‘Kindly switch off your mobile phones during the kutcheri’, is an often-heard statement at Chennai’s sabhas this season. Doing that might just help you enjoy the music better, but using your phone — and a few applications — could make your Margazhi experience a lot better. Here’s how:
App: Arangam
USP: Booking an Uber along with your concert ticket
You’re at OMR and want to hear Sanjay Subrahmanyan sing at a Mylapore sabha on a Saturday evening. But you dread the drive to the venue and back, and therefore, give the concert a miss.
Arangam seeks to address these logistics issues. With a tie-up with Uber, this app — founded by Yessel Narasimhan — will ensure that you have a hassle-free ride to the concert venue. “Reaching the sabha itself is a big task, especially if you stay far away. We wanted to address this bottleneck,” he says.
Through Arangam, which already has more than 1,500 downloads in Android, you can also mark a concert as favourite for easy access and search for an artist/accompanist and view their concerts. But their USP is the manner in which they solve the logistics issue, says Narasimhan, who hopes that Arangam will be a one-stop destination soon for “all performances of fine arts across the globe”.
App: Zeekh
USP:Sending song requests to performers
Many years ago, the ‘chit system’ used to be popular in Carnatic music; if you wanted a singer to perform a number of your choice, you’d write it down on a chit and pass it on.
In Margazhi 2016, you can do the same via the Zeekh app. Through Rasikadhwami, a rasika can pick the artiste/concert that they plan to attend, and send in the song that they want to listen to during a concert. The team behind the app collates this list and shares it with the performer. “This was primarily done as a contest; the one whose request got selected won a gift. But a recent concert of Guitar Prasanna was almost fully driven by requests; he performed the full playlist,” beams Vanipriya Jayaraman, who has founded this lifestyle management app.
Apart from listing concerts, Zeekh — which has had more than 500 downloads in the last couple of weeks — also features a concept called ‘Margazhi and Me’, short snippets on what the season means to a cross-section of people, and ‘Sabha Hopping’, a weekend planner for the best of the happenings in the season.
App: Margazhi Sangeetham
USP:Accessing schedules of artistes
A couple of years ago, S. Kameswaran’s relatives wanted to attend a kutcheri by Yesudas. The tech-savvy man that he was, Kameswaran said he’d find out details. But all he did was get lost in a pile of newspaper cuttings and websites that confused him.
“Sometimes, we’d hear about a concert after it happened — and we would end up wondering why we didn’t know about it,” he says, “I wanted to assimilate all the information.”
Margazhi Sangeetham, which has had more than 1,100 users, tries to narrow down your search based on the artiste you want to listen to. “Collating it was a huge challenge,” he says, “We have featured about 750 performers who are doing concerts this season. Every programme that’s happening at a sabha, be it music, dance or drama, is listed on the application.”
