Music celebrated

THE AIM of art, of any kind, is to bring calmness to the minds of the people, which would ultimately lead to peace in the world, observed Sri Vijayendra Saraswati Swamigal of Kanchi Kamakoti Peetam. He was present at the World Music Day celebrated by Carnatica.com and HMV on June 21, at the Narada Gana Sabha. He also inaugurated Cybervidyalaya of Carnatica.com, a site to teach Carnatic music. Sri Vijayendra Saraswati said that as music was used by everyone at every level of the society on every occasion, from birth to death, both classical and folk music should be propagated without diluting their values. It has been through music that the messages of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, which contain the principles of justice applicable to every one have been spread, he said.

The celebration began with performances by young, up-and-coming artistes. L. Saravanan and N. Anantha Narayanan played the flute and Veena respectively and B. Muthukumar, Gayatri Girish, Lakshmi Rangarajan, Vijayalakshmi Subramaniam and Vasudhra Rajagopalan rendered vocal recitals. They all presented one composition each and were accompanied by Nagai Sriram and Satish Kumar on the violin and K.V. Gopalakrishnan and G.S. Krishna on the mridangam in turns.

Dr. S.A.K. Durga, in her lecture, highlighted the differences between various musical cultures, world music ensembles and inter-cultural ensembles. A. Kanyakumari accompanied by some of her disciples on the violin, and other artistes on the veena, mandolin, keyboard, nagaswaram, mridangam, ghatam and tabla presented thematic music.

A video presentation had many music stalwarts including Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer extend their greetings on the occasion of World Music Day. Child artiste Malavika Raghunathan sang a stothram on Lord Ganesha as a prayer and it was touching to find His Holiness accompanying her.

The Chief Justice of the Madras High Court, Mr. N. K. Jain, presided over the function. Mr. N. R. Chandran, Advocate General, was the Chief Guest.

Popular musicians Sudha Raghunathan, Priya Sisters, Nityasree Mahadevan, T.M. Krishna, Unnikrishnan and Vijay Siva presented a composition each. Sriram Kumar and Varadarajan on the violin, Arun Prakash and Srimushnam Raja Rao on the mridangam and E.M. Subramaniam and Adambakkam Shankar on the ghatam took turns to accompany them. Asia Brothers Ravikiran and Ganesh presented a duet.

Sriram Parasuram and Anooradha Sriram offered a jugabandhi. The surprise item of the day was the group singing of ``Shanti Nilava Vendum'' by all the artistes. This replaced ``Entaro Mahanubhavulu'' which was slated to be the conducting item.

The long evening (of five hours) drew to a close with the fusion ensemble of Ganesh, Kumaresh and other artistes. The auditorium was filled to capacity but one wondered if the organisers had not packed too many things in one eveing.

LAKSHMI VENKATRAMAN

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