The bulk of this issue is devoted to reports and analyses of a number of festivals of music and dance. Another Mad Season in Madras, the mid-section concerned with the festival in Madras, rightly takes up most of the space. The lead article in this section, Nothing Exceeds Like Excess presents the salient facts and explains the consequences of the profligate programming which results in a music and dance overkill — facts and analysis you will find nowhere else. My colleagues, including a couple of occasionals, have pooled their observations to make the feature interesting as well as instructive. Youll find they have not hesitated to offer praise where due or to make mincemeat of even sacred cows where warranted. In Sounds of Music and Images of Dance, the pithy critiques focus on selected artists who performed at the Mecca of Music and the Delhi of Dance.

In Madras the festival is a raging fever; in other places it is only a mild rise in temperature, maybe. But you can read about the festivals in Bangalore, Secunderabad and Visakhapatnam also, in the News and Notes section. And too, about the continuing Festival of India in the USSR and Synergy-87, a mini-festival organized by the students of NITIE in Powai, Bombay.

Yet another festival—combined with a seminar —took place in Calcutta. It focussed on the Martial arts of Asia and their influence on dance and theatre. There is a report on it, as well as a commentary. The 'back of the book' contains a thought-provoking article on Tyagaraja as a composer with intelligence and very human traits. It contains, too, the issue's 'cover feature' — the lucid notes on the raga Sankarabharanam, accompanied by illustrations executed by the principal author S. Rajam.