The disciples of the late Palghat Mani Iyer, the Mridangam colossus of yesteryears, faithfully observe the anniversary of his demise, 30th May, year after year at Palghat , while the trusts set up in his name celebrate his birth anniversary (10th June) at Madras. Other centres at Bangalore also gives suitable expression to their appreciation of him. There is no dearth of top class mridangam vidwans in Karnatak music today and the average, too, is pretty good. But none of them has come anywhere near the dazzling eminence of Mani Iyer; and even when they play well, old rasikas often cannot help reflecting on how much more brilliantly Mani Iyer would have handled the same situation.

Of course this difference is just what genius is all about - because "a genius himself discovers the laws that govern the constructions of his art.... and requires to master a certain amount of form and only as much tradition as will cultivate his particular garden" (Neville Cardus). This is very relevant to Mani Iyer’s excellence.

Mani Iyer’s forte lay, in creating vast dimensions and investing rhythm, at appropriate moments, with an athletic sense of movement at one time, a reposeful gait at another and, in his speciality of joining the music or effecting pauses in his playing, to highlight the krithi or music.

He above all knew the sound of silence. those light and shade effects compelled the admiration of both the performer and the listener. He proved that rhythm also contains great scope for displaying the inventive power of a creative intelligence-a divine faculty-and that the mridangam was also an apt medium for its expression. Earlier, Pudukkottai Dakshinamurthy Pillai had shown the way by introducing "lakshya" in an art that in his time was impaled mainly on "lakshana" and dry arithmetic. Mani Iyer till his last breath, acknowledged the debt he owed to Dakshinamurthy Pillai in this respect.

Mani Iyer had a compact mind of terrific tidiness encased in aesthetics, along with a highly developed instinct of self-preservation.

He could stun the professional with the depth and intricacy of his rhythmic cosmology; or sway the layman with his instinct for the sheerly beautiful; overall, the manner of his playing for krithis, neraval, swara and pallavi, amounted to a thrilling musical discourse with the centre performer on the one hand and the audience on the other-no mean achievement.

The whole edifice of his art was founded on an immaculate judgement of what precisely to do, how, and when, on the mridangam. In this context, La Rochefoucould’s dictum "Judgement is only the extent of the mind’s illumination" comes to one’s mind. R.W.S.Mendl said "The conditions of the age influence the artistic creator, but it is the geniuses that mould the epoch ". As a genius of unquestionable calibre, Mani Iyer did mould his epoch