A music kiosk is up and running at the IGNCA Southern Regional Centre in Bangalore, where an established audio-visual archival centre was inaugurated recently. “This would be a place to relax, music connoisseurs are just going to love it,” said R.T. Chari, Managing Director of the TAG Corporation, who has associated with the IGNCA for setting up the music archives. “The TAG Group of Companies that has set up a huge digital listening archive of vintage music at the Madras Music Academy joined hands to collaborate with us and share around 1000 hours of live recordings of Carnatic music right from the 1930s,” said Vikram Sampath, Executive Director, IGNCA Southern Regional Centre.
The 1000 hours from TAG are from Chari’s personal collections that he has assiduously collected in over 30 years, digitised and catalogued them painstakingly. It is rare to have collectors like him who readily share their collections with institutions. Pointing out that all the music collectors were against commercialisation of such a rare collection, Chari said the archive had a distinct software that would prevent downloading or copying of music. Such a facility had been set up at The Madras Music Academy, added Chari saying the digital archive would help in passing on the tradition of classical music to future generations.
Several artistes including Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavathar, M.S. Subbulakshmi, D.K. Pattammal, K.V. Narayanaswamy, Alathur Brothers, Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, M. D. Ramanathan and others are featured in this collection as also recent artistes.
Chari has gone a step further to enrich Bangalore. He has also contributed valuable paintings and wall-to-wall murals featuring icons of Indian music, including one by S. Rajam which now adorn IGNCA’s archival centre room.
In addition to this collection, Vikram Sampath too has donated his private archival collection from the Archive of Indian Music (AIM) for old gramophone recordings. “Our idea is not to hoard these in vaults and keep them inaccessible, but make them available for scholars, students and general public to access, as these are audio, visual and textual wealth of our country,” says Sampath. IGNCA invites organisations and individual collectors to join hands as sharing cultural treasures help in their dissemination and utilisation, says Sampath. Given that IGNCA is a Central Government institution under the Ministry of Culture, collections received from contributors would be given due credit, he said.
Gramophone recordings
These feature gramophone discs right from 1902 in Hindustani and Carnatic music, folk music, early cinema, theatre recordings, patriotic songs and speeches of leaders. Several artists like Gauhar Jan, Peara Sahab, Maujuddin, Kesarbai Kerkar, Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar, Salem Godavari, Bidaram Krishnappa, Veene Sheshanna, Mysore Palace orchestra, Bal Gandharva, Indu Bala, KL Saigal, Kalinga Rao, Ashwathamma, speeches of Gandhiji, Tagore, Subhash Chandra Bose amongst several others are part of this collection.
MS Subbulakshmi- United Nations Concert; During felicitation for her 80th birthday and MS’ annual December season Music Academy concerts. * Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar- concerts for AIR * Chembai at Vigyan Bhawan Delhi * MLV’s last concert at the Woodlands Hotel in Madras held at a private reception. * Gauhar Jaan (1873-1930) the first Indian and woman of the sub-continent to record commercially on the gramophone in 1902, who died in Mysore. Her three- minute records along with several women contemporaries of her times like Malka Jaan of Agra, Zohra Bai Agrewali, Janki Bai of Allahabad, Salem Godavari, Kali Jaan of Delhi, Coimbatore Thayi, Bangalore Nagarathnamma, Bangalore Thayi, Mysore Adilakshmi and others come from the AIM’s gramophone collections.
Between the TAG Archives and the AIM collection, a major chunk of our country’s musical history has been captured in digital format, right from 1902 to latest times.
* The significant feature of TAG’s collection comes with a special user-friendly software that allows the users to select the song by various parameters like raga, composer name, genre, artist etc and listen to them as per one’s wish.
* IGNCA’s visual repository of cultural documentaries and past programmes have been added to this collection for people to access.
* A huge repository of nearly 15,000 microfilms of rare manuscripts from all over India- Oriental Research Institute Mysore, Khuda Baksh Library Patna, Jaipur City Palace, Thanjavur Saraswathi Mahal Library, Kamrupa Anusandhan Samiti Guwahati etc are also available.
The archival unit, reprography and library are open - Monday to Friday 9.30 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. For enquiries, please write to executivedirector.igncasrc@gmail.com or call 23212320/23212356. An online catalogue of all the books and manuscripts are available on www.ignca.nic.in
