for the survival of the arts, a new city like Madras posed challenges – the ruling elite was English and had no intention to support artistes. The aristocracy, namely the dubashes or translators, provided the necessary support from the 17th century onwards. In the 19th century, new classes of wealthy professionals – lawyers, businessmen, doctors, and accountants – took over, with the support of Indians in Government who were the closest to what could be termed royalty in an egalitarian city. That saw the birth of the Sabhas – a group of wealthy patrons getting together to support the arts by way of providing venues and performing opportunities for artistes. Beginning with Madras city, the concept of the Sabha as a cultural patron spread to other towns in the Presidency. The Princely States and samasthanams were rather late in getting Sabhas.
At one time, namely in the 19th century the Sabha suffix was adopted by any organisation wanting to promote group activity. The Madras Mahajana Sabha (founded 1884) was a political organisation, the Suguna Vilasa Sabha (1891) promoted theatre, the Chennapuri Andhra Maha Sabha (1916) espoused culture and sports, and the Sukruta Lakshmi Vilasa Sabha was a social club! Even the humble facilities where factory workers sought recreation were known as Sabhas. It was at one such, the Venkatesa Gunamritabhivarshini Sabha in Perambur, that the Madras Labour Union, India’s first, was born. Today we associate the Sabhas most closely with classical music and dance.
The decades immediately after Independence were the best for the Sabhas. Faced with the end of princely patronage and the simultaneous onslaught of cinema, musicians and dancers looked to the Sabhas for support. There were plenty of opportunities – the Sabhas did not operate just in December. Throughout the year there were events of some kind of the other – Rama Navami, Gokulashtami and Navaratri series and mid-year festivals. In fact, many of the older ones such as the Jagannatha Bhakta Sabha, the Tyagabrahma Gana Sabha, the Sri Parthasarathy Swami Sabha and the Narada Gana Sabha did not even participate in the December Music season, leaving the field to the Music Academy, the Indian Fine Arts Society and the Tamil Isai Sangam. You need to just contrast it with the situation today. Very few offer events the year round and mostly focus on December. And then we have what the late R Krishnaswami of Narada Gana Sabha termed as ‘fly by night operators’ – those who suddenly appear every December, host a series somewhere, and then vanish.
Ask the Sabhas and they blame poor audience response for this. Given the multiple channels of entertainment that exist today, going all the way to a Sabha for a concert probably ranks low in priority unless the artiste is a major crowd puller. And even if the performer is popular, there are YouTube and other online channels that offer the same person’s music. Then why go to a Sabha? Some have begun to work around this by going online themselves – but for some strange reason very few have felt the need to monetise this offering. It is of course understood that sponsorships probably cover the cost of the technology but to offer music/dance for free to an audience that can well afford it is nothing short of suicidal in the long run. The Sabhas need to ponder over this – given that we were always in an industry where ticket rates were at BPL, do we need to make Carnatic music a freebie? Most of the senior artistes are against their concerts being made available for free and some have begun their own exclusive paid channels. If that be so, where is the need for a Sabha?
Post Covid, there are two probable scenarios – one, where audiences afflicted with online fatigue make a beeline to the Sabhas and two, where people increasingly used to free offerings online, stay at home. The latter would really mean the end of the Sabha as we know it. It is however up to the organisers to really come up with remedial measures. The art will survive, one way or the other, as did before the advent of Sabhas.