MY FESTIVAL
Too many concerts?
RANJANI AND GAYATRI
People who live in Chennai may take its extraordinary music festival for granted. But visitors who come from outside the city are awestruck by the number of concerts, sabhas and the unique ambience. You can't get it anywhere else. From the early 1980s we used to come from Bombay to attend the concerts and lec-dems. Soon we had two or three concerts as violin accompanists. We'd say that's the right number for young talent to be showcased, but not over exposed too early in life.
What intrigued us back then was how the audience differed in each venue. The Music Academy listeners were very different from those at the Krishna Gana Sabha. They had their preferences and ways of reacting to the music.
Attending the season as outsiders was privilege enough, and we found greater gains as regular violin accompanists to vidwans of different schools and stylistic approach. Playing for artistes like Sanjay Subramaniam, Vijay Siva, Sudha Ragunathan and Nithyashree Mahadevan, was to experience great variety. Vijay was meticulous in planning, with Sanjay you didn't know if he himself knew what he was going to sing on the stage, Sudha came up with new things...
As accompanists we had to be alert, capable, and competent to support them all. We felt less pressured. After all, the success of the concert was the responsibility of the main artiste. We felt those pressures when we shifted to vocal music.
Though we know the value of this festival, we are beginning to wonder if this kind of excess and performance orientation is the only way of preserving and nurturing our music. With so many concerts during the Season, how can any artiste do justice to every one of them? It's not as if any venue is less significant. Every audience is important.
Today, not only the top artistes but also youngsters give eight to 10 performances. Are they equipped to do justice to their art? Besides, how can they listen to others if they are constantly performing? And if they don't make use of the Season to listen to seniors, how are they going to improve their own music? It was so much better for us when we had only three concerts as youngsters. We could do the exciting sabha rounds every single day.
Now we feel terrible about not being able to perform less and listen to others more. Also, we know that even mature artistes cannot retain freshness and creativity, do justice to themselves and to the audience, beyond eight or nine concerts in a single season. But saying no to any sabha is branded as arrogant.
The music season gave us opportunities to hear K.V.Narayanaswami again and again. He could take us to a different world altogether. He gave us a glimpse of what great music can be, how it should be. We were thrilled, and also dismayed — if this is real music, can we ever reach anything like his ripeness, his sense of total music?
Two season concerts haunt us still. We sat on the stage and listened to N.Rajam at the Music Academy. We had to exercise great control not to get up and dance! The other was when T.N.Krishnan mesmerised Sastri Hall with an unforgettable Salagabhairavi. We talk all the time about preserving tradition. That day we knew why it is timeless.
During this season, one day when our voices were not in perfect condition we decided not to sing but play the violin. The morning ad announced this change. The sabha secretary was flooded with calls of complaint. Why have we stopped listening to instrumental music even though we have so many world-class instrumentalists among us?
(As told to GOWRI RAMNARAYAN)
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