Violin Concert!
It’s been a while; since I had bragged about myself and in the process almost self inflate my sagging EGO!
Well, we had been to a violin concert last week. It was a south Indian Carnatic classical violin duet concert, performed by the famous Ganesh and Kumaresh brothers from Chennai.
It was my first violin concert, especially since I have started learning the same. We were all there apart from Nila (daughter), who was bit busy with her drama classes.
It was Priya’s (my wife) and mukil’s (son) first concert too. Priya was in fact more motivated than me to attend this concert, as she been learning Veenai for a good six months and her interest in Carnatic music is literally growing taller than her!
The concert was held in the famous Bridge water Hall in Manchester
The programme started with the composition of Saint Thyagaraja in Ragam Andolaki, followed by a Kambeera nattai (remember “Innum ennai enna seiyya pogirai anbe” from Singaravelan) performance, composed by the brothers himself without any lyrics. Then came a beautiful Poorvi kalyani ragam based composition, which literally took us to a different planet with a beautiful Alapana by the brothers.
They were both playing the instrument like couple of cute dolphins deep in the ocean, swimming effortlessly with lots of finesse!!!
A short break was followed by a 45 minutes piece of “Ragam, Thaanam, Pallavii format in Ragam Aberi, equivalent to Ragam Bhimplas in Hindustani.
The concert ended with a composition in Ragam “Sindu bhairavi”.
There were hundred of us totally and half of the audience were English. The theme of the concert was “Music for Mind and Peace” and no wonder most of us enjoyed the blissful music as it were poring out from a holy grail.
The concert was an eye opener, except for Mukil, who spent the whole two hours, having a siesta, mooted by the mellifluous music!!!
I have been to many classical music concerts during my college days, mainly at Raja Annamalai Mandram, Parry's corner, during, my school and college days.
Those days, I and my brother frequent the late night concerts, mainly Nagaswaram and Clarinets concerts as the admissions were free for those!!
I have also attended a few, including many of Jesudoss’s concerts, when I was learning vocal carnatic at the same institution, albeit for a short period, during my college years. The original plan was to learn Violin, which was done free in the Tamil Isai College
However the tradition was to start with vocal carnatic for six months, before moving on to violin. I was and still am ashamed to say that my patience nearly ran out during that six months (possibly lots of adrenaline and “kadalai”) and hence my aspiration to learn violin.
I am forty one now and have started once again because of the inspiration and motivation triggered on by from my better half. I have been now learning to play this superb and beautiful instrument for a year and half and ever since, my interest in our culture, tradition, values, and music has grown literally out of shape like me!
It may take another 5-7 years for me to master the art of playing proper carnatic music on my violin; however, I am damn sure that my focus will be more tunnelled and funnelled during these times.
The concert, well, certainly not only did fortify my thoughts and aspirations, also make me feel proud to be an Indian again for two many reasons.
In my opinion, music is the epitome of human knowledge, mind, and the brain’s neuronal intricacies.
The Indian culture and the heritage is the next one.
No more bragging!!
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