Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar was one of the finest Carnatic music vocalists of the 20th century. This is a list of concerts and events that helped shape his career as a popular Carnatic musician. Arangetram & first paid concerts (1904) He had his arangetram or debut, a concert of two hours' duration, when he performed together with his brother Subramanian in 1904. The brothers had their first paid concert in 1905 at a temple festival in a town called Ottapalam in the Palakkad district of Kerala. A little later, there was another noteworthy concert at Kantallur Parthasarathy Temple. Anantha Bhagavatar himself provided the violin accompaniment, while mridanga support was given by well-known stage actor Chokkanathapuram Ayya Bhagavatar. Vaikom and Guruvayur performances (1907) One of the landmarks in the early career of the brothers was their concert at the temple festival in Vaikom, known for the annual musical feast it provided. At this concert in 1907, the father again provided violin support. Chembai thereafter made it a practice to sing at the Vaikom festival every year. After the Vaikom concert, Anantha Bhagavatar took the boys to Guruvayur, another important temple town where again they had a successful concert. Guruvayur too became a regular part of the Chembai's concert programme every year. Thus Vaidyanathan and Subrahmaniam imbibed from an early age not only the knowledge of music that their father had but also the tradition of a religious life which had marked the family for generations. A year with Kaliakudi Natesa Sastry (1909) When Kaliakudi Natesa Sastry of Tiruvarur, an exponent of the art of Harikatha (musical discourse), came to Chembai village, Anantha Bhagavatar and his family attended the programmes, leading to the boys joining Sastry's troupe. Their concert in Tiruvarur (in Tanjavur district) at a guru pooja festival at which Natesa Sastrigal gave a discourse was especially notable, because it was at this concert that the boys were heard for the first time by Pudukkottai Dakshinamurthy Pillai, a famed exponent of the mridangam and kanjira. During their sojourn with Natesa Sastry, they had not only been singing at various places, they had also taken every possible opportunity of listening to famous musicians whenever they performed, such as Namakkal Narasimha Iyengar, Kallidaikurichi Vedanta Bhagavatar, Ramanathapuram Srinivasa Iyengar, Konerirajapuram Vaidyanatha Iyer, Harikesanallur Muthiah Bhagavatar, Madurai Pushpavanam, Tirukodikaval Krishna Iyer, Malaikkottai Govindaswamy Pillai and Pudukkottai Dakshinamurthy Pillai. This learning by listening was a valuable facet