Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Rhapsody for a cause
IT'S WIDELY known that Unwind Center caters for the acoustic needs of the city. But there's more to Unwind Center than what meets the `ear'. Read on to find out.
Alcohol, drugs and tobacco have blotted rock music's escutcheon. Before going on stage to perform, most rock stars get high on these stimulants in order to get themselves into an expansive mood. Unwind Center campaigns for `clean rock'.
It would take a 14-year-old a whole year to memorise the equations in his chemistry textbook, but the same teenager would be able to learn by rote a dozen rock lyrics in a little more than an hour. Since rock music has a vicelike hold on youngsters, they imbibe the attitudes of rock stars. In the light of this reality, getting rock musicians to speak against drugs and alcohol could be the best way to check such dissipative habits among the young.
"The leader of our own Vineyard Band, Saroop Mathew, suggests to rockers that they could produce good music without the prop of stimulants; and the intake of stimulants would not make them any better as musicians," says Lijjin Varghese of Unwind Center.
The organisation takes a hard line on the issue. "Before we sign up a band, we make our values clear to them," says Hari Menon, one of the protagonists of Unwind Center's mission. "In one of our JRO (see box) shows in the past, it came to our notice that the members of a band were drunk. We did not let them take the stage. We refunded 50 per cent on each ticket."
The collections from the live concerts are used for community development. Acts of Mercy (AOM), a wing of Unwind Center, dispenses succour to the needy.
One of its projects is called `The Street School'. "We provide non-formal education to street children. We started the project in 1998. Every day street children assemble in the Anna Nagar Park to learn reading and writing skills. They are also taught hygiene, moral values and manners. We talk their parents into having them (the kids) enrolled in schools. We bear half the school fees. We get them school uniform, too," says Lijjin.
AOM volunteers visit old age homes, feed the poor every week and hold medical camps. A year ago, AOM cleaned up the Marina (from the Light House to the Gandhi Mandapam) with the help of ONYX-CES.
Another project is titled `Give Me A Break'. "Children from underprivileged families work part-time to augment their parents' income. They soon drop out of school to take up full-time jobs that fetch no more than Rs. 400 or so, a month. We provide computer education to such kids so that they could work as tellers at grocery stores or as data entry operators, taking home a starting salary of Rs. 2,000 a month," says Lijjin.
Another interesting project is `Police - Friends Of The People'. "It is aimed at removing the veil of misunderstanding that characterises the public's perception of the police," says Lijjin. "This year we would be supporting the child of a policeman who died on duty."
In short, for Unwind Center, music is not an end in itself. Its ethos seems to say that notes of music would be cacophonic unless they serve as an instrument of community development.
PRINCE FREDERICK
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
|
