The Music Academy founded in 1928, is a pioneer in hosting the December music festival in Chennai. The Academy is hosting its 87th annual conference and concerts. “We have an interesting mix of musicians, musicologists and professionals from various fields on our committee, and follow a process in selecting artists to perform in the December festival, giving fair opportunities to all talented musicians out there. We share a great relationship with all the artists. So they look forward to sing at the Academy as much as we do,” says N.Murali, president, the Music Academy.
The Music Academy hosts five concerts every day, with juniors and sub juniors singing in the afternoons. Seniors get to sing in the prime slots in the evening with the super-seniors singing in the morning. “Since we wanted to give importance to dance as well, we conduct a week long dance festival separately as soon as the music season gets over in January,” says the president.
“Since the time the present committee was elected in 2005, we have brought about several changes in acoustics, the look of the auditorium and the revamping of seats. As we have many patrons and corporates who believe in us and support the music festival, we have been able to consistently raise the remuneration for the artists,” he says.
The popularity of the Academy is demonstrated on December 2 when after it announces its sale of season tickets, you can see a huge crowd lined outside the premises.
This year's most coveted award of Sangitha Kalanidhi is being conferred upon next gen artiste Sudha Ragunathan. “This opens up opportunities to musicians of the next generation who have been doing exceedingly well for several years now, to be recipients of the Sangitha Kalanidhi in the years to come,” Murali concludes.
Next: On the trail of concert quality
On the trail of concert quality
K.N. Shashikiran and Nivedita Narayanan
Carnatic music concerts as we know them have existed for about a century now. They have evolved with time, new styles have emerged, concert duration has reduced drastically, concert numbers have gone up exponentially, artists are performing many more concerts and new stars are emerging every season. In terms of technical aspects, what has changed with Carnatic music concerts over the past few years is that voice quality has improved tremendously and voice culture has become an integral part of the learning process.
The importance of correct pronunciation and lyrics has increased over the years with musicians making efforts to learn Telugu and Sanksrit and the meaning of the kritis before presenting them in concerts. Musicians are pushing the boundaries by presenting more complex and mindboggling pallavis, and their grasp of laya-related concepts has increased multifold. Professionalism has increased in terms of concert presentation, packaging and themes.
Yet, there is something that appeals to rasikas about yesteryear greats-something that they find missing from present-day concerts. Seasons come and seasons go, yet names like GNB, MLV, MDR, Ariyakudi, KVN, Madurai Mani, D.K. Jayaraman, Semmangudi, GNB and Chembai have stayed on forever. Their music appealed to rasikas of their generation and continues to appeal to all. The missing something is, in one word, vitality. A vitality, passion and energy that was inherent to those days, has given way to a more thought-oriented and hence reduced tempo music.
The music of such musicians as Sathur Subramaniam and T.K. Rangachari is very appealing to rasikas today, even though they were actually in the shadow of giants like Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar in their times. That is because their concerts had a zeal and energy that has somehow gotten lost in the process of musical evolution.
The impact that some of the live concerts of those days created lasted for several days, sometimes years!
Over the years, and in our quest for precision, it sometimes appears that we've achieved a sort of mechanised perfection-call it robotic excellence if you will--that lacks the ruggedness and charm of those days. The very professionalism that has ensured impeccable presentation of performances has itself become a bane, in that it has in some ways robbed us of the gay abandon and hence creativity that musicians sang with earlier.
Madurai Mani Iyer, for example, used liberal doses of seemingly meaningless phrases like “oooooh la la la”, yet his music was enormously captivating because it had a very rustic vitality. As concert performers, we cannot imagine getting away with singing such phrases today!
Proof of the fact that our music has evolved into a more thought-oriented music lies in the fact that some musicians who have been singing for several decades now and drew full houses in their prime are unable to draw similar crowds now.
However, all said and done, now is definitely boom time for Carnatic music. It is receiving more media attention than ever before, more prime time TV slots than ever before, and more young people are taking to the art now than ever before. With everything going in favour of Carnatic music, it is up to us musicians to bridge the gap between then and now-if we combined the best features of the music of then and the music of now, it is needless to say that we'll have an unbeatable combination!
(K.N. Shashikiran is a Carnatic musician; he sings with musician Chitravina Ganesh as Carnatica Brothers. He is also a guru, scholar, author and the founder of well-known music organization Carnatica. Nivedita Narayanan is a Carnatic vocalist and a disciple of K.N. Shashikiran. She is also a TV anchor and a writer.)
Next: Pristine performance
Pristine performance
Date: December 17
Venue: Narada Gana Sabha, Alwarpet Acoustics: Very good, considering the size and compared to last year!
Ambience: Kudos for tasteful décor - The ad in the centre was an eyesore Comfort: Very comfortable seating, good view of artists from everywhere
Crowd: <50 % for the beginning; 10% till the end.
Response: Good rasikas stayed, enjoyed with loud and appreciative claps
In nutshell: Dr Pantula Rama is seen more on the centrestage of Carnatic music, in recent years. Her presence in the Chennai concert scene is marked with sincere, sensitive concert presentation.
She has a quiet demeanor — her voice is of vintage quality, inlaid with sweetness, expressive of gana, naya aspects very well, and her style, a package of impact and confidence. She has a noticeably cute quiver in her voice, not hindering her confident performance anyway.
Accompanied by her husband M.S.N. Murthy on the violin, J.Vaidyanathan on the mridangam and Dr Karthick on ghatam, the concert though was poorly attended (I wish Chennai rasikas shirk the herd following and start paying attention to new challengers in the scene) was a unique combination of scholarship and aesthetics.
Next: Facebook posts of music buffs
Facebook posts of music buffs
(Not all music buffs own a computer or an active Facebook account. If some had one and did post status updates during the music season, the texts might read like these. Disclaimer: Names used are fictitious and not of persons alive and kicking. Or had breathed and posted their last!)
Mylai Madhavan
As if it were preordained, he drops himself heavily onto the adjacent seat in the Sabha almost daily. He beams at me like a lost child in a festival crowd would, at the sight of its mother, and begins his erratic tala enthusiastically. For him aadhi, ata, jhampa rupaka, kandachapu, all have the same beat which he marks on his right thigh with the impressive wrist action of a washerman in Dhobi Talao, banging the hell out of a thick dhoti on a granite slab. Though it may be his fundamental right to enjoy music the way he deems fit, it embarrasses me, if in the surge of excitement, he bangs his palm on my adjacent left thigh instead.
Maduramangalam Mandiresan
Oceans of ink have been used on reams of paper in exhorting rasikas not to get up and go to the canteen/toilet during thani aavardhanam of a mridangist. Yet, yesterday, the moment the vidwan gave me the signal to display my prowess in performing a solo which I began like a rumble of distant thunder, the lady in the red sari in the first row sitting bang opposite me, got up suddenly like a jack-in-the-box and darted across with the swiftness of a fire-walking devotee in an Amman temple. Though I saw red, I could not take her to task for I had married her twenty years ago and her defence would be that she had realized suddenly that she had forgotten to turn off the gas cylinder.
Sundhari Sudhakar
After my recent wedding, I accompany, on the tambura, my mother-in-law Pushpavalli PoornachaÂndar, the Carnatic vocalist. My husband Sudhakar makes fun of me, his pitch being that my sruti is more compatible with my mother-in-law's than with his. This is pure nonsense. If I get up to attend to a forgotten chore while we are in the midst of a romantic tete-e-tete during a lazy Sunday afternoon, he gets annoyed.
“This is not fair,” he growls, “Don't you sit riveted behind my mother for over two hours without any movement like a doll? Yet you can't be with me even for fifteen minutes?”
Indeed, he is unfair-but I like Sudha for throwing such tantrums!
Dhochu Dwarakanath
My granddaughter Shreya doing a degree in SusÂtainÂability Management ( whatever it is) in New York accoÂmpanied me to the Academy tonight. “Great!” was her wide-eyed comment on the ambience--what with elegant ladies parading in swishy gorgeous KanchipuÂrams seÂndÂing flashes from blue jager diamonds whenever they turned every which way.
She was curious to know why the performing musiciÂan had sheaves of paper beÂfore him like a prompter. MiÂnd you, Shreya got by heart Vishnu Sahasranam, SupraÂbatham and other twisters within a week when she was eight years old. Even today she can belt out the tongue-twisterThiruppugazh Muththaitharu paththith thirunagai without any debacle in the middle. “Does he require notes for every song?” she asked? “No,” I shot back, “Mercifully not forVatapi Ganapathim.” She threw me a playful round-house punch.
(The author is a music aficionado and writes humour )
