Violinist Nedumangad V. Sivanandan turns 90: A look at his life and music

The Hindu

01-07-2025

Young V. Sivanandan completed a three-year course in Carnatic vocal from a prestigious institution in Thiruvananthapuram in 1954, when he decided to specialise in the violin. Virudhunagar Ganapathi Pillai took Sivanandan under his wings. The mentoring gifted a new exponent to the illustrious Kumbakonam style of violin-playing, which Ganapathi had learnt from Rajamanickam Pillai.
Ganapathi , a staff-artiste in the All India Radio (AIR)-Thiruvananthapuram, initially started with weekly classes for Sivanandan. The boy would often walk 18 kilometres from his home in Nedumangad. 'No big deal,' says Sivanandan, now aged 90. 'I was familiar with such drills. My father used to take me to concerts in the city and we would walk.'
Sivanandan's father, Neyyattinkara Vasudevan Pillai, was a harmonium master, keen to train his eight children in music, who either sang or played the veena or the mridangam. 'I chose the violin,' Sivanandan smiles. His father was his first tutor. 'At 12, I debuted for a harikatha at the local temple. I never had a formal arangetram. '
In his mid-teens, Sivanandan enrolled for the Gayaka course at the Swathi Thirunal College — those days known as The Music Academy (for 23 years since its inception in 1939). The faculty was stellar: Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, C.S. Krishna Iyer, K.R. Kumaraswamy, among others. 'My chief veena teacher, K.S. Narayanaswamy, found me promising. My first love, though, was the violin.'
Sivanandan later trained under Ganapathi Pillai in a gurukula system. 'Tonal clarity and restraint are the traits he passed on to me. I gained a sense of proportion as an accompanist. If the vocalist's alapana spanned 10-minutes, my solo response would take around half that time,' says Sivanandan, who has a performance experience of over seven decades.
To Sivanandan, practice holds the key to excellence. 'Even for violin geniuses such as M.S. Gopalakrishnan or Lalgudi Jayaraman,' he notes. 'I insist on my pupils to allot a decent amount of time for daily sadhakam; be punctual for classes and concerts. I used to once teach from dawn-to-dusk.'
Sivanandan lives in Cherthala in the coastal Alappuzha district. 'Right from the beginning, I was flooded with invitations for kutcheris. There was a dearth of violinists in this region,' says Sivanandan, who rose steadily to accompany stalwarts, including Parassala Ponnammal, B.V. Raman-Lakshmanan, Bombay Sisters, Trichur V. Ramachandran, O.S. Thiagarajan, K. Omanakutty, Sudha Raghunathan, S. Jayashri and T.M. Krishna. For a long time, he was in the retinue of Neyyattinkara Vasudevan and K.J. Yesudas.
Big or small, each concert 'serves a lesson'. He would wear a miniature violin that his guru gifted him on Sivanandan's 60th birthday. 'You learn something new even from a not-so-good kutcheri. This is one lesson I got from my teacher,' says this Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Akademi awardee.
Apart from music, Sivanandan loves reading. Though not a film buff, he donned the role of a violinist in the 2007 Malayalam film, Ananda Bhairavi. 'During my travels for concerts, I would always carry a book. I didn't mind even if it was children's literature.'
Even today Sivanandan's hands move deftly along the strings of the violin. 'I follow a disciplined routine. I am particular about my diet. We get most of the vegetables from the garden in our backyard. We also grow several medicinal plants.'
Sivanandan's daughter V. Sindhu teaches the violin at the Chembai Music College in Palakkad. 'Apart from my daughter and grandson Adarsh Dileep, I have several disciples, including Thiruvizha Sivanandan, Edappally Ajithkumar, Bindu K. Shenoy, Cherthala Sivakumar, Viju S. Anand and Manjoor Renjith. 'I am sure they will carry forward the bani,' says the veteran.