Music for the soul
RANEE KUMAR
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Violinist Kanya Kumari believes her music can heal the minds.
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VIOLIN FOR A CAUSE Kanya Kumari
Music as a therapy to many an illness is the latest medical mantra. Scores of musicians have volunteered to lend their art to tranquillise patients tormented by terminal diseases, or in trauma,
agonising stress or retarded mental growth. But here is an innovative musician who would like to try her hand at tranquillising criminals facing trial in jails!
For those of us associated with music and concerts, Kanya Kumari is a household name for the past three decades. Those where the days when the female trinity - M.S. Subbulakshmi, D.K. Pattammal and M.L. Vasantha Kumari stormed the male bastion and carved a eternal niche for themselves in the realms of Carnatic music. A recital by MLV had the mandatory violinist in the young, talented Kanya Kumari who till today considers the doyen among vocalists as her `mentor'.
"I consider it a blessing and looking back , I owe all my instrumental strength to her," says a grateful Kanya Kumari.
A stop-over at Hyderabad enroute Bangalore where she has a concert to perform, Kanya Kumari took time off to speak her mind on a subject that has been close to her heart for long and is just beginning to take shape.
"It's been established by now that music and more so instrumental music has therapeutic properties. In fact, when we told that our ancestors were able to breathe back life into a dying man, we used to dismiss it as myth. And today, when scientific research has as much proved it, we have re-discovered ourselves. I have been for long toying with the idea of using music to transform a violent brain. It is my innate belief that no man or woman or child is a born criminal.
There must have been some internal stress factor somewhere, at some stage of life, which would have triggered a violent emotion that compels man to commit an offence. It may be a one-time occurrence or a repeated one or even adopted as a nefarious activity. If I could change at least one-tenth of such number of minds with my music, I will consider it an achievement. My Bangalore trip is geared towards this end," she pauses.As a token gesture, a CD called Prashantham was released by her sometime around 2004 where her violin and Janardhan Mitta's sitar accomplish notes of peace and serenity.
" My intention is to give a live concert to the jail inmates and the officials manning prisons.
It just can't be a one-evening affair.
It has to be pursued to a purposeful end. My dedication towards the cause must see a few among the inmates coming up and wanting to have more of music or learn music themselves.
In Bangalore, I have got the necessary permissions and dates to experiment with my new thinking.
I am looking forward to do the same in Hyderabad too, when a beginning is made, the work has to go on,'' she says with a smile.
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