Saraswathi Orchestra, Bengaluru (Bangalore)
Mayavaram Subramaniam Natarajan (aka..Silk Natarajan…aka…Banjo Nataraj) a maverick genius, in the 1930’s set out to put together his own band.
Silk Natarajan was born to a famous Dental Surgeon in Bangalore. He had mastered at least 18 musical instruments by the time he was a teenager
By early 1935 he got 5 like-minded friends (vidwans) together to form the ‘Saraswathi Orchestra’
Within a year the band Saraswathi Orchestra went on to become a 25-member Bangalore band that mixed Hindustani, Carnatic and Jazz music
Silk Nataraj gave India fusion music way back in the silent era. He met the famous dancer Maya Rao in one of his programmes and who would become his future wife
The Saraswathi Orchestra ran for 20 years before being disbanded in the 1950’s. Some of the members of the select group of 25, went to become very famous. A few of the well known are Mridangam Vidwan Veerabhadrappa, Vidwan Anoor Suryanarayana (vocalist and veena player), Vidwan Srikantiah (veena player) and Vidwan Krishnamurthy Rao (Violinist)
M S Natarajan passed away in September 1997 in Bangalore