JOIN USInnovations and cross-cultural collaborations across different streams of Indian classical arts and Western music are becoming more and more common.
Audiences, critics, art historians and fellow artistes have celebrated this phenomenon as it has resulted in some beautiful and commendable genre-bending experiments. However, we saw purists, too, regret this trend as a craze, confusion and a dilution of ‘pure classicism’ and of decreasing respect for the maargam.
The current trend of fusion or collaboration with the Western genres, especially on their soil, gives our great artistes and art forms wonderful international exposure. But there is also some concern that less competent artistes are, sometimes, compromising on standards simply because performing alongside foreign artistes and/or on foreign soil is more ‘glamorous’ or lucrative.
Of course, there are some renowned and widely respected dancers who have managed to stay faithful to the maargam even as they experiment and innovate in admirable ways — a few examples being bharatanatyam doyens like Alarmel Valli and Malavika Sarukkai. Among some interesting innovations were Geetha Chandran’s presentation of bharatanatyam woven around the Jain anekantan philosophy.
After seeing different classical dance forms one after another on a stage, we are also seeing, nowadays, a trend of these being interwoven in a single presentation. One example was kuchipudi dancer Vanashree Rama Rao’s ‘Timeless Tales of Gods and Goddesses, Men and Demons, Love and Devotion’, which combined Mayurbhanj chhau, kuchipudi and bharatanatyam. It was also good to see more talented male solo dancers get their due — like bharatanatyam dancers Zakir Hussain and Sathyanarayana Raju, kuchipudi dancer Avijit Das, and many more.
Talents galore
Among innumerable successful experiments in music is the recent one with Thyagaraja’s famous Telugu composition ‘Nagumomu’ by Brooklyn Raga
Massive, a music community movement in New York, even as the Cleveland Thyagaraja Festival showcased the best of Carnatic music traditions. In London, even as chaste classical music was presented at several platforms, including the Darbar Festival, well-known artistes like Jyotsna Srikanth, who regularly performs Carnatic music, had successful collaborations with Western classical and folk music genres. Renowned pianist Anil Srinivasan amazingly blends the East and West proving that the twain can meet, and successfully at that. Chitravina Ravikiran came up with a first-of-its-kind concept — the Indian Music Spelling Bee contest.
Several established artistes have turned organisers or curators of arts festivals. Like Prathibha Prahlad and Delhi International Arts Festival (DIAF); Raja and Radha Reddy with Parampara; Jyotsna Srikanth with London International Arts Festival (LIAF); Shovana Narayan with her Lalit Arpan, where this year the theme was ‘Ashta Nayika’, etc. The same holds for established contemporary dancers like Madhu Nataraj Kiran and Anita Ratnam, for example.
The birth
centenary of M S Subbulakshmi, an icon of Carnatic music, was celebrated across India and abroad, with dancers, musicians, musicologists and sabha-heads paying tribute in a series of dance performances, concerts and talks. Fittingly, Subbulakshmi’s historic concert at the United Nations (UN) was remembered with a special function there. The UN also honoured this great vocalist by issuing a stamp to commemorate her centenary.
This year also marked the centenary of another milestone — the first All India Music
Conference. It was in 1916 that the great pioneer and musicologist Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande brought together around 400 musicians from different regional and language backgrounds for this seminal conference in the princely state of Baroda (now Vadodara).
The prestigious Sangeeta Kalanidhi for 2017 was announced for outstanding
violinist and guru Avasarala Kanyakumari. She created history by becoming the first female violinist to receive this honour, though it’s considered a delayed recognition. Among her long list of achievements, Kanyakumari is also the first female Carnatic violinist to create new ragas and compositions. Another long overdue recognition was when renowned dancer, teacher, scholar and choreographer C V Chandrasekhar was named a fellow of the Sangeet Natak Akademi.
It was also heartening to see traditional art forms continuing to stay strong with their annual performances. For instance, Melattur Bhagavata Mela of Tamil Nadu, a rare temple/theatre art composed in Telugu; the vilasini natyam at Ranganatha Swamy Temple in Hyderabad’s outskirts; and kaisika natakam, a 10th-century performance art hosted by Anita Ratnam’s Arangham. We also saw the revived kalavantula nrutyam, a courtly and salon dance taught and sung by Annabhattula Lakshmi Mangatayaru and Annabhattula Leela Sayi, and danced by Yashoda Thakore with Dr Davesh Soneji providing commentary.
Soulful tunes
In Hindustani classical music, octogenarians like Pandit Jasraj and Kishori Amonkar and 70-plus artistes like Shivkumar Sharma and Amjad Ali Khan continued to mesmerise crowds with their musical genius even as the younger crop are winning standing ovations, both in their traditional forms and innovative methods. Take a look at sitar player Niladri Kumar with his zitar. That is the beauty of the Indian classical music tradition — it gives space to such a wide range of articulations of music!
A void in Hindustani classical music was created with the death of the stalwart of Gwalior gharana, Veena Sahasrabuddhe, who was widely applauded for her renditions of khayals and bhajans, and was a very respected teacher.
Music colossus M Balamuralikrishna passed away. In a tribute, living legends said that he was ‘na bhuto na bhavishyati’ — a ‘never before, never again’ phenomenon, and that no tribute could do justice. Consider this unparalleled record — astonishing prowess in multiple roles of a vocalist, composer, multi-instrumentalist, music director, playback singer, and teacher. He created ragas, too, and did daring, genre-bending experiments. Besides his divine vocal music, he was a proficient player of violin, viola, khanjira, veena and mridangam. Balamuralikrishna is also the only musician with National Awards in classical music, film playback singing and music direction.
The new generation of performing artistes is blessed with access to advanced technology offering enormous, easily accessible learning resources. Among those to watch out for in Carnatic music are Aishwarya Vidhya Raghunath, Mallela Tejaswi, Abhishek Raghuram, Bharat Sundar, Ashwath Narayanan, Shreya Devnath, Prasanna Venkataraman, Amrutha Venkatesh, Sandeep Narayan, Amritha Murali, Trichur Brothers, Archana and Aarathi, Askhay Padmanabhan, Brinda Manickavasagam, Vasudha Ravi, Vidya Kalyanaraman, Akshay Anand, etc. It certainly looks like the future of classical arts is in safe hands.