‘Nadalahari’ was a grand musical celebration of instruments at the Narada Gana Sabha. They were celebrating the UNESCO’s inclusion of Chennai in the Creative Cities Network. It was organised by Avasarala Kanyakumari, known for such grand shows with violins.
Dedicated to the cause of instrumental music, Kanyakumari, in her welcome address, did mention the lack of opportunities for instrumentalists to perform solo and also the rasikas’ preference to vocal. Indeed, her grievance is genuine; listeners are not fully tuned to instrumental music unless they find something exotic in it.
Guests of Honour K.N. Ramaswamy of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and Haricharan Das of Musee Musicals were in full appreciation of Kanyakumari’s endeavours with zeal in promoting instrumental music among the audience.
In this marathon programme, about 50 instrumentalists participated and performed in succession; so one can almost get to listen to all the popular instrumental artistes from Kadri Gopalnath’s saxophone to some very young learners performing veena, violin or mandolin.
Opened with saxophone
The programme started with Kadri playing the Bhairavi swarajati ‘Amba Kamakshi.’ Chitraveena Ravikiran and his students took over to present ‘Brochevarevarura’ (Khamas).
It was time for the flute and R. Thyagarajan with his disciples played ‘Ramakathasudha’ (Madhymavati). R.S. Jayalakshmi’s group (veena) presented ‘Jagadeeswari’ in Mohanam. Multifacedted Palghat Sriram in the company of young artistes played ‘Telisirama.’
Raju and Nagamani’s party impressed with ‘Thaye Tripurasundari’ (Suddha Saveri) followed by the majestic nagaswaram with a group presenting ‘Akhilandeswari’ (Dwijawanti). Notable inclusions were the solo presentation of raag Sindhubhairav by Pt. Janardhan Mitta on the sitar and raag Maru Behag by Balesh on the shehnai. The penultimate offering, Nadatanumanism (Siddha Ranajni) was by Kanyakumari with all the violinists and her students.
In the grand finale, all the artists joined to thank the audience with ‘Entaro Mahanubhavulu’ (Sri). A host of percussion artists supported the instrumentalists in different combinations.
What I have said may look like a report. But it was a celebration and celebrations are meant for sharing and enjoyment. The emcee Krishna Babu constantly talked about the enthusiasm of the artistes, who had gathered breaking all barriers — age, name and fame, etc. The aim was to participate and showcase their speciality. Nuggets on Chennai and its musical history were provided as interludes by Rasikapriya, during the change of artists. The glitches in the sound system — unavoidable perhaps, given the range of instruments and their frequencies — was overshadowed by the spirit of the artistes, who were in excellent form.
The final piece reminded me of AIR’s ‘Vadya Vrinda’ — several artistes playing kritis in perfect unison. Perhaps Kanyakumari can think on those lines — live joint ventures with different instrumentalists, where each enjoys his space.
