Musician Murali Narayanan protests fete sans flutes

THRISSUR: Well-known artiste and Guinness record holder in conducing the longest concert on flute, Murali Narayanan, has come out against the new manual issued by the state education department for excluding flute from the background score in dance forms like Bharatanatyam and Moniyattam.  Murali who performing a 27-hour-long flute concert at Thalikkulam here last year petitioned education minister C. Raveendranath. “Most of the dance forms are based on stories of Lord Krishna and there are ample instances in them where the ‘mudra’ of playing the flute is performed by the artis-tes/contestants on the stage. While such ‘mudras’ are performed, the background music of any other instrument like violin which are at present permitted to be included for the background score in the youth festivals as per the manual will not sync with the performance on stage,” Murali said in his complaint.

He told this newspaper that though the practice of giving live background music for performances was done way with as per the new manual, almost all contestants have already done recording the background scores for their performances at the studios by including flute and used them for school youth festivals.

“It is a fact that for the contestants, the permission to use the recorded music during performance will bring down their expense. But, going by the instruction given on the 14th chapter of the manual, they will have to do re-recording of the manual without including  flute, which will cost them more money and time,” Murali noted. However, It is learnt from the PRO of Directorate of Public Instruction that there was very less chance of changing the manual as it was prepared after consultations with experts.