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Birthdays & Anniversaries
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Birthdays & Anniversaries
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Celebrating Mrinalini Sarabhai
BySapna Rangaswamy
“I am dance, dance is me,” says Mrinalini Sarabhai in her autobiography titled Voices from my Heart. The famous Bharatanatyam dancer married scientist Vikram Sarabhai and made Ahmedabad her home. She performed and propagated fine arts in the city in a big way. She launched the Darpana Academy of Performing Arts to nurture traditional and experimental arts. On 3 July, the arts community in Ahmedabad congregated to celebrate the memory of Amma (that is how Mrinalini liked to be called). Antarnaad– the Gujarati translation of Mrinalini Sarabhai’s autobiography – translated by Bakula Ghaswala and published by Gurjar Prakashan was released in the presence of dignitaries like architect B.V. Doshi, Bharatanatyam guru Ilaxiben Thakor, Kuchipudi dancer, teacher and Darpana alumnus Smita Shastri, artist and art curator Amit Ambalal and sitarist Manju Mehta.
“As Amma lived in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, the Gujaratis should know about her life, and work, hence her autobiography in Gujarati," said daughter Mallika Sarabhai. The book has also been translated into Malayalam.
It was an evening of dance dedicated to Mrinalini's memory. It began with a mallari – malla kusti with the god. The concept was playful and so was the dance performed by Pooja Purohit, Manoj Bagga and Hemvati. This was followed by alarippu by D. Padmakumar (Pappan sir) and Hemvati, an item rarely presented today in dance programmes. Mallika Sarabhai and students of Darpana performed a traditional varnam, and it was refreshing to see Mallika perform traditional Bharatanatyam.
After the varnam, the backdrop came alive with video clippings of Mrinalini talking about her best friend Lord Krishna. She described how her mother had closed her eyes and led her to the pooja room – a child's first memory of being introduced to Krishna. There were other clippings of Amma explaining to a journalist about her choreography, feelings and emotions as a dancer, and rare footage from Darpana’s old production Rigveda. Chatunni Pannikar, Bhaskar Menon, Mrinalini and several great gurus of Indian classical dance came alive on the screen. It was a memorable journey down memory lane.
The high point of the evening was Natanam Adinar danced by Revanta, grandson of Mrinalini and son of Mallika Sarabhai. He got a standing ovation. It was heartwarming to see the third generation take up the dance for which Mrinalini lived. A contemporary tillana by Mallika Sarabhai, Anahita, Pooja, Hemvati and Padmakumar was the concluding performance for the evening.
Educationist H.C. Kapasi, Kishan Trivedi, and Damini Maheta recalled their close collaboration with Mrinalini in Gujarati theatre. When Mrinalini – a trained classical dancer from south India – was introduced to Rangmanch, Gujarati theatre, not only did she learn Gujarati in just fifteen days, she even directed a Gujarati play Chando che Shyamlo by Pannalal Patel. She also directed another Gujarati play Koi Pan Ek Pool nu Nam Kaho along with H.C. Kapasi, in which Kishan Trivedi and Damini Maheta also participated. Damini later became an integral part of Darpana and its drama department. These veteran artists of the Gujarati Rangmanch remembered ‘Ben’ (Mrinalini Sarabhai) and shared their memories of their bonding over art.
Even as everyone was celebrating Mrinalini the creative artist, Kartikeya Sarabhai, spoke about his mother Mrinalini. He recalled how she had kept awake the whole night holding his hand when he was ill and how she had cancelled her dance tour because her young son needed her by his side.
Although Mrinalini Sarabhai passed away on 21 January 2016, Ahmedabad continues to celebrate her life and achievements. <<>>
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Birthdays & Anniversaries
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Music Academy-TAG Raga Identification Competition
Music Academy-TAG
Raga Identification Competition
Organised by TAG Corporation and Ramu Endowments along
with The Music Academy, specifically for Carnatic music rasikas. There will be two age groups, below 25 and above 25.
Date: 16 October 2016. Venue: Music Academy, Chennai
Time: 10.00 a.m. Registration 9 a.m.
Last date for registration: 1 October 2016.
Send your name, age, e-mail Id and phone number to
soomty@gmail.com and to rajagopalk@tagcorporation.net.
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Birthdays & Anniversaries
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FROM THE EDITOR
By V Ramnarayan
Hindi film music was for long a meaningful bridge between classical and light music. In the 1950s and 60s, for every hundred popular songs based on westernised, fast numbers, Hindi cinema offered at least a handful of raga-based songs, including some that filled entire films. Music directors like Naushad, Shanker-Jaikishen, Roshan, Madan Mohan, S.N. Tripathi and even Ravi Shankar gave us melodious songs some of which were adaptations of bandish, thumri or tarana. A parallel stream of light classical music – mainly ghazals by such maestros as Mehdi Hassan, Ghulam Ali and Jagjit Singh, as well as Sufi music by the likes of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan – constantly followed a pleasant middle path, so that the chasm between art and popular music was never too wide. Unfortunately, the typical Hindi film music director no longer seems interested in or capable of composing pure raga based songs.
In the south, film music was completely dominated by classical music in the time of M.K. Tyagaraja Bhagavatar, K.B. Sundarambal and T.R. Mahalingam. Concert singers of the calibre of G.N. Balsubramaniam, Dandapani Desigar, M.S. Subbulakshmi, D.K. Pattammal and M.L. Vasanthakumari sang songs which became bestsellers in their time. Popular singers like T.M. Soundararajan, Sirkazhi Govindarajan and P. Leela were classically trained and known to have performed in the kutcheri circuit. Music directors G. Ramanathan and K.V. Mahadevan readily come to mind as outstanding purveyors of raga music in films.
Film music in the south had moved away from Carnatic music when the Telugu film Sankarabharanam in the 1970s promised to bring back audience interest in the genre, by featuring a principled bhagavatar rooted in tradition as the protagonist, though it offered at best a “filmi” form of the classical genre. In later decades, geniuses like Ilayaraja and A.R. Rahman have proved time and again that they can be masters of classical music including Indian and Western, along with world music of great variety, but films celebrating Carnatic music have been rare.
Classical musicians like Sriram Parasuram, Dr. S. Sunder and Chitravina Ravikiran, to name just a few, have been authors of outreach efforts of varied kinds. The recent past has seen attempts by T.M. Krishna to take classical music to those not overly exposed to it so far. His attempts at inclusiveness have been much in the news, especially since the announcement of the Magsaysay Emerging Leadership Award to him, with several critics questioning the merit and timing of the honour. While his fan base continues to be loyal in its total support to him, other admirers of his music have questioned his experiments with the kutcheri format among other things. They feel the award could have waited for a few more years of solid contribution in the field by Krishna. A third category of critics continues to respect his musical prowess, but questions his politics and ideology.
Assuming that the propagation of classical or art music on a mass level is a desirable objective, can it be done effectively through the medium of cinema? T.M. Krishna was involved in two films celebrating Carnatic music – one was a concert from varnam to mangalam along with Bombay Jayashri, and the other was of raga music amidst nature.
There have not been too many Tamil feature films on the lives of classical musicians or films with a predominance of raga music in recent decades. Is it time to produce quality films of the kind in order to take art music to a wide audience, and will there be genuine music patrons willing to invest in them? Will senior musicians and modern day composers be interested in composing the music for such initiatives? For such an effort to have any chance of succeeding, the film needs to be a box office hit, and it therefore becomes imperative for it to have a good storyline, a winsome star cast and top class music – and of course loads of luck. Carnatic music through cinema, anyone?
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Birthdays & Anniversaries
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Birthdays & Anniversaries
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KNKP Festival
August 23. 2016. KNKP New Committee Formation.
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KNKP Festival: Planned for 1 year. Tentative.
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Sep. 25. 2016. Dharani festival. Parampara auditorium. only kuchipudi. 30 mins.
Oct. 3. 2016. CALICUT. 90 mins.
Oct. 24, 25, 26.. 2016. Ankura festival. Seva sadan. 120 mins.
Nov. 19, 20 2016. India International Dance Festival. 30 mins.
Indira nagar sangeet sabha.
Dec. 24, 25. 2016. Sagar National Dance festival. 30 mins.
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Jan. 2017. Mangalore. Bharathamuni Festival.
Jan. 15. 2017. Mysore. Articulate India. festival. 30 mins.
Feb. 12. 2017. Sneha Kappanna Theatre. 120 mins.
Mar. 2. 2017. Nataraja Nrityotsav. Bharatiya vidya bhavan. 120 mins.
Apr. 29. 2017. World dance day.
May. 14. 2017. Tumkur festival. 120 minutes.
June. 11.2017. Mysore. festival. 120 mins.
July. 9. 2017. NRI festival 120 mins.
Aug. 15. 2017. Independence day programme.
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WORKSHOPS: Lecture Demonstrations:
1. Praveen.d.rao. Music for Dance dramas.
2. Kanak raju. Dance make-up.
3. Prasanna. Basics of Nattuvangam.
4. Guru murthy sir. Jatis composition for Dance.
5. sai venkatesh. Lighting Dance Dramas.
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Birthdays & Anniversaries
Maharajapuram Viswanatha Iyer - Buy a Digital Issue Contact - sruti.magazine@gmail.com
T.N. Seshagopalan - Buy a Digital Issue Contact - sruti.magazine@gmail.com
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Birthdays & Anniversaries
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Excerpts from Australia's prime time news channel -- ABC
Emergence of Indian Music in Australia
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Birthdays & Anniversaries
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Birthdays & Anniversaries
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Birthdays & Anniversaries
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CMANA’ s 40th Anniversary Celebrations Program
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Birthdays & Anniversaries
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Birthdays & Anniversaries
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Birthdays & Anniversaries
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