Yamini 2017

After a 3 year long break, I was back to watch the overnight music extravaganza

So, little bit of personal context w.r.t Indian classical music. My father had to keep moving due to his job, and I ended up studying in 7 different schools when it was all done. While this system was great in me adopting to new places and people quickly and developing a habit of reading books, what it was not good for was maintaining a hobby, no matter how much my mother tried.

I have on separate occasions taken classes for Carnatic vocals, Hindustani vocals, Harmonium and Tabla as a kid, but none of them could be sustained for a period of more than an year or so due to our moving frequency. This is where my interest in classical music stems from.

I was able to pursue my interest of classical music (only watching, no doing)much more after I moved to Namma Bengaluru in earnest some 4 and a half years ago. It has a vibrant community, and incidentally people in my close circle were pretty decent performers and enthusiasts themselves. I have attended their personal performances and one of them even tried to teach me some, which again due to complications of life, lasted only for a full month.

SPIC-MACAY is one organization which I have to thank for the continued exposure. They used to have regular concerts at my college, so I did not have to go far to attend. It does a great job of trying to keep the Indian music and cultural heritage alive across the country especially among the youth. Do check out the link to learn more about them.

Unfortunately I have not kept detailed note of the previous artists and concerts I have attended, so I felt it was never a bad time to start. I have previously attended concerts of Mysuru brothers, Bombay Jayashree, Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, these are the ones I remember at the top of my head. I have attended a lot more.

So, this brings us to Yamini of this year, it is the flagship event of the Bengaluru/Karnataka chapter of Spic Macay. It is held every year from 25th January evening to the dawn on 26th January, which happens to be the Republic day of India, ergo a national holiday. I had attended way back in 2014, when it was held in the indoor auditorium at PESIT. I had put off last two years considering the cold of January in an open air arena. Finally this year, I decided to go for it.

This was the line up for the night.

It started off with an Odissi performance by the great Sujata Mohapatra and her troupe consisting of another male dancer and around 4–5 singers/instrumentalists. Her rendition of Ramayana was really mesmerizing, forcing me to recollect all the Ramayana story points which I had learnt when as a kid. The facial expressions, the nimble body movements bought the story to life so vividly, made total justice to the epic that is Ramayana. They also had a few more routines, one of which showcased the Ardha-Narishwara where both dancers performing in sync as one half of the human body. My memory has become bad, but I believe this was the first ever Odissi dance performance which I have seen live.

Next performance was by Padma Shri Venkatesh Kumar, a Hindustani classical singer from North Karnataka. I guess this is the beauty of the state which has lent it’s name to the distinct music style called Carnatic music but can still help nutrure great Hindustani classical artists. Personally I do not have a taste for vocals, and Hindustani vocals in particular, so I cannot really comment much. He had a really deep and rich voice and he was bringing his renditions to life with great joie de vivre with his troupe. One of my friends, who had come along and is a life long connoisseur of classical music said “I thought Venkatesh was not in his best form.. only his signature song, the last one was very good”.

His was felicitated by the Director Girish Kasaravalli after the show. Apparently he is also directing a documentary on Venkatesh Kumar’s life. Girish Kasaravalli is a great director, his National Award winning movie Dweepa (2002) is still embedded very firmly in my mind. It made quite an impression on the 12/13 year old me, It tackles a lot of raw issues dealing with the human cost of “progress” and “development”. If you have not seen it, I highly recommend that you do.

Next up, was a Carnatic vocal performance by Sikkil Gurucharan. He was accompanied by a lady on Ghatam in his troupe, first lady I have ever seen on a Ghatam or any percussion instrument for that matter personally. I was up for the first hour of his performance, but could not help dozing off for the second hour, though I quite enjoyed sleeping under the stars, under the influence of great Carnatic vocals. Again, not a great patron of vocals, but it was quite riveting in bits.

What followed for next two and half hours was nothing short of musical nirvana. The Akkarai Sisters took the stage at about 2 AM, and held the rapt attention of the audiences till about 430 AM. We literally did not realize the time pass, and had to look at the watch in amazement realizing so much time had indeed passed. I suppose that is the hallmark of a great performance of any kind, you never realize the time passing and you give into it completely. Now to the nitty gritties, the two sister combo which forms this band of “Akkarai sisters” are very proficient in violin, and come from a long family tradition of musicians. They were accompanied on the Mridangam by Patri and on the Ghatam by S Karthick. They performed various raagas and compositions one after the other, and it felt really effortless. They rounded up with the rendition of Raghupati Raghava Rajaram to commemorate our Republic day.

Here is one of their performances, I highly recommend to give it a listen, that is what I have been doing while writing this piece down.

After this performance, we were not sure that anyone could match up, and so did a good chunk of the audience so they headed home to enjoy their holiday.

Me and couple other friends decided to give it a go, and we were not disappointed. It was a Sitar performance by Shahid Parvez and was very proficiently assisted by Ravindra Yavagal on tabla. One word to summarize Shahid Parvez’s style of play is fun. Honestly, it felt like he was playing a guitar rather than a Sitar! such was his speed, precision and the joy with which he played. Again I am not really equipped to go into the nitty gritties except saying that it was a great conclusion to an incredible evening. The solo Sitar, the solo tabla performances and them in combination. All in all it was a treat to hear.

Here is a detailed poster of the artist lineup.

It was sharp 6 AM, when the performance ended, and we decided to head back. In spite of sleeplessness really well spent 12 hours.

Now I cannot help but mention my pet peeves with what I saw, there was a lot of needless paper wastage by asking us to print a “Pass”, I got the digital copy, but I saw a lot of print outs which could honestly have been avoided. I get the need to light up fires due to cold, but we have more smoke than we can handle in Namma Bengaluru as it is. There were slight problems with the stage setup and sound system too, but really minor wrinkles in the grand scheme of things.

I implore you guys to please attend as many classical concerts/events as possible, all of SPIC MACAY events are free of cost.

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