December 2018 Music season - Tidbits - Part 1

Tidbits mid-season from here and there

(plus hits and bites on many everywhere)

Part 1 of . . .

December season has the musical highs, as well as the accompanying fun, awkward moments and woes. Here are some of them to chew on, mid-season.

A picture from the previous season - 30 December, 2017 - winners of best concert of the season

Why is it that some folks wear those overpowering perfumes and land up in a tightly packed small hall, which is already warmed up by the excited bodies in spite of the A/Cs going full blast? Boy o boy, was it a hit on everyone's nostrils and for some it struck the brain and probably nearly made them faint. Please folks, can you take it a little easy on the perfume in such places. Maybe you can try it in huge auditoriums, like NGS / MA, but please don't in the Raga Sudha Hall! You have some weddings too, like at Antila, that can present you with the right opportunity to overpower everyone within 3 floors of you.

Hindustani methods are mostly followed in every thani avartanam. That is my opinion. What do I mean by that, am sure you ask! Well, the presentation of the percussionists starts at a leisurely place, in vilambita kaalam and possibly a 2-kalai chowka taalam. However, as the different exchanges move forward, the taalam speeds up and soon the beats are closer placed. At the end of the kuraippus and korvai one can see the vast difference in the taalam as the singer / instrument player has to switch back to his/her 2-kalai chowka taalam in vilambita kaalam to finish the presentation of the item. It is very obvious at this time, though the earlier change of speeding up is very gradual and less noticeable. If we were to have an electronic taalam keeper, one will find that at times the taalam is at 1.5 times the speed - or they finish 1.5 avartanams near the end of the tani avartanam compared for every avartanam used during the start of the piece.

Now is that something to complain about - probably not. However I wonder whether the percussionists can do even more variations in more complex nadais, if the taalam were kept at the slow speed. It could give more scope to the mridangam, kanjira, ghatam and morsing players, if one were to keep the slow pace throughout. More complicated korvais and many more variations could probably be played with ease, don't you think in the vilambita kaalam?

It was not rare to see people reading magazines and newspapers in the decades ago, while enjoying the music. Though magazines were less of a problem, newspapers were a nuisance - noisy to open, flip, fold, etc. Now-a-days, of course it goes without saying, many are on their mobile phones to either post their opinions (minority) or keep checking news, social media, etc. (majority) It was interesting to see one gentleman in the 2nd row of a hall (already mentioned in that particular concert's notes) happily reading a newspaper. Probably he was doing it noisily, as a VIP from the first row had to step up to him and admonish him (after which the reader folded, and after a few minutes was out of the hall, probably bored without parallel activities). Though the mobile phone usage by others has not been bothering me much it has indeed made me wonder which gets priority in our brains - music or the masala? Your views please!

Can you identify the star on the dais, other than the violinist Shri B U Ganesh Prasad?

When we complain about the audience, it is OK, but couple of folks took the cake and ate it too, when doing on the dais - disturbing the concert. They ate it because they were the percussionists in the concert, when they decided to start chatting during the AlApana of the main artist. They kept at it for "longer than it can be ignored" duration and disturbed the main artist so much. The artist had to break off the AlApana and a stare at the mridangist had to set the 'concert ethics' right! I did not expect the lack of professionalism on the part of experienced percussionists (was this AlApana of a top artist so disinteresting). Ooh la la. If they were my friends I would have let it rip at them after the concert. However, I am just a lay rasika who should not poke nose into giving top artists some advice.

Back to the audience - we seriously really need to control our movements and respect the fellow rasikas. Sabhas need to do something to stop movements in the middle of songs. Like the volunteers in tennis matches, who stop movements in-and-out of the stadium except during the breaks between games, we need the sabhas to enforce the rule of in-and-out only during the gaps between songs. It is really annoying when the interruptions are frequent, especially in the "free concerts"... okay, okay... since it is free for me, I should bear with it? Oh wait. It is free for them too - does that mean they are going to run amok and trouble all rasikas? Hmmm... You decide folks.

Yes, yes, it is well known that people should switch off their mobile phones or put them on silent mode. But wait, we don't announce that anymore. That means, there are many who don't do it anymore. Every concert I hear a dozen or two interruptions by the mobile phone. Now, there are going to be one or two people who genuinely forget to switch off or switch to silent mode. An announcement before every concert should likely reduce these interruptions to one or two (by old person or two whose problem(s) we have to be sympathetic to). So, please organizers, continue to announce before every concert - it may really help (along with chaperones at the gates for the control of flow of people).

Back to sound advice. Or rather just observation of solace for the experts who are fighting every day with the equipment. If Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan itself has problems with the sound, at times, where we are supposed to have one of the best sound systems if not "the" best in Chennai, then what can we say about other sabhas, halls and kalyana mandapams. During the concert of Shri Abhishek Raghuram there was a hum heard, but I believe only on the dais, probably from the monitors (lucky for the rasikas in the seats). In the concerts of two vidushis Gayatris (K and V, latter after the first), there was feedback heard and at times for the rasikas too. However, this time it seemed to have been reduced if not eliminated after a while and multiple attempts - just tells us so much about the complexity of creating a re'sound'ing success.

OK, I will sign-off with a confession until the next hit-or-miss comments on everything but music. Except for a concert in Arkay CC, where I waited for a particular song to complete before entering, the few times I have been late to a concert, I have entered in the middle of the presentation wonly. We are like that wonly, when seats are likely to be gone in any delay of a few seconds. But I do try to avoid in case seating is not likely to be a problem and I happen to be late. Leaving mid-way is usually not a problem, as I leave only between songs or when the artists are re-tuning their instruments.