Sabhapathi

It is music festival season in Chennai and Mylapore Fine Arts Club (MFA) is where I will be every evening till end of this year. Two kutcheris (concerts) have already been ticked off, Gaayathri on Veena and Sowmya (vocal). It has been very good so far though I have to admit the canteen facility is a bit disappointing.

It has been a busy time and that is one of the reasons for not blogging for so long. Asha India had its bi-annual meeting in IIT Mumbai last week and Asha Bangalore was there in full strength with 4 of the teachers coming along with us. I traveled by 2^nd class in train (long distance, I keep doing the Bangalore-Chennai trip more often) after a long time and I have to say that the things have improved a bit. The train coaches are slightly cleaner than before. And also it is the best way to experience Mumbai. Gosh, when you enter Ambarnath area the stench is unbearable. Wiffs of what seems like very toxic chemical along with decomposing garbage and human shit is quite overwhelming. It is also amazing how quickly our senses get used to such stuff. After 15 minutes I stopped noticing the smell.

The Chennai musical festival season is quite amazing. In the next few weeks there would be more than 2000 concerts here! MFA has 5 concerts every day starting at 9 in the moring and ending at 9 at night. Similarly there are more than 20 to 25 sabhas (music clubs) organizing kutcheris. But in a typical southern traditional the whole thing is very low key. A tourist can be visiting Chennai and can even not notice such a festival is going on. If this kind of opportunity was there in any western country they would have marketed it so much and made a huge deal about the whole thing.

If one observes the audience they would soon realize that the average age is 65. But it would be wrong to conclude that classical karnatic music is a dying art. Most of the performers are not very old (in their forties) and in fact in the last decade there has been a boom of sorts. It agains comes down to time availability. The way we have structured our lives with corporate jobs that squeeze every drop out combined with obsessive child rearing leaves very little time for younger folks for any leisure. So only those who are ‘retired’ can attend music concerts that slowly build up over a 3 hour period. But I guess there would be a constant stream of 60 plus retirees who would fill these sabhas. So let us not worry that the classical music would die out.