ஸரஸ்வதி தேவிக்கு ராகஸ்ரீயின் சங்கீத மாலை

Kumaramangalam Srinivasa Raghavan, popularly known amongst his friends as “Squadron Leader Raghavan” and as ‘Pappakutty” to the doyens of the carnatic music world, was a Carnatic Musician, Vainika, Musicologist, Lyricist, Composer, poet, Sanskrit Scholar, Journalist, Painter and much more. Born in the year 1910, Raghavan was a contemporary and a close of friend of 20^th century legendary musicians, such as Sangeethakalanidhi Maharajapuram Viswanatha Iyer, G.N.Balasubramanian and Madurai Mani Iyer. Raghavan and GNB started their early music training under G.V.Narayanaswami Iyer, father of GNB.

He had composed and set to score more than two hundred kritis, keertanams, Padams and bajans. A multilinguist, Raghavan’s compositions are in Sanskrit, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Hindi. Raghavan was also proficient in playing several Indian and Western musical instruments notably Veena, Flute, Violin, Mridangam, Harmonium and Piano.

Sri.Raghavan was a great devotee of Jagadguru Kanchi Paramaacharya His Holiness Chandrasekarendra Saraswathi. He was ordained by Paramacharya to translate the Narayaneeyam into Tamil Poetry. Sri.Raghavan completed the translation in 1036 tamil verses in less than 90 days  and dedicated his work to Paramacharya. Sri.Raghavan trained his daughter and son Smt.Bhooma Narayanan and Sri.Tiruvaiyaru Krishnan respectively for giving concerts in 1950-60s.  Krishnan-Bhooma brought out a number of kritis of “Aandavan Pitchai’s” on Paramaacharya and kritis on Muruga composed by “Aadhiseshaiyer” tuned by Sri.Raghavan

The following is one of his master piece in praise of “Saraswathi” garlanding her with Ragas names and the sangeetha Lakshanams.