MADRAS MUSIC MELA 2002
       

GRAND ALL-NIGHT FEST FROM CARNATICA!
     
Unbelievable but true! This is what the ads that Shapre Carnatica gave out in the last few days for their New Year Eastern Ethnic Eve celebrations on December 31, 2002 said. And that’s exactly what happened on the 31st night between 10.30 pm and 6.30 am. It was a great treat to watch artistes, musicians, musicologists, Vedic pundits, bhajan singers and music lovers, all assembled together at this unique congregation.
    
The function started at 10:30 pm with the crisp and lively violin concert of T N Krishnan and his son T N Sriram Krishnan. To the excitement of the audience, the artistes included the popular composition 'Endaro Mahanubhavulu'. This gave several among the audience an opportunity to sing along! The violin duet was followed by the vocal concert of O S Tyagarajan, who managed to attend the function despite having a performance at the Mylapore Fine Arts Club earlier that evening, and that of senior vidwan Setalapati R Balasubramaniam.

    
At the stroke of midnight, everybody, including the audience chanted Om. Then Setalapati Balasubramaniam took over again and did a short namasankeertana.
    

A big kuttuvilakku was jointly lit by Mohan Parasaran, Chairman of Carnatica Archival Centre and M Murali of Sri Krishna Sweets. Simultaneously, numerous tiny lamps (ahalvilakku) were lit outside the hall by the Carnatica staff to welcome the New Year.
     

After the namasamkeertana, all the artistes including Setalapati Balasubramaniam, N Vijay Siva, O S Tyagarajan, Srimushnam Raja Rao, R Suryaprakash, Prof. M R Rangarajan, B Ranjani, B Gayatri, Vasundhara Rajagopal, Lakshmi Rangarajan, Palghat Sriram, Nisha Rajagopal, Savita Narasimhan, Sangeeta, Lavanya, Akkarai Subhalakshmi, M Janardhanan, B Ganapatiraman, B Sivaraman,  K V R S Mani, K V Gopalakrishnan, Trivandrum Balaji and Subhiksha Rangarajan together rendered Harinama samkeertana and the popular song calling for world peace, 'Shanti Nilava Vendum'.

The assembled artistes also performed individually. Some of the surprises were the vocal performances of mridangist Srimushnam Raja Rao and Akkarai Subhalakshmi, who teamed up with her sister Swarnalata. These artistes also untiringly provided accompaniment all through the night. Sitarist M Janardhanan's choice of 'Do-Re-Mi' from the movie The Sound of Music and 'Lara's Theme' from Dr. Zhivago also came in as surprises. The Priya sisters also joined the function later and gave a short but crisp performance.

The audience was treated to some traditional South Indian food in the form of ‘Panakam’, ‘Ven Pongal’, ‘Sweet Pongal’, ‘Badam Kheer’ and ‘Masala Chai’, to keep them refreshed. Veda Parayana started by about 5 am and continued till 6.15 am. The function came to a finish with a performance of the Carnatica Brothers, K N Shashikiran and P Ganesh.
    
The rasikas truly had a wonderful time. Rarely do art-forms like Namasankeertana, Vedic chanting, Bhajans and classical music come together. Carnatica and the sponsors of the event ought to be complimented for bringing them together. One hopes that they will continue to provide such value entertainment in the years to come.

    

Posted on January 3, 2003
   

More from MMM 2002!
    

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