Return to the raaga
Jaya Menon, The Indian Express
January 6, 2008
http://www.indianexpress.com/sunday/story/257653.html

Every winter, as the clammy air turns into a wispy breeze, Chennai, a city often troubled by the torrent of change, loses itself in the comfort of an 80-year-old tradition. In music halls (sabhas) scattered across the city, techies from Silicon Valley and maamis in glittering temple jewellery, settle down in chairs. The chatter subsides, all eyes turn to the stage—and in the touch of the bow on the strings of a violin, the silence scatters. The concert begins. This is the city’s famous kutcheri festival, held from December 15 to January 15, the margazhi month in the Tamil calendar, the only celebration of classical music and dance in the country, apart from Kolkata’s Dover Lane Music Conference, where music-lovers outnumber the tickets on offer.

Thirty-nine-year-old S. Sridharan, a software professional from Sydney, got hooked to the magic when he was 12. He left for Australia six years ago but every December, he flies down from Australia, carrying his mridangam, to the city of his birth where he grew up learning raagas and thalas. When he is not performing, Sridharan, who works for retailer giant Harvey Norman, wears cool shorts, hops from one programme hall to another, attending not less than 50 concerts in the season, drinking filter coffee and munching on seedai and murukku.

At the halls, in the crowd of uncles in cotton veshtis, clutching worn diaries in which they jot down the name of a song and its raaga, you can find more hip techies like Sridharan who return home at this time from all corners of the world. With their camcorders and laptops, they bring with them the talent and interest that keeps the sabha season buzzing with life. “It is the frenzy that is most enthralling. We go from one sabha to another, discuss and talk after every performance, catch up at a sabha canteen, debate on the quality of performances and exclaim over the ones we missed. This is what we come back for every year,’’ says Sridharan, who will fly back after attending the last concert of the season.

This season, he was only a part of the audience, listening to vocalists and instrumentalists, uploading long hours of video and audio recordings on the popular music website, www.sangeethapriya.org, started by him and another techie friend from the US, Sreenivasan. In some ways, for the NRIs who fly in to see the 100-odd sabhas host the biggest names in Carnatic music and dance, it is a pilgrimage that cannot be missed. And for about a month in the Mecca of south Indian music, they forget the world they have left behind to hear well-known vocalists R.K. Srikantan, Nedunuri Krishnamurthy and Jayalakshmi Santhanam.

Until last year, Nirmala Rajasekar (40), an accomplished veena player and vocalist, was a senior systems analyst and programme manager for United Hardware, a Minneapolis-based IT firm. She was doing her research in artificial intelligence when she decided to give music her full attention. Despite leaving Chennai in 1991 after marriage and two children, Nirmala never fails to make it to the city during the festival to perform. “Getting ready for the sabhas is an elaborate procedure in Minneapolis. You see, I am the wife-mother-homemaker-chauffeur. So, I send out desperate ‘help’ messages to a large network of friends. I cook for a week and store the food in labelled containers,” she says.

Her rehearsals begin a good three months before and her days are packed until it is time to leave for Chennai. “But it is all worth it. We pull out our kanjeevaram saris and wear our traditional gold jewelry…And I love mallipoo (jasmines),’’ says Nirmala, the first Indian musician to receive the prestigious Bush Fellowship, the second largest endowment in the US.

A lot has changed from the initial years of the sabhas. Music-lovers in Chennai shake their heads in disapproval at the commercialisation and competition that has invaded the festival and cringe at the aggressive lobbying that is needed to get a prime slot in the best of the halls.

Nirmala would rather remember the past when she paid Rs 5 to sit in the balcony of the Music Academy, one of the most prestigious halls in the city even today, with aspiring musicians like Mannar Koil S Balaji (mridangam), Vijaya Shiva (vocalist) and R.K. Sriram Kumar (vocalist), all big names now. “We watched Ramani mama (N Ramani, well-known flautist) and Srimushnam (the famous Srimushnam Raja Rao, mridangam player) from the balcony. Now, I am scared of heights,’’ she says, laughing. Nirmala is now a top-ranking performer herself. In 1985, she and several young aspiring musicians started the Youth Association for Classical Music to inspire each other to hold on to a rich tradition.

And even now, “there is a growing audience and more interest in the sabha season,’’ says Kiranavali Vidyasankar, a vocalist, who began to learn music when she was barely two. Her father, Narasimhan, a Chithraveena player, taught the art to her brothers Ravi Kiran and Sashi Kiran as well. Music and concerts were inseparable for the three child prodigies. Today, Kiranavali is based in Philadelphia and travels to Buffalo, Sacramento and San Diego teaching music. But come December, she drops everything and rushes home to listen to the aging vidwans For 66-year-old Hariharan and wife Vijaya, too, the sabhas are a musical pilgrimage. They leave behind the monotony of retired life and like excited children pack up soft silk veshtis and kanjeevaram saris to take a train down south from Pune. They rent a one-room quarter near the Narada Gana Sabha for about a month and attend the concerts from 8 am until the curtains come down on the last performance. For Hariharan, it is time to immerse himself in great music and catch up on old friends.

But there are many music connoisseurs, brought up in the corridors of the old sabhas, who are disheartened by the new generation of musicians. Says S.L. Narasimhan, who has a rare collection of recordings of more than 2000 concerts from the 1940s, “The quality of the concerts is getting abysmal. Suddenly there seems to be a big void in the second level. The first-rung artistes are good…but after them…’’ His friends from the U.S., Sri Sridharan, head of the department of management, Clemson University, South Carolina, and James Frederick from Cedar Rapids, US, continue to attend the music seasons every year. “But, there is growing disillusionment even among the NRIs,’’ he says.

Asha Sivakumar, a regular sabha-hopper, based in Chennai, agrees. “The concept of free kutcheri and music for music’s sake has gone with the old vidwans. Today, we not only have to pay, but in the process of standing in the queue for tickets for a concert, we miss another good one,’’ she says.

But Steve Brantseg and wife Merrie from Minneapolis are excited. Both are learning the veena from Nirmala Rajasekar. Steve has played in various bands —rock and roll, roots and the blues — across America and is now fascinated by south Indian classical music. This is just their second season at the sabhas and they promise to return again. As does Sridharan.

The show will go on.