News - Views - Reviews
World Music Day Celebrations
It was a very peaceful Sunday evening when we entered Vasanth Vihar, the premises of the Krishnamurti Foundation of India on Greenways Road, Chennai. A very quiet, beautiful and cozy place to be in. What an ambience to listen to good music! The beauty of the whole event was how the young and energetic Carnatica team beautifully gelled with the senior (average age was 50 plus), but enthusiastic members of the KFI team.
The evening started off at exactly 5.30 pm, as scheduled and the hall was already overflowing with small kids and their parents. Nisha Rajagopalan started the function with a prayer for world peace. She very aptly chose the popular song, Maitreem bhajata, setting the right note for occasion. Following this Mr. O R Rao, trustee of KFI and Carnatica's Mohan Parasaran delivered their welcome addresses.
|
|
|
Then
came the much-awaited panel discussion on the topic
"Role and Contribution of Indian Music to World Music." The expert panel
consisted of Dr. V V Srivatsa, Dr. S Sunder and V Sriram. It was obvious
that the panelists had done their homework in the way they made every
minute useful, informative and interesting. Dr. V V Srivatsa
spoke in about the history of various music systems across the globe,
interspersing his session with thought-provoking tidbits. For instance, he
mentioned that the Carnatic raga Kambhoji came from Cambodia and that raga
Sindhubhairavi was derived from Sindh.
The grand finale of the evening was the thematic music recital by S Sowmya.
Once again, her choices were very apt, bringing in different facets of
Carnatic music, and illustrating how great composers have taken the best
elements from other systems of music and incorporated them cleverly into
our own system. The items included compositions like Sarasanetra
(in a Western note style), the popular Dwijavanti piece Akhilandeshwari
(Hindustani style) and Sangeeta gyanamu (traditonal Carnatic
style) and so on. For the benefit of the kids in the audience, Sowmya also
explained each raga and tala and why
she chose each song.
Another heartwarming feature of the concert was that the kids displayed immense enthusiasm, keeping tala with the main singer and even humming the tunes they were familiar with!
|
|
|
In her vote of thanks, Mrs. Uma Kalyanaraman especially praised the coordinator and brain behind the whole function, K N Shashikiran, for his indefatigable spirit and tireless efforts.
The Hindu carried a report of this function on June 24, 2002. You can access the same at http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/lf/2002/06/24/stories/2002062402820200.htm
Sunanda Rangarajan
Posted on June 28, 2002
