A Brief History of the “Geography as Melody” project

When I was studying for my PhD at the Department of Geography, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio in 1990, my guru, Dr Surinder Mohan Bhardwaj told me that I should start presenting original academic research papers at conferences. He asked me to think of topics that I would like to research and present a paper at the Annual South Asia Conference at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin that autumn.

I selected two topics.

One of these was about the sacred geography connections in the compositions of Śrī Muttusvāmi Dīkshitar (24 March 1776 – 21 October 1835). He is considered one of the trinity of karnātaka sangītam (also called Carnatic music) along with two others: Śrī Śyāma Śāstri (1762 – 1827) and Śrī Tyāgarāja (1767 – 1847).

Growing up in Bangalore (now Bengaluru), India, I was introduced to his compositions as a teenager. Most people’s introduction to his compositions is through his very popular composition on Ganéśa, vātāpi.ganapati.bhajéham.

For years, I had learned about Dīkshitar’s pilgrimages and how several of his songs were connected to specific places. I had also visited some of these places.

My guru, Dr Bhardwaj, is well-known expert on sacred geographies — he has studied, taught, and written about sacred places and pilgrimages for many decades.

We wrote a paper together titled Cultural Geography Themes in Muttusvāmi Dīkshitar’s Compositions, and presented it at the 1990 Annual South Asia Conference.

Subsequently, Dr Bhardwaj said we must edit the paper and publish it in some academic journal. We submitted the paper for review and it was published in 2001. You can read an online PDF version of the paper here.

Chandra S. Balachandran, Surinder M.   2001.  “Geography as Melody in Muttusvami Dikshita’s Indian Musical Works.”  The Geographical Review, volume 91 (4), p. 690-701.

Since the time we presented our original paper, I had been wanting to make a documentary about Dīkshitar and his contribution to cultural geography that no one else had looked at. I could not find the resources to do it. However, it was always in my mind to make.

In 2018, I visited Chennai for some geography workshops. There, I met several of my students, all teenagers. In the course of conversation, I mentioned this desire I have had to make a documentary on Dīkshitar’s work. They were all excited and they all volunteered to participate in this. (You can find their names in the project team listing below.)

In 2020, we were supposed to go to various places to shoot video for the documentary. However, the Covid-19 pandemic did not allow us to do that. Meanwhile, several team members moved on with their formal education.

It seemed that the project that I was desirous of making was again stopped.

In 2021, Kanishk Gokul expressed an interest in making an online, interactive version of the project. This sounded much better than the documentary that I had been thinking of. The documentary would not have been interactive. This idea completely changed my thinking and we started working on this new format. Several of the old team members returned to prepare the various pieces of the story.  You can read them in this project site.

I wanted to make a documentary for school children. The topic is very “heavy”, but that should challenge young children rather than frighten them away to think, “Ayyo! This is all too much! I can’t understand all this!”

In the end, the team decided that we should not spoon-feed everything to our young minds. Rather, we want to get you asking questions and trying to find answers to them — think as geographers!  In the process, we hope you will learn something about geography, Dīkshitar and his songs, research skills, using databases, and most important of all: Asking geography questions!

You will never understand until you explore!  Now, you can.

And here we are.

I hope that you will explore all the components of this project and interact with it. Use the comments sections of individual essays to ask questions, share thoughts about what you found interesting, what was clear and what was tough.

— Dr Chandra Shekhar Balachandran, Geographer
Founder, Director of The Institute of Geographical Studies

Videos of the project launch event, Geophany, held at MithraVana, Mysuru on 24 June 2022.

This part features the inaugural talk by Śrī Sriram Venkatakrishnan, noted writer and historian of karnātaka sangītam (carnatic music) on the importance of travel and how geographical details in Śrī Muttusvāmi Dīkshitar’s compositions help a better understanding of pilgrimage geography.

Featured image: Project logo, by Maitreyi Ramasubramanian and The Institute of Geographical Studies, © 2021.

Acknowledgments:

Thanks to everyone who has helped with this project in direct and indirect ways.

Project Team:

	Jyothi Gokul	At nearly half a century, I am still learning and discovering; through new experiences in the fields of my choice: creating and developing content for communication, venturing deeper into philosophy, indulging and expressing through the art, and participating in services for positive change among people and in the environment around me. Helping with video documentation for the MD documentary project is definitely one such enriching experience.
	Pranav Shankar	I am a homeschooled student who attended G.o.D. sessions with Dr Balachandran. I have a keen interest in geography and Karnātaka sangītam For the project, I worked on the thematic elements of Dīkshithar's compositions.
	Maithreyi Ramasubramanian	I am a dance student and I have been learning Bharatanatyam since 2012. I am also really interested in art. I worked on the scripting for the Transcending Boundaries segment (to be added later) and creating the logo for the project.
	Kanishk Gokul	I started off by joining the G.o.D. course with Bala Uncle (Dr. Balachandran) in 2017. Uncle had always been expressing a desire to make a documentary on Muttuswami Dikshitar (MD). I decided to join as it would be a great exposure for me. I built the interactive map that allows the user to track places connected to Śrī Muttusvāmi Dīkshitar's songs.
	Manya Sekar	I was homeschooled from age 9 to 12 and I am currently attending school in Auroville. I was a Bharatanatyam student since 2015, a Karnātaka sangītam student since 2017. a G.o.D. student 2016-2020. I like reading, writing and daydreaming. I worked on the fusion and diaspora aspects of the project.
	R. Neeraj Bharadwaj	I am a big fan of Karnātaka sangītam. I am learning to play the mrudangam. I researched and prepared the historical, political, and cultural contexts of Dīkshitar's life.
	Sarah Nivedita	I have been a student of Geography.over.Distance since 2017. I have been learning bharatanatyam since 2012 and karnātaka sangītam since 2015. I've been working with the fusion and scripting parts of the project.
	Neel Shashank Krishna	I joined the project in 2019. I started working on iconography in Dīkshitar's songs. I also worked on the database used in the project. I engaged in writing for the script of the documentary since the beginning of the summer of 2020. Subsequently, the documentary project was replaced by the project that you now see.
	Ramesh B.	Academically an electronics engineer, professionally been a computer engineer and trainer. Currently engaged in school education. Been more involved in various social causes using my passion and skills in training, interacting with people, photography, film making, etc. In this project, I have been involved in videography.
	Chandra Shekhar Balachandran	I grew up enjoying Śrī Muttusvāmi Dīkshitar's compositions. Following a chance conversation in 1990, my guru, Dr Surinder Bhardwaj (now Professor Emeritus, Geography, Kent State University, Ohio, USA), started me on this journey exploring the sacred geographies of this great composer. For this project, I worked as a coordinator bringing together my colleagues' diverse talents. I also wrote and organized some components of the project pages.