V. Lakshminarayana

Prof. V. Lakshminarayana was the eldest of a musical family settled in Ramanathapuram, which included Ramnad Eswaran, Ramnad Venkatachalam, Ramnad Krishnan, and Ramnad Raghavan.

The family belonged to the guru-shishya parampara of Baluswamy Dikshithar, who is believed to have introduced the violin to Indian music. Lakshminarayana studied vocal music under Gopala Bhagavathar, disciple of Parameshwara Bhagavathar.

The family also learnt from Ramanathapuram C. S. Sankarasivan, elder brother of mridangam maestro Ramanathapuram C. S. Murugabhoopathy and guru of Madurai T. N. Seshagopalan. Sankarasivan was himself a disciple of Harikesanallur Muthiah Bhagavathar.

Lakshminarayana served as a professor at the music college in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. It was his dream to make the Indian violin, then used mostly for accompaniment, a primary solo instrument on par with the western violin and to see it played in prestigious concert halls worldwide.

He introduced masterful and original violin techniques while preserving the ornamentation essential to Indian classical music. His sons L. Vaidyanathan, L. Subramaniam, and L. Shankar carried forward the tradition.