Music lovers mourn Mandolin Srinivas' death - Times of India

VISAKHAPATNAM: The untimely passing away of Mandolin Srinivas, considered one of the greatest musical geniuses of the modern era, left music lovers in the Port City, especially patrons of Carnatic music, deeply shocked.

The child prodigy, who hit the headlines at the age of 12, breathed his last at 45 at a corporate hospital due to a prolonged kidney ailment in Chennai, on Friday.

Mourning his untimely death, legendary Carnatic violinist Dwaram Venkata Swami Naidu's grandson Dwaram Swami said, "It is a great loss to the world of music as there will never ever be another Mandolin Srinivas. A genius, he could play any raga on the instrument instantaneously. He was also forever humble and extremely polite. To me at a personal level his death is cause of great grief as he was more of a younger brother."

Recollecting the mandolin player's last performance in Visakhapatnam in 2000, Dwaram Swami said, "It was at the Kalabharathi and in memory of my late father, Bhavanarayana Garu. He started his performance with my father's composition Sri Venkatesa, based on the Valaji Raagam, and actually broke down during the performance."

Ruing the fact that though a Telugu born and trained in Andhra Pradesh, Mandolin Srinivas was never given the recognition due to him by the AP government in the last 30 years and it was the Tamil Nadu government that accorded recognition to his prodigious talent.

Kalabharathi secretary Gummuluri Ram Babu pointed out that Mandolin Srinivas was slated to give a performance at Kalabharathi in 2015 as he was to receive the Kalabharathi eminence award for the year 2015. I cannot express my sorrow in words. However, for the last four years, he had been going through a very painful period," said Ram Babu, pointing out that unfortunately the connoisseurs of music in Vizag got to watch him live only twice, once in the mid-80s at the Vivekananda hall and the second time in 2000.

Terming the musical genius as a true Saraswati putra, B Vikram Goud, who runs the Nataraj Music and Dance Academy, said artists like Mandolin Srinivas are not mere mortals. "Such artists are not born everyday and they definitely cannot be made," Goud said. D V Subba Rao, one of the chief patrons of classical music in Visakhapatnam, mourned the fact that such a long, glittering career was cut short so cruelly by fate.

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