MUSIC SEASON
This is original version of the Article which was published on the Total Perspective Vortex last year...
------------------------------------------------------------
The city of Chennai during the fag end of every calendar year gets itself geared to what is very less known to most of its parts. This is probably in some sense a private affair to the oldest areas of this city, which form a great portion of the southern part of the city. Actually, one can even confine this event to the folds of Mylapore and its whereabouts with probably one or two exceptions elsewhere. It is the Carnatic Music season, which gets started sometime in December (in recent times towards end of November) and goes on till just beyond New Year. This is when one gets to listen to music of all kind in places of all kind by people of all kind
Most people in the city feel the existence of the season from the traffic snarls and haphazard parking of automobiles of various sizes and shapes all over the roads near the auditoria where performances are held. Many a carnatic freak will say that one can put up with such worldly issues when one gets to hear divine music, which is soft, majestic, melodious and yet above all has a very rigid basic grammar to which one is expected to adhere completely while for others all of this commotion is an add-on to the noise made by a group of people on stage, which is any day inferior to the popular numbers on TV and radio everyday. A popular magazine has reported that there where not less than 2500 performances in various kinds of music and dance only in the recently concluded music season.
The question of what is so special for this kind of music and why is it that people flock to these concerts is something, which has been unanswered. The music for people who like it is a blessing to hear and these people are the ones who can understand the music. The en mass of people who cannot identify the intricacies involved in this music do not appreciate this variety of music A remarked a learned scholar on music of the west.
“Indian classical music forms do not have any tune, they just have a way of singing which is adhered to”.
Though this statement makes the form of music very simple sounding and hence leaves one with a idea that it should be understandable to all, the very statement has the answer for why the music is not understandable to people who do not have an initiation to this form of art which is a legacy since ages.
This carnatic music season has a long-standing history of just over a century and has a lot of anecdotes and controversies all thro’ it. The first of these sabhas (Associations/Trusts) that organize these concerts was “Parthasarathy Swami Sabha” was started in 1900 in the terrace of a house in Triplicane after the presiding deity there. Chronologically the second and the leading institution of the day, “The Music Academy” was started in 1929 in Mylapore and presently is in Alwarpet. Its sessions were held in Mylapore or Triplicane. These sabhas in the early days were basically started and run by leading Lawyers and Doctors who felt that they had to promote this form of art to keep up the tradition and legacy left to us by our ancestors and also would be a good entertainment in the evenings after a hectic day.
This season did not start as a planned event. The third in the list was Indian Fine Arts which kicked off in the early thirties and later the Tamil Isai Sangam (Association for Tamil Music) was started in the early days of World War II. After which there were a few more sabhas started in the late 40’s and 50’s. During those years in the Early 40’s there was a strong divide between people who wanted that only Tamil music should be performed and another group which said that the compositions of stalwarts of carnatic music were not many in Tamil and hence the performances should have more of songs in Sanskrit and Telugu which are the two languages widely used by composers. The rift was so intense that the artists were classified into two mutually exclusive sets and each group would have its own performances by their own artists who would not crossover. This rift was somehow bridged in later days but the concept of parallel performances at different places, which was started as a result of this divide, did continue. Thus the concept of a few associations having performances during approximately the same time in different places came into existence. Then there were more sabhas started in the years to come.
Beyond the crowd pulling concerts of the evenings, the organizers started holding lectures and demonstrations on various music related topics in the mornings. Later there were dedicated auditoria built by these associations for their programmes, thus shifting from temples and other multipurpose halls. Then the concept of giving a chance to upcoming artists also came up and they were accommodated in the afternoon sessions at various placed. The season sort of got set in the month of December when the people had a chill weather and also thanks to the English who made most of this month as holidays.
Then the came the practice of recognizing artists of high caliber during these series of performances. One of the pioneers for this was the Music Academy, which since its first year decorated great musicians as chairman of the year’s music festival, which it calls as the Annual Music Conference. This honor of Chairman, Music conference was later rechristend as the “Sangita Kalanidhi” which is a prestigious award even today. The other sabhas followed in honoring senior artists with awards of various names and kind.
Today, the music season has extended to last for more than a month. The different associations also conduct series of performances for various occasions and festival but the Annual Music Season, which was started and is organized to celebrate no festival/occasion is the largest hit and crowd puller even today. Most people living in parts of south madras still consider it as a great thing to attend concerts of this kind in sabhas of high stature in the Rock/Pop/Metallica Age. The number of concert goers has surely gone down over the years but be it MTV or Channel V or any more of these things which would haunt our living rooms, there is still enough crowd in concerts that the parking lots of almost all these places where performances are held always over flow.
Any type of music downloaded from any part of the world will surely have basic element of the traditional Indian music in it, which will live whatever happens. Any day, this form of music will have its own fan falling and the day when more people get attracted to this divine art form is not far.
------------------------------------------------------------
The city of Chennai during the fag end of every calendar year gets itself geared to what is very less known to most of its parts. This is probably in some sense a private affair to the oldest areas of this city, which form a great portion of the southern part of the city. Actually, one can even confine this event to the folds of Mylapore and its whereabouts with probably one or two exceptions elsewhere. It is the Carnatic Music season, which gets started sometime in December (in recent times towards end of November) and goes on till just beyond New Year. This is when one gets to listen to music of all kind in places of all kind by people of all kind
Most people in the city feel the existence of the season from the traffic snarls and haphazard parking of automobiles of various sizes and shapes all over the roads near the auditoria where performances are held. Many a carnatic freak will say that one can put up with such worldly issues when one gets to hear divine music, which is soft, majestic, melodious and yet above all has a very rigid basic grammar to which one is expected to adhere completely while for others all of this commotion is an add-on to the noise made by a group of people on stage, which is any day inferior to the popular numbers on TV and radio everyday. A popular magazine has reported that there where not less than 2500 performances in various kinds of music and dance only in the recently concluded music season.
The question of what is so special for this kind of music and why is it that people flock to these concerts is something, which has been unanswered. The music for people who like it is a blessing to hear and these people are the ones who can understand the music. The en mass of people who cannot identify the intricacies involved in this music do not appreciate this variety of music A remarked a learned scholar on music of the west.
“Indian classical music forms do not have any tune, they just have a way of singing which is adhered to”.
Though this statement makes the form of music very simple sounding and hence leaves one with a idea that it should be understandable to all, the very statement has the answer for why the music is not understandable to people who do not have an initiation to this form of art which is a legacy since ages.
This carnatic music season has a long-standing history of just over a century and has a lot of anecdotes and controversies all thro’ it. The first of these sabhas (Associations/Trusts) that organize these concerts was “Parthasarathy Swami Sabha” was started in 1900 in the terrace of a house in Triplicane after the presiding deity there. Chronologically the second and the leading institution of the day, “The Music Academy” was started in 1929 in Mylapore and presently is in Alwarpet. Its sessions were held in Mylapore or Triplicane. These sabhas in the early days were basically started and run by leading Lawyers and Doctors who felt that they had to promote this form of art to keep up the tradition and legacy left to us by our ancestors and also would be a good entertainment in the evenings after a hectic day.
This season did not start as a planned event. The third in the list was Indian Fine Arts which kicked off in the early thirties and later the Tamil Isai Sangam (Association for Tamil Music) was started in the early days of World War II. After which there were a few more sabhas started in the late 40’s and 50’s. During those years in the Early 40’s there was a strong divide between people who wanted that only Tamil music should be performed and another group which said that the compositions of stalwarts of carnatic music were not many in Tamil and hence the performances should have more of songs in Sanskrit and Telugu which are the two languages widely used by composers. The rift was so intense that the artists were classified into two mutually exclusive sets and each group would have its own performances by their own artists who would not crossover. This rift was somehow bridged in later days but the concept of parallel performances at different places, which was started as a result of this divide, did continue. Thus the concept of a few associations having performances during approximately the same time in different places came into existence. Then there were more sabhas started in the years to come.
Beyond the crowd pulling concerts of the evenings, the organizers started holding lectures and demonstrations on various music related topics in the mornings. Later there were dedicated auditoria built by these associations for their programmes, thus shifting from temples and other multipurpose halls. Then the concept of giving a chance to upcoming artists also came up and they were accommodated in the afternoon sessions at various placed. The season sort of got set in the month of December when the people had a chill weather and also thanks to the English who made most of this month as holidays.
Then the came the practice of recognizing artists of high caliber during these series of performances. One of the pioneers for this was the Music Academy, which since its first year decorated great musicians as chairman of the year’s music festival, which it calls as the Annual Music Conference. This honor of Chairman, Music conference was later rechristend as the “Sangita Kalanidhi” which is a prestigious award even today. The other sabhas followed in honoring senior artists with awards of various names and kind.
Today, the music season has extended to last for more than a month. The different associations also conduct series of performances for various occasions and festival but the Annual Music Season, which was started and is organized to celebrate no festival/occasion is the largest hit and crowd puller even today. Most people living in parts of south madras still consider it as a great thing to attend concerts of this kind in sabhas of high stature in the Rock/Pop/Metallica Age. The number of concert goers has surely gone down over the years but be it MTV or Channel V or any more of these things which would haunt our living rooms, there is still enough crowd in concerts that the parking lots of almost all these places where performances are held always over flow.
Any type of music downloaded from any part of the world will surely have basic element of the traditional Indian music in it, which will live whatever happens. Any day, this form of music will have its own fan falling and the day when more people get attracted to this divine art form is not far.
posted by bharath at 9:24 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home