Some one asked Lord Beaconsfield from whom he was descended. He replied, "sir, I am an ancestor. not a descendent". While all great men are, in one sense, the product of their times and inherit the accumulated discipline of ages through their preceptors, they are, in another and more valid sense, individual luminaries in their own right and commence rather than continue a tradition.

Palghat Mani Iyer, like the late Tier Varadhachariar and Veena Dhanammal was one such artiste to whom a period of study was merely a technical preliminary for the expression of inherent creativity. Mastery and control over an instrument is one aspect of an art. It provides the grammatical background of it. But in the hands of a genius, it recedes into the background and in fact is taken for granted and becomes nothing more than a medium for the display of a vast treasury of musical wealth.

Mani Iyer was a prodigy. He was born with a mridangam in his mind. But unlike other prodigies he did not descend into mediocrity with the passing of years, but grew from strength to strength, so that by the time he was an adolescent, he was not a promising youngster but an acknowledged master. He did not rise to the top. He started at the top and stayed there.

He had his early training under Chathapuram Subba Iyer who was well-known to the listeners of my generation as an unassuming and competent exponent who often accompanied Palghat Rama Bagavathar and Chembai Vaidyanatha Bagavathar. Later, he learnt the subtler aspects of the art under Tanjore Vaidyanatha Iyer, who was an excellent teacher and a great artiste besides being a ‘bon-vivant’, and a fine raconteur of musical jokes. I listened to Mani Aiyar’s playing for the first time in 1928 when accompanied Chembai Vaidyanatha Bagavathar, to whom more than to anyone else, is due the honour of having brought him to the notice of the discerning public. It was the occasion of the inauguration of the Music academy, as a side show of the Congress session which was held in Madras that year. I saw a short, thin, darkish boy, just emerging into his teens, beside whom the instrument loomed large,accompanying the veteran vocalist with quiet confidence, and Chembai leading him proudly somewhat like the owner of the horse that has won the Derby.

From then onwards Mani Aiyar never looked back. He soon reached a stage of having to reject more offers than accepting them, so greatly was he in demand. Indeed, he became a kind of yardstick by which to test the eminence of an artiste. It was a sought-after praise of an artiste to say that he was accompanied by Mani Aiyar himself. And the best tribute that one could pay to a mridangam vidwan was to say, "After Mani Aiyar, he is the best". As Mathew Arnold said of Shakespeare "Others abide our question, thou art free".

During his early years of thrusting prominence, some of the senior artiste, including the great Dakshinamoorthy Pillai jealously put him to the test. But Pillai was too genuine an artiste to succumb to jealousy, or denigrate a deserved distinction, and after one performance blessed him in his characterisitic way "Very good, very good, may God (Andavan) bless him". and several years later, Mani Aiyar paid his own tribute to Pillai during a concert by Alathur Brothers in which he was being accompanied on the Kanjira by Dakshinamurthy’s son Swaminatha Pillai, by intervening during "tani" and saying "He is good, but is about one fourth of his great father".

On another occasion the late Nayana Pillai tried to confront him by marking the "tala" with his fingers concealed in his upper cloth. Mani Aiyar was undaunted and intervening said "what is this esoteric Gayatri Japam? Kindly make the tala openly". this incident was mentioned to me by my friend C.K.Venkatanarasimhan who was Mani Aiyar’s closest friend amongst rasikas.

Much can be said in praise of Mani Aiyar, but what was it that marked him off from the rest of his profession and endowed him with exclusive excellence? Firstly, it was the "musical" quality of his playing. He realised that the mridangam was not a mere percussion instrument, but one which was tuned to the particular sruti in which the artiste was singing, and that unless it was played so as to bring out its melodic fidelity and affinity to the sruti, it was just a manual belaboring of dead leather. This was particularly pertinent when the artiste lingered on the upper shadja and the resonance of the mridangam (from the right side) lent the voice a support which enhanced its excellence when it was truly in tune and masked its deficiency or weakness in volume when it was not. Secondly, Mani Aiyar was ever conscious of being an accompanist and never tried to dominate the show by diverting attention to himself. In this he did not always succeed. the audience were unconsciously attracted to him and were drawn by the magnet pull of artistry, in spite of themselves. In this, sometimes even the main artiste joined (like the late Ariyakudi) by saying "Aaha" at frequent intervals. I have with me several recordings to prove this point. Further he followed the tempo of the musician withgenuine faithfulness and never played in a faster time measure, as some of the obstreperous youngsters of the present generation do. He was a "pakka vadyam" when he accompanied an artiste but was a "pukkaa vadyam when he played the ‘tani’. But even here he showed an admirable reticence which only a great artiste can accomplish.

In one of his infrequent speeches (he loved to play but hated to speak) he said ‘ a tani should not be very long. about ten minutes should be sufficient for it’. And although his skill in combining the various jatis or in manipulating the concluding ‘tirmanam’ were unsurpassed, he preferred to bring out the music of the mridangam rather than the mathematical intricacies of it. In this he was more akin to the late Azhaganambi Pillai than to Dakshinamoorthy.

Thirdly, he was responsible for introducing several new phrases in the mridangam. The original Tanjore style was comparatively uncomplicated and relied mainly on the four-unit measure or the "chathusra-jatti" which is without doubt, the basic phrase in song as well as in tala. But Mani Aiyar borrowed some of the phrases from the "chendai" of Kerala which has several distinct phrases of its own. the phrase "Thaka dimi thaka" is one such and Mani Aiyar made full use of it. Indeed in his occasional moods of exuberance, he even over-did the chendai phrases . this apart from his own building up of the orthodox phrases which he elaborated in his own way. He gave a new expansiveness and a new dimension to the art of mridangam.

He was a musician first and a mridangam player only next. So much so he developed a peculiar style of following the song instead of merely giving tala support to it. This created a controversy amongst some of his colleagues who felt that the mridangam had a language of its own, and was intended to support the songs and not reproduce it on the instrument. But those who have heard him accompany a song like "endaro Mahanubavulu" or "Sri Venugopala" may be pardoned for enthusing over it although it is a dangerous deviation in the hands of lesser artistes.

Another controversy for which he was responsible was his refusal to play before a microphone. He genuinely felt that the mike had ruined the need for voice culture, distorted the natural voice, made a whisper into a thunder and altogether made the inferior acceptable. Those of my generation who have heard the great musicians of the past sing in higher srutis can well understand his view on this matter. But no individual can swim against the current of history, and the mike has come to stay, and has enabled large audiences, instead of merely a handful of elites, to listen to a concert, a point which has an economic more than even a musical significance. Besides, all the musicians of the present day have attuned ( or shall I say low-tuned) themselves to the mike and they find it difficult to give a mikeless concert once in a while. I am inclined to feel that Mani Aiyar’s refusal to play in a mike-ridden concert may perhaps have been due to his understandable reluctance to play for all and sundry, but this is only my personal view and a conjecture and not evidenced.

The mridangam has an independent and honoured place in Carnatic music, where the tala and song go together, and where, in the singing of a Pallavi for instance, it is integral to the music. Connoisseurs of music are not always knowledgeable in following the nuances of the mridangam. They have a general understanding of the tala (which they usually mark off with their hands but in constant fear of missing it) but not much expertise in following the permutations and combinations and the arithmetic involved in them. Several years ago when I put up a budget for a zamindar which was then under the Court of Wards, I left the expenditure of the music college intact. the member in charge ordered " The vocal, veena and violin classes may continue but the mridangam class may be abolished, it is only a drum and may be played by one of the college servants when required". I then showed Sir C.V.Raman’s article on the mridangam which described the exactitude of its tonal excellence, and to say that astonished will be an understatement. Most musical enthusiasts are only slightly more learned. they like it without precisely knowing why. But it is a great instrument, with musical more than percussion qualities, and a great artist like Mani Aiyar made it sing.

Let me conclude by recalling two tributes paid to him by two eminent artistes. The first was by Tanjore Vaidyanatha Aiyar (his own guru) who accompanied T.R.Mahalingam at a concert during the hay-day of the latter’s youthful glory. At the end of the concert he told me " I wish Mani had played in this concert". Another was by Tiger Varadachariar. He told me " during ordinary times Mani has ten fingers. when he plays he has fifty fingers. If he had a tail, he will be Nandikesvara