From Mylapore to Singapore: A musical journey

Students from a music school in Mandaveli win three awards at international choral festival

The team which performed at Singapore. (Inset) Rajarajeshwari . Photo: special arrangement

For Rajarajeshwari, a music teacher of over two decades, it was a challenging task to assemble a team of young singers, train them and make them sing in front of an audience of nearly 2,000 people in Singapore. But after more than three months of rigorous practice, her team won three awards at the 5th Singapore International Choral Festival held from July 19-22.

Rajarajeshwari, who runs the Kamala Music School, was a disciple of M.B. Sreenivasan, a noted music director who founded the Madras Youth Choir. “I came to know about the choral festival in April. The minimum size of the competing choir was 20 participants. So I asked the parents of my students and they spread the word among their friends and relatives, and we put together a team of 23 children,” she says.

She says it was a collective effort from the students and the parents that made the participation possible. The parents made sure the children attended the practice sessions on all days during the summer holidays. They also divided themselves into smaller groups and handled various responsibilities such as travel arrangements, costumes and accessories and others.

“Our only aim was to have our children make our country proud at the SICF,” says Ramesh Ramamoorthy, father of Pranadha, one of the participants.

The preliminary round was held at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music and the Grand Prix (Finals), Award Ceremony was held at the Esplanade concert hall. The team won a bronze medal in the under-12 category; they sang a German and a Punjabi song. They won another bronze medal in the folklore category (sang Maatrinal, Kavadi and gummi) and a special jury award in the sacred category (Thiruppugazh, Thyagaraja Kriti and Mayavathara).

There were a total of 64 teams from 12 countries and two from India including the Mylapore team.

“It was a wonderful experience for me as I learned about the songs and culture of other countries. I made new friends too. And we all cheered for India when the prizes were announced,” says nine-year-old Pranadha.