Papanasam Sivan’s contribution to music

April 2007

Papanasam Sivan is hailed as Tamil Thyagaraja as he was greatly influenced by Thyagaraja in composing songs. He also imbibed the best of the other two Trinity and evolved a unique style which made his compositions very popular. Sivan chose Tamil and Sanskrit as his medium of expression and his simple and catchy tunes gave unique shape to many ragas. Dr.Radha Bhaskar explained all these interesting aspects of Sivan’s compositions and sang many popular as well as rare kritis of Sivan. She made special mention of the number of kritis Sivan had composed, next to Thyagaraja and how they were different from Thyagaraja’s conceptualization of the raga.