The Hindu Business Line : Season in the strobes

This is a tale of three musical nights in February. The first, part of The Banyan’s annual celebratory fundraiser, is Basant Utsav in its tenth edition this year. The compere went to great self-deprecatory lengths to assure us that not only were they going the whole hog to keep the Utsav happening every year at the place where it all started ten years ago, i.e., DakshinChitra, they were not sparing any efforts to make sure they did not start on time. That’s wha t it sounded like and it seems the message went home because people drove all the way out and waited, braving the onslaught of mosquitoes. Boring it was not because of all the people-watching that was on offer!

After about an hour of waiting, we lost sense of time so it didn’t matter at what time exactly the folk performers came on with poi-kaal kudirai and fire-blowing acts. When one of the performers reached into an accompanist’s shirt-pocket to pull out a box of matches for her fire act, she took him completely off-guard in one of the more heart-warming moments of the evening!

There was a mela mood which somehow didn’t gell with what was on the agenda: Aditi Mangaldas and the Drishtikon Dance Foundation, and Kishori Amonkar. But we take what we get and what we got was an engaging explosion of kathak through sound and silence, action and stillness, life in nature. The costumes were pleasing and the young accompanists, although unhappy with the sound amplification, very talented. The encore performed by Aditi and her fellow dancers was as dramatic as the pieces presented. The waiting was worth it, we thought.

It was past 9.30 p.m. when the formidable Kishori Amonkar came on and it took a while for the sound and the lights to be arranged. Besides, she wanted the lights directed on the audience and not her face! Cinematographer Rajiv Menon, who introduced her, had tried to prepare the ground in a rather gentle way by saying she would sing raag Bhoop and, maybe, a bhajan, and that she didn’t sing for claps. Apparently she didn’t sing for the camera either because in between essaying on the raag and clearing her throat repeatedly and asking for more sound especially for the violinist, she ticked off our fellow travellers, the photographers, for doing what they were there to do in the course of her doing what she was there to do. The photographers walked out, Bhoop carried on for a short while, and bhajan followed. Meanwhile the audience dwindled.

The second tale concerns Ruhaniyat, the all-India Sufi and Mystic Music Festival brought to Chennai for the third year by Banyan Tree Events, at the Madras Race Club grounds. Nothing fancy about the décor, except for a magnificent tree canopy, the dark night above, and the energy of expectation. There was something endearing even about the unprepossessing green and yellow lights bouncing off the branches.

The show started quickly enough, and the mood was set right away by the Siddhis of Gujarat who trace their origins to Africa, evoking the desert and seeking Allah’s blessing. They were dressed in pristine white robes. Performers and practitioners from all over India — Dron Bhuyan and group from Assam, Parvathy Baul from Bengal, Kachra Khan, Mahesaram and others from Rajasthan, the Nizami brothers, to name a few — drew wah-wahs and kya baat hais from the wildly elated audience, some who have been coming to Ruhaniyat regularly, and some newly initiated.

Sufi musician Latif Bolat.

The special treat was Latif Bolat, scholar, composer and performer of sufi songs, from Turkey (and now living in the US). His sonorous rendering somehow connected with resonances of an M.D. Ramanathan! When he recited lines from a poem with the refrain ‘Hairatteym, hairatteym’ (I am amazed, I am amazed), the enchantment was magical.

There was food, there was socialising, but the spirit of ruhaniyat reached out and, through the listeners, went beyond flesh and blood, which had been nicely roused by the Nizami brothers’ qawwali. Incidentally, the sound arrangements at MRC were superb. And the compere was gracious, clear, unpretentious, well-informed and sharing. We learned something about sufi and mystic music that night not only from the music itself, but also from her. She deserves special thanks.

And so, to the third musical night: Shankar Mahadevan at College of Engineering, Guindy, courtesy CEG-Anna University’s Techofes. It’s a mystery why the tagline says ‘the ray of entertainment’ but never mind. It was a new experience being surrounded entirely by ‘dudes’ and ‘babes’ — Gen Post-Next as far as I am concerned! Noisemaking level: high. Dust-raising level: very high. Adrenalin-pumping level: very, very high. The evening began with a fireworks display and rocked, for all of the Shankar Mahadevan part with Jhoom barabar setting the tone. Halfway through the show the kids were dancing on chairs. I, of course, sat on mine — occasionally. This musical night was of the here and now and wild and I loved it! I wonder what passengers on planes that flew over the open-air-theatre at regular intervals thought of this blast that must surely have been visible.

But, hidden behind the platform erected for the strobe, another gig was under way: a little girl, maybe four years old, dancing wildly away and completely captivating the hearts of all the ‘dudes’ around. We had our own little show there by torchlight. Thanks, little one, that was great.

But not at all great was the sight of CEG students in the galleries apparently having to sit ‘boys separate’, ‘girls separate’! That doesn’t rock, Anna University, that shocks! It’s their season in the strobes, don’t you know?