And you get it too! "Coffee saapadriyaamma?" asks R. Vedavalli, in the middle of the interview, and goes off humming under her breath to make it herself!

Never mind that she is the hottest name in the kutcheri circles today, Madras' Music Academy having just announced that she is the President of its Annual Music Conference 2000, the recipient of the ultimate music 'birudu', the Sangeetha Kalanidhi.

And that is typical of the comfortable and unassuming scholar and celebrity who has been living a life of music for much over half a century. "I am not from a family of musicians, she begins disarmingly.

As an infant she would listen to her father's gramophone records unendingly and would 'stop crying if they played music', she says, adding, "that's what my family says, not that I remember it!"

This was at Mannargudi where her father left her with her grandparents while he worked in the Army. At the age of 6 she was taken to Madurai Srirangam Iyengar to begin formal training in music. He was the younger of the Madura Brothers, the elder one, Madurai Srinivasa Iyengar having been MS' first guru.

"We did not write notes those days," she recalls with a smile. Either you learnt and remembered, or learnt till you remembered!

Vedavalli's father then quit the Army and settled down in Madras - around the time when she was about ten years old, and the Guru could not quite reconcile with a stoppage in the training of his young ward.

He organised for his senior disciple, Naganatha Iyer in Madras to continue teaching her till he one day in 1951 decided that the child required a much more accomplished teacher and took her to Sangeetha Kalanidhi Mudicondan Venkataramier who was also the Principal of the Music Academy's Teachers College of Music.

For the rest of the maestro's lifetime, till 1975, it was Gurukulavasam with all its traditional trappings for Vedavalli, who flourished under his tutelage, performing her first 'sabha'kutcheri at Bangalore's Malleswaram Sangeetha Sabha with T. A. S. Mani accompanying her on the Mridangam!

He was a young boy then," she says with a smile - and she was all of 18! A couple of years later came the All India Radio Sangeetha Sammelan Award in the All India Music Competition in Classical music.

These awards, which are pretty routine and almost a rat race today, were exalted then and none other than the President of India gave them away (See picture of Vedavalli at 20 receiving her award from the First President of India, Babu Rajendra Prasad).

That was only the first of awards.

There was the AIR award for light classical music the next year (1956), the Gold Medal from the Music Academy in the Ragam, Thanam, Pallavi singing competition and for a Purandara Dasa Krithis competition. The Government of India cultural scholarship for three years to specialise in advanced music like Ragam, Thanam, Pallavi under her Guru Mudicondan, a Sangeet Natak Akademi fellowship to learn padams and javalis of the great Veenai Dhanammal school under T. Muktha, and another from the same institution to undertake a research project on the temple music of Mallari, and the first recipient of the senior scholarship from the Department of Culture to do research in Ragam, Thanam, Pallavi.

And titles too. Starting from Sangita Choodamani of Sri Krishna Gana Sabha in 1985, Isai Arasi of Eyal, Isai, Nataka Manram, Madras, Divya Prabhanda Isai Mamani by His Holiness Srirangam Srimad Andavan Swamigal, Ganakala Bharathi from Narada Gana Sabha, Karur in 1992, Gayaka Kulathilaka Kalpalatha by His Holiness Srimad Andavan of Periashramam, Srirangam in recognition of her renderings to propagate the works of Sri Andal's Tiruppavai and Nachiyar Thirumozhi, Sangeetha Rathnakara from the Cleveland Thyagaraja Aaradhana Committee in 1996, and similar honours from Chicago and Toronto organisations.

The crowning glory was the Kalaimamani Award from the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu in 1995 quickly followed by the Emeritus Fellowship of the Department of Culture, Government of India in 1996.

In the kutcheri circuit, after her debut in Bangalore in 1953 her first Music Academy kutcheri was on December 28, 1959 - a 'junior' kutcheri at 2.30 pm!

"I sang every year at the Academy," she told KutcheriBuzz, "progressing to the senior slot, and now to the very top slot too!" she says with a laugh. And that's an unbroken 41 years of singing at the ultimate destination of Carnatic performers!

Through the years Vedavalli has also been working with the Music Academy's College of Music and with the AIR, as well as a 14 year stint with the Tamil Nadu Government Music College, Madras, starting as a lecturer in 'Vocal Music' in 1980 and retiring as Professor and Head of Department of the Department of Vocal Music in 1994.

Dozens of lec-dems prove her interest and prowess on the scholarly side of music, which in fact is one of the main qualities that the Music Academy looks for when choosing its annual honour.

Her favourite areas of work have been Ragam, thanam, pallavi, revival of almost lost musical rituals like the Mallari, of the Divyanama kirthanas of Thyagaraja, and propagating the memory of her late guru, Mudicondan Venkatramaiyer.

She pursues her work through her organisation, the Devaganavali Trust, which has been working in theoretical and practical aspects of music and its supporting disciplines and arts.

- By K. Nitya Kalyani