Lovely weekend concerts
….
This is a post about music and the Mallikarjun Mansur Music Festival , not about the great work the Bangalore Kidney Foundation has been doing for 27 years now…..
After witnessing, some time ago, pyrotechnics in classical music without much substance to them, it was a refreshing change to attend the north Indian classical music concerts under the aegis of the Bangalore Kidney Foundation’s annual Mallikarjun Mansur music festival. The Gundecha brothers , Rama Kant and Uma Kant , Smt Vasundhara Komakalimath.; Pandit Venkatesh Kumar,Dr N Rajam , Dr Rajshekhar Mansur , and Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt ….between them they provided a feast of fairly unusual raags like Jayant Malhar, Hem Behaag, as well as the known ones like Bhairavi, Behaag and Yaman Kalyan. Of course, with Vishwa Mohan Bhatt what I call the “audience pleasing factor” (er..I call it the LS factor, actually) was higher; but the production was backed by solid worth. It is an amazing thing that he has converted a western instrument (the Spanish guitar) into an instrument of north Indian classical music.
The event was so well organized, too; goodness knows how many glitches there were, but they were not apparent (and I attended all the sessions.) Kamat Yatri Nivas did the catering and today both KM and I ate both our meals right there, next to the auditorium where a shamiana had been put up.
I was very impressed with a young man who did a good job of introducing the artistes and thanking them after their performance…and you can imagine how thrilled I was when he came up to me and said he had been reading my blog regularly! KM promptly said that we would no longer need an airbag in the car as my head could do duty perfectly well…. (and all you orrible sceptics out there, this is NOT the reason why I am writing nice things about the music festival!) Hey, Srikrishna…come on into LJ soon, writing is as much fun as reading….btw I want to share a lovely quote he used right at the end:
<H1 style="FONT-SIZE: 12px; MARGIN: 0pt">“Music speaks what cannot be expressed, soothes the mind and gives it rest, heals the heart and makes it whole, flows from heaven to the soul.” </H1>
(By that prolific author, Anon…I googled but couldn’t get a name.)
Also, KM in fine Philistine fettle did his own take on the quote, telling our daughter on the phone, “your mother heard this quote about music going from the soul down the hole and she is all melty and senti now…”
There was also a Volunteer of the Year award, which went to Ashima Goel, who works for Texas Instruments and volunteers for, among other things, the Bangalore Kidney Foundation. I have very high regard for volunteers, especially those who take time from demanding jobs to do so. I will find out more about this award and post about it….all the other volunteers at the music festival also seemed to be doing a fine job of it…through the crowds and the hours, they were always courteous and smiling, which must have been difficult to do at times!