JOIN USAn all-women ensemble of 30 musicians from across the state brought alive a bygone era of Kannada cinema with hits rendered by playback singer S Janaki at the Ganesh Utsava recently.
The group, led by well-known artistes Supriya Raghunandan and Sunita Murali, featured 20 instruments, including guitars, sitar, santoor, drums, tabla and mrudanga. In an interview with Chetana Divya Vasudev, Supriya talks about how the group came together.
Why S Janaki?
Well, back in the 1950s, women didn't get the kind of encouragement in the field of art that they do today. In such a time, she persevered and made a name for herself in all South Indian language film industries. In Kannada, you think of songs from that era, and she’s one of the first people who come to mind. So who better for an all-women band to honour than her?
How did you get the ensemble together?
The festival organisers approached Sunita and me in February, and we started looking out for musicians as early as March. Some were people we knew of. But it’s hard to find women playing certain instruments — drums, mrudanga, tabla, djambe. So we asked our friends for recommendations.
The artistes are from across the state. How did you manage the rehearsals?
That was one of our biggest challenges, but every one was very cooperative and would come down to Bengaluru whenever we fixed rehearsals, mostly in the last couple of months. There were days when we had continuous rehearsals from 9 am to 9 pm. We also got to jam together a few times.
How was it performing at the Ganesh Utsava?
It went very well, considering that for a lot of artistes this was their first shot at performing Kannada film music. Many are Indian classical musicians and some others, like the violin and soxophone artistes, have a western classical background.
Do you plan to form a band?
In some sense, we already are one though we don’t have a name. And yes, we have been getting calls from other cities as well. As for the band members, we are also keen on keeping this going and creating our own music as well.