Kshetrayya

Who is Kshetrayya?

Kshetrayya was a prolific Telugu poet and composer of Carnatic music. He lived in the area of Andhra Pradesh in South India. He composed a number of padams and keertanas, the prevalent formats of his time. He is credited with more than 4000 compositions, although only a handful have survived. He composed his songs on his favourite deity Krishna in Telugu.

Not much is known about his personal life. He was born in a village called Movva in Andhra Pradesh. His parents named him Varadayya. Because of his habit of traveling from one place to another singing his songs at temples, he came to be called Kshetragna or Kshetrayya.

He perfected the padam format that is still used today. His padams are sung in dance and music recitals. A unique feature of his padams is the practice of singing the anupallavi first then the pallavi. Most of the padams are of the theme of longing for the coming of the Lord Krishna.

He wrote with Sringara as a main theme in expressing madhurabhakti. Sringara is a motif where the mundane sexual relationship between a Nayaki and a Nayaka is used as a metaphor, denoting the yearning of jeeva to unite with the divine. In most of his compositions, Kshetrayya has used the mudra "Muvva Gopala" as a reference to himself, which is also a name for the Lord Krishna in Kshetrayya's village Muvva in Krishna District of Andhra Pradesh State, now called as Movva.