As an upcoming young musician, I have listened to innumerable live concerts of stalwarts of Carnatic music and have been specifically interested in the accompanying instruments. Veena Balachandar once created magic with just the mridangam as accompaniment. On the other extreme, a team of six or seven artistes accompanied the vocalist at a memorable Madurai Somu concert on the kanjira, ghatam and the morsing, with Somu himself joining occasionally on the konnakkol. The concert was nearly six hours long, with the ‘thani avarthanam’ itself lasting for close to an hour. Of all the percussion instruments in Somu’s concert, it was the morsing that was a big hit with the audience, with its bell-like tone and the discerning artistry of the practitioner who made his entry with guns blazing during the thani avarthanam.
The charm of such full-fledged concerts has faded these days, courtesy reduced attention spans of listeners and shorter concerts, and challenges for the curators of music festivals. And many of these instruments are not used as much as they were in concerts, while there are fewer practitioners.
The morsing was originally known by the name mukha shankhu (face conch) in folk music. The western counterpart of this instrument is called the Jew’s harp, which has its origins in Siberia. Temir komuz, an instrument similar to the morsing is popular in Central Asia. In India, the morsing is used in Rajasthani music and Carnatic music of South India, mainly in Tamil Nadu.
This conch-shaped instrument is held with the left hand and has a metal reed at its centre which is vibrated by plucking it with the right hand. The resulting bell-like tone is modulated by skilful breath control. It is said that the first sollu kattus or basic percussive phrases were played by Lord Vishnu on the ‘maddalam’ for the cosmic dance of Lord Nataraja. All the percussive instruments of Indian music adopted the rhythmic syllables which evolved from the maddalam and the morsing is no exception. In addition to the rhythmic presence, the morsing augments the tanpura in a concert with its melodic tone.
There have been many morsing artistes of merit who complimented the concerts of the legends of the past with their skillful and aesthetic performances. Adichapuram Seetharama Iyer and Palakkad Sachidanandam were some of the earliest, followed by Mannargudi Natesa Pillai, Pudukkottai Mahadevan, Harihara Sarma, R V Pakkirisamy and Srirangam Kannan.
It is said that in a concert of the reputable Madurai Mani Iyer, morsing artiste Pudukkottai Mahadevan complimented the artistry of the great Palghat Mani Iyer on the mridangam. He played so well that after the concert that Madurai Mani Iyer remarked that Mahadevan’s morsing seemed to tell him, ‘sing more, sing more!’
From a purist lens, however, if the morsing accompanies the vocals continuously, instead of at particular points, the compositions tend to lose their classicism, and the lines between the Carnatic and the devotional genres will blur.
This elusive aesthetics of discernment while accompanying a Carnatic concert is a steep learning curve for any practitioner of the morsing. That might be the reason there are fewer artistes of calibre today, and lesser presence of the instrument in the concert platforms.
Nevertheless, there are a few accomplished morsing artistes like A S Krishnan, Bangalore Rajasekhar, R M Deenadayalu, N Raman and N Sundar who keep the flag of aesthetics flying.
In this context, it is pertinent to mention that the ‘gethu vadyam’ which was also a percussion instrument that was used in concerts of the past is almost a fossil today. The gethu vadyam is also known by the name Jhallari, which figures in the krithi ‘Akhilandeswari’ in raga Jujavanthi, composed by Muthuswami Dikshithar as ‘Jhalli maddala jharjhara vadya nada mudithe’.
Incidentally, this writer is one of the few who has sung a full concert with the gethu vadyam as one of the additional percussion instruments, played by Auvudayarkoil H Subramanyam. It is an instrument similar to the santoor where the stringed lute is struck with short bamboo sticks using both hands. The only difference is that the strings are tuned to only the tonic note.
Presently, the gethu vadyam is known mostly as the ceremonial percussive instrument in the temple of Auvudayarkovil in Tamil Nadu.
