Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Rich fare for Navarathri fete

Special Correspondent

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The annual music festival held at the Navarathri Mandapam in the Fort Palace here gets under way on October 3. Concerts will be held on all nine days from 6 p.m. to 8.30 p.m.

The festival begins with the arrival of the idols of Subramania Swamy from Velimala; Munnoottinanka from Sucheendram; Saraswathi from Thevarakkettu in Padmanabhapuram; and the ceremonial sword from the Padmanabhapuram Palace at the head of grand processions in the city.

The Saraswathi idol will be kept at the `sreekoil' in the Mandapam and Munnoottinanka at the Chenthitta temple, where pujas will be performed for 10 days starting from October 3.

The vocal concert on the first day will be presented by Rama Varma of the ruling family of erstwhile Travancore, with Avaneeswaram S. R. Vinu accompanying him on the violin and B. Harikumar on the mridangam.

Concerts will be presented on the subsequent days by the Malladi brothers Suri Babu and Narayana Sarma; Trichur V. Ramachandran; Sanjay Subramanian; T. N. Seshagopalan; T. M. Krishna; K. N. Ranganatha Sarma; and T. V. Gopalakrishnan.

Flautist N. Ramani will present a concert on October 8 to the accompaniment of Attukal Balasubramaniom on the violin, K. Velukkutty Nair on the mridangam and Anil Kumar on the ghatom.

It is a speciality of this festival that on all the nine days, those with a taste for music can give devotional concerts or present dances individually or in groups with prior permission, according to administrator S. Parameswaran Nair.

The concerts are performed according to strict time schedules. They start at the ring of a bell at 6 p.m. and end with another ring at 8.30 p.m. Even the style of the concerts is very different and till recently, the ghatom was not permitted here.

The mandapam itself is situated inside a beautiful wooden building, with a curious acoustic arrangement consisting of earthen pots strung together with their mouths facing downwards.

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