sabha crawling

December music festival in chennai is well known and extremely well documented.NRI tamilians flock to chennai during this time and have their fill of ragas, swaras, sahityams and sabhas to last one year. Like camels this drink of pure carnatic music will last them long.It is true for chennaites also. The feverish pitch with which chennai skyline is dotted with performances at every available space makes ardent music lovers like me wish for december season to last for the next eleven months. The Hindu has sponsored a theatre fest in november and a dance festival in Music academy in january about explains the slow spread of the fine arts virus to the other months.
There is something very endearing about getting into the mood and sabha hopping during the peak december season. You open the newspaper and they are full of reviews, photos and comments about the performances of the previous day with vivid marketing for the programmes scheduled for the day and week ahead. Huge pull outs from newspapers were missing this time and we were told that the economic melt down is having a music festival angle to it. But then the competititon among newspapers saw to it that reams of newsprint was utilised in postmortems! TV channels were also hard pressed for creative programmes, simply latched on to relaying these programmes and they had very good viewership among the senior citizens and others on the go! They had their taste of a kutcheri for an hour in the evening/early morning(repeat telecast) and felt a sense of being there and doing what the culture vultures in chennai were doing.
The sabha halls were a different experience altogether. I did spot very senior citizens nodding their heads vigorously. But i also saw the veterans; they had a dictionary of karnatic music songs.The minute an artiste sang the first line of a keertana, they would flip open the book and note the composer. Of course identifying a raga would have already happened. I saw a techie with a net enabled handset googling for information on the artist. I saw an entire family land in a concert and had vigorous consultations on ragam tanam pallavi and the ragamalika ragams at the end of it. One of them had a small note book like what waiters used to have in udipi restaurants (they were called 'servers') and was noting down the songs sung by the musician. A compendium of sorts. It made me want to chronicle in a similar way and remembered to carry a huge diary for tm krishna's concert (the 4 hour version). But lost the pen on the way and hence innovated by storing them in my mobile. Vallavanuku handphone um aayudham!
Nithyasree's concert was very good. I am hearing her concert for the first time; no not this season but first time ever. I enjoyed every minute of it. She lives through her concert. Her rich timbre and sruthi sutham shines through. Her songs are not performances but showcasing herself. Her choice of songs was perfect and the three hours went away without looking at the watch even for a minute. I just closed my eyes and lived through the concert. It was a yogic experience.
Mandolin concert was to accompany my aunt. She is an ardent fan of mandolin and had specifically requested that she be escorted for the same. I am again listening to mandolin srinivas after many years and I had warned athai that we would stage a walkout if he gets into speed playing and gimmicry.But as it turned out it had its 'speed' moments but it was a soulful melliflous rendering. How he is able to effortlessly coax that tiny instrument to bring out so many wonderful kaarvais is amazing.
Sowmya was very good and very pleasing and melodious but she is not able to lift the concert to an extraordinary experience.
Mahabalipuram dance festival was an unique experience. Coincidentally the day we were there we had a kalakshetra presentation and we got ringside seats as guests of kalakshetra. It was a surreal experience with the moon shining as a backdrop; goats grazing on the rocks above the arjuna penace and small kids frisking about on the rockface. The entire experience was something to be cherished.
Curtain down on december festivals. But margazhi madam is still going strong!