Dear Vincent, I hope you make my 'season' a wonderful one!
Part of an e-mail I found in my mail box earlier this week.
It was from a regular at our web site KutcheriBuzz.com
And I guess this man in the USA wanted to warm us up for the 'season of music and dance'.
Three people - Revathi, Manju and Bhanumathy - are doing their best to make the 'season' a great one for thousands of people who will enjoy visiting our web site over the next seven weeks.
For it is that time of the year when our city plays host to one of the most unique festivals of classical music and dance anywhere in the world.
For close to a decade, we at KutcheriBuzz have been doing what we do best - providing rasikas news and information that prepares them better for the 'season'.
And reporting the highlights of the fest so that all those people who cannot make it to Chennai, manage to get a 'feel' of it wherever they are.
Often, we go beyond our call.
We have tried to get Mylaporeans and Adyarites to offer bed and breakfast facilities for the 'December season'.
That is because the number of people outside this city who seek this facility are growing.
We have also tried to coax people to host 'coffee and chat' nooks and meetings so that visiting artistes, touring groups and south India-bound tourists have a space to get a closer 'feel' of music and dance . . .
Because there is more to a fest than hundreds of concerts and dozens of lec-dems . . . .
Perhaps, there will be a 'Walk around and Discover Kalakshetra' tour that will get booked this season.
Perhaps, my friend V. Sriram will after all decide to host at least two heritage walks devoted to music /dance in December. . .
Perhaps, the Tamil Nadu Tourism will find better ways to package the Mamallapuram Dance Fest which allows the audience, mostly foreigners and tourists, to soak in that bit extra . .
Sitting as we do in the heart of all the action on the eve of the December season, I guess I tend to get overly excited.
Anyway, you will see me more at KutcheriBuzz.com
4 comments:
Hello Vincent
Looking forward to meeting you again in Chennai during the season days. Congratulations for your wonderful work in art journalism and for propagating classical arts through www.kutcheribuzz.com
GS RAJAN
www.malabarian.com
During 1960s and early 70s, I attended many December classical music and dance events at the then Madras, and had the previlege to listen to such stalwarts as Ariyakudi,Musiri, Alathoor Brothers, Madurai Mani, of course Mysore Chowdiah and not forgetting the superb MS. No doubt, the classic music is enjoyable by every one, but requires quite a bit of knowledge to savour it. Even then, I felt that more than half of the audience
were not knowledgeable in any manner of speaking (by the way they were reacting to nuances in the presentations of the artist) and were attending a Madurai Mani because 'they wanted to be seen doing it'! Those were the days when 'appearing to enjoy the erudition of Mani' meant something.
When the classical music lost its shine in late 1960s, in one event there were just 15 to listen to great Madurai Mani.
One heard politics played by musicians of repute, and the highest award by the Madras Music Academy did not go to the most deserved at the right time. Papanasam Sivam , the composer of prodigious talent, whose compositions were sung by the front- ranked musicians had to wait for his award for decades! The very musicians who were happy in singing his compositions opposed the highest award going to him for years giving the flimsy reason that he was not a true musician after all, but a composer in the classical mould!!!
If Bill Gates were to come to sit in the audience at the Music Academy today, one could expect Thiru Karunanidhi to be with him!!
Thiru Karuna and his ilk absolutely detested the music at the Academy listening to his comments from time to time in those days when he was a younger CM. He may be different now, because Americans and NRIs learned to like it!!! Have a good season, and the let the
sound of the classical music reverberate in every nook and cranny of Chennai!!!
One can never get too excited about the Season. And all your ideas sound wonderful - I hope they come to fruition.
Kamini
i am a 2nd year, college student at NIT Trichy but have lived in Besant Nagar all my life. I have 40 days of holidays from today till january and would love to work in Adyar Times for an issue or two. I am proficient in English, got the CBSE 0.1 % certificate of merit for topping the English boards and hail from PS Sr Sec School, Mylapore. It would be a great honour for me to write in your paper, the adyar times. Could i?
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