Gayana Samaja's 40th music confest
Focus on Semmangudi - SULOCHANA SARALAYA

The fortieth music conference of the Bangalore Gayana Samaja was held from 27th July to 3rd August. Senior vocalist, Bellary M. Venkateshachar was elected the Conference President and presided over the experts sessions held in the mornings from 28th July to 2nd August The theme of the Conference was "Semmangudi".

N. Gopalaswamy, Chief Election Commissioner of India, inaugurated the conference and Sudhakar Rao (Chief Secretary to the Govt. of Karnataka), conferred the title "Sangeeta Kalaratna" on vidwan Bellary Venkateshachar on 3rd August. In his valedictory address, Justice B.N. Srikrishna, recollected his family's association with Semmangudi and released the autobiographical Tamil book Semmangudiyin Kural penned by Dr. Karaikudi S. Subramanian and published by Brhaddhvani.

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Teertha Bharatham
Dance like a river! - LEELA VENKATARAMAN

It was Bharatanatyam engaged in traversing the collective consciousness of India through the theme of Indian rivers in Natyarangam's (dance wing of Narada Gana Sabha Trust) Teertha Bharatham (4th -10th August) at Sathguru Gnanananda auditorium. The choice of subject for the organisation's annual thematic dance festival, a popular landmark event of the Chennai cultural calendar, has to be lauded for its aesthetic scope and relevance to the pan-Indian situation.

Barring Malavika Sarukkai whose performance was the curtain raiser for the week-long event, the participants were younger artists who are making a mark. Far from being imitative, the young aspirants revealed a vibrant intellectual approach along with remarkable creative imagination.

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Svanubhava
An enriching experience - GAYATRI SUNDARESAN

Svanubhava was an enriching self-experience. The six-day festival showcased repeatedly that the fine arts are to be felt and experienced by the rasika – by definition a person who savours and appreciates. And being in the midst of hordes of keen students of music brought this feeling to the fore.

The ambience at the Kalakshetra campus was all that one could wish for – traditional kolam designs welcoming the participants, fresh breeze wafting into the open auditorium from the lush green trees outside. The strict dress code observed there took one back by some years – the traditional Indian sari, flower-decked long plaits, kumkum and chandan on the foreheads of the girl students, and veshti-kurta worn by the male students set the scene for a classical festival.

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Sangeetanjali in Ettayapuram - M.B. SRIMAN NARAYAN

Sri Parthasarathy Swami Sabha, Saraswathi Vaggeyakara Trust, Narada Gana Sabha Trust, Bharatiya Sangeeta Vaibhavam, Chennai and Nada Jyoti Sri Muthuswami Dikshitar memorial Trust, Ettayapuram jointly organised and offered "Sangeetanjali" to Nadajyoti Muthuswami Dikshitar on 10th August at Sri Muthuswami Dikshitar memorial hall in Ettayapuram.

The Sangeetanjali was held from 9.30 am to 6.30 pm. It began with the rendering of Muthuswami Dikshitar's kriti Saravati tatavasini in Saravati raga by Nithya and Vidhya disciples of Tiruvengadu Jayaraman. The function was inaugurated by Cleveland V.V. Sundaram and the kuthuvilakku was lit by Gomathy Sundaram. The list of compositions to be presented were given to the artists in advance, so that no Dikshitar kriti was repeated. The compositions to be rendered during the Sangeetanjali were published by Sri Parthasarathy Swami Sabha and released by Sundaram.

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Upasana – making a mark - A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Upasana, a Manchester based Indian dance company, performed to a packed auditorium in their annual showcase, Utsav 08 held in September at The Waterside Arts Centre, Sale, Manchester, the U.K.

With colourful costumes and vibrant music, the 25 students from Upasana's classes at the Didsbury Methodist Church, Manchester High School for Girls and Indian Association’s Nrtya Jyoti, Oldham, presented a display of high quality Indian dance and music. Utsav was a beautiful combination of energetic dance, music, costumes, foyer exhibition and Indian snacks from Anand Deli, Rusholme. It even had a green message by putting on sale their specially commissioned jute bags! The event was supported by the Community Foundations for Greater Manchester.

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CHENNAISPEAK
Raining rivers - N. VAIDYANATHAN

It is raining, a pleasure to watch through the window, snug in your study, book in hand and a glass beside you. Watch the rain turn into rivulets, collecting in puddles and pools. Aakaasat patitam toyam… Rivers in embryo? I look at the book in my hand – Alice Albinia's Empires of the Indus – a tribute, part-epic part-elegiac in tone, to the Sindhu.

It is a slow read to begin with, slipping into patches of history and archeology familiar to us. But if you persist, as the writer does, doggedly following the river from the sea to its source, through the Himalayas into Tibet, the narrative picks up speed. The Himalayan landscape works its magic. Listen to Alice… "The Indus, older than the mountains, older than the Ganges, follows the fault-line, from western Tibet through Ladakh, tracing the seismic join between the continental plates". Her vision is contagious as she treks resolutely, porter and guide, ramshackle tent and all, through the Hindu Kush and Karakoram Himalayas, more desolate-sounding somehow than the Garhwali-Kumaoni ranges, into Tibet, beyond Mount Kailas, determined to reach its source. And when she does so, you send up a silent cheer. There are books which tell us as much about the writer as about the theme. Alice may not write like Pico Iyer. But she comes across as a woman of indomitable spirit, a ‘Veerangana’, a true daughter of the Sindhu.

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Sruti Silver Jubilee
Eyal Isai Natakam Gala - S.P. Sundaram

Apart from the obvious toast to Sruti for its dedication and service ov er a quarter of a century, one should also propose the second toast to Sruti parivaar for putting on a typical programme, in the tradition of Sruti, befitting the ideals and the dreams of its Founder. Yes, Pattabhi Raman would have highly approved, perhaps with the comment that, in keeping with the character of Sruti, a session could have been devoted to Hindustani music and the magnetism of another living legend (and a staunch supporter of Sruti), Pandit Ravi Shankar.

Truly, we can only commend the organisers for the conceptualisation and the contents of the "splash" and the selection of the artists to project the items, as bequeathed by the Founder, who revived the RTP, and had experts study and analyse the magic of GNB's music and the deliciousness of the bowmanship of Lalgudi. Sruti’s Silver Jubilee Splash was another trend-setter.

Throughout the programme, it occured to me – possibly to others as well, like S. Rajam, Nirmala Ramachandran, R. Sathiamurthi, KVR and the Editor – was it not part of the dream and vision behind the (still-born) Samudri? Samudri (The Subbulakshmi-Sadasivam Music & Dance Resources Institute) would not only house the manuscripts, photos, recordings and other archival material, but the walls of the Samudri complex halls would be alive with the sound of music of long ago and later — the pathantara-s and teaching traditions, the pearls dived out of the 'samudram' — ensuring their everlasting life.

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Vocal role models - V. Ramnarayan

The Sound of Mucus. That is how Christopher Plummer, who played the role of Captain von Trapp in the 1960s super blockbuster The Sound of Music described the movie in a private moment. The tongue-in-cheek remark has stayed in memory all these years, mainly because, I, like millions of others, was shocked by the actor's cynicism. Why did he accept the role, if he felt the way he did, was the question uppermost in my mind.

Be that as it may, I have often wondered if Plummer's description of the award winning film in which he co-starred with Julie Andrews, better fits the vocalisation efforts of some Carnatic musicians. For instance, 'Raba lallu brovara' and 'Kabalabba bajare' are common enough refrains to suggest an ongoing relationship between Carnatic music and running noses and blocked nostrils. A closer examination would however reveal poor enunciation and vocal indiscipline – rather than chronic colds – to be the real culprit behind such cold-blooded murder of lyrics.

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