“Nobody should sing Amritavarshini (the raga that is said to cause rains) this season,’’ was the joke doing the rounds when the skies opened up before Deepavali this year. Unfortunately, it was no longer a joke when the rain intensified and relentlessly flooded Chennai and other parts of the State.
Many music and dance programmes were naturally cancelled, as people, many of them rendered virtually homeless and losing most of their personal belongings could not be expected to attend concerts. Many artists were among the victims of the flood ravage. Musicians and dancers have done us all proud by spearheading relief and rehabilitation campaigns, often personally supervising such splendid initiatives, in which youngsters have played a sterling role.
As Chennai is limping back to normalcy, a few of music-related events and kutcheris have resumed. I attended an award ceremony in memory of TG Viswanatha Bhagavatar conducted by city-based Sampoornam Foundation, managed by G. Ramanathan, saxophone artist and son of Sangita Kalanidhi TV Gopalakrishnan. It was followed by a short vocal concert by TVG accompanied by the awardee of the evening, violinist S. Varadarajan, and mridanga vidwan Patri Satish Kumar. It was quite an emotional experience to listen to an 84-year old singer still adventurous enough to attempt risky vocal maneouvres while still spot on in raga delineation. The violinist and mridanga vidwan, both front ranking musicians of calibre, provided delightful, mellow accompaniment, and the concert, punctuated by TVG’s reminiscences of his father and grandfather, seemed to provide emotional succour to listeners, most of whom have been battered by the rains.
TVG made a prayerful appeal at the end of the concert to the weather gods to bring sunshine into the lives of all those affected by the recent depredations. Many of those gathered at the venue felt that music in a spirit of devotion and compassion was not inappropriate even in these difficult circumstances.
Meanwhile, some leading artists who have incurred grievous losses have cancelled all their season concerts, and some others have done so out of a feeling of deep sympathy for the flood victims. I have personally been party to a decision to indefinitely postpone a three-day programme of lecture demonstrations starting on December 12 as further rain at this stage may make it difficult to stage the event, but I do hope that once the weather clears, the season will take place, albeit quieter and less celebratory, but as an act of meditation and prayer, much like the concerts that followed the Tsunami of December 26 2004. Perhaps it will succeed in raising funds for flood relief.
(The writter is Editor, Sruti magazine)
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