Abstract

Dāsarapada-s are compositions of Haridāsa-s of Karnataka. The Haridāsa-s were mainly followers of Shri Madhwacharya, who considered themselves as servants of their Supreme Lord – Hari. They composed various compositions on subjects like devotion. Their teachings covered a wide spectrum of philosophy, religion, ritual, theology, social reformation, ethical conduct etc. The purpose of these songs was to teach the common man about devotion and philosophy. They are mainly composed in simple Kannada language and few in Sanskrit. Music was used as the medium to make these ideas reach people. These were set to music and people learnt it as songs. This paper attempts to study the adaptation of a Dāsarapada in Karnataka classical music and Sugama Saṅgīta version, and to examine the musical elements of the song in both these versions. This is a case study of the Dāsarapada “Nānēke baḍavanu, nānēke paradēśi”, which has two popular versions – the Karnataka classical music, sung by M. S. Subbulakshmi and Sugama Saṅgīta version, tuned by Mysore Anantaswamy and sung by Pushpa Jagadish which was released as part of MSIL geethegalu by Lahari Bhavageethegalu & Folk – T-Series. The scope of this paper is restricted to the study of the above-mentioned two versions and the other musical adaptations of this song are not considered for this study. Data for this study comprises of recordings of the two versions of this song. Analysis has been carried out based on the following parameters – structure, melodic features, rhythmic features, instruments, synchronization of music and meaning in Karnataka classical music and Sugama Saṅgīta.