Monday, February 26, 2007

A Million Thanks To Shakthi Foundation.....


Senthil, even though he is MY friend somehow ends up with some good stuff, thanks to his contacts across the software industry. One such incident was the music show being conducted by Shakthi Foundation to raise funds for their organization. Software with all its banes, curses, medical problems etc does have some advantages though. The internet or the web architecture has nowadays become a kind of media of broadcasting things which may be of use to others.

One such mail contained information about the Music show being held at Music Academy where three musicians with THE command in their specializations were going to perform for a good cause. Having seen a video of such a programme earlier we found no better reason to say no to it and and to end up spending the time as one of our typical Saturday evenings.

We reached the place (it was the first time for me and Senthil to set foot into music academy hall, it had been nothing more than a landmark for us until that evening) in time and settled down in our seats just as the compere had started his welcome speech. The “Landmark” turned out to be a well made acoustic architecture from inside. The performers for the day were Shankar “The Breathless” Mahadevan, Mandolin “Maestro” Srinivas, “Ustad” Zakhir Hussain and “Ace Percussionist” L.Sivamani. None of us, useless non entities (Tamizhla sonna, Bhoomi Ki Bharam), had absolutely any idea of what we were going to witness.

These were, simply put, the best in their businesses and they started off with a song on Vinayagar. Then it was the turn of Srinivas to enthrall the audience with his strings. He just kept producing such vibrations from the steel wires in his instrument that kept the whole audience in pin drop silence due to rapt attention. Any bloke who had never had the slightest idea of what music is all about would have been dumb struck by the stuff that was rendered. A couple of days after the show I learnt more about this maestro from my cousin that he has customized and perfected the instrument so as to make it suitable for Karnatic music by introducing new strings in the conventional model.

Somehow I was not surprised or awed on hearing all this after hearing him play it in the function.

Then started the man who once made music out of a biriyani kadai. L.Sivamani started off with so many instruments around him (around 45-50) and started what he does best, produce Music out of those in certain combinations which were otherwise unfathomable to us. He used the conch, the bells, a few electric drums etc to produce all kinds of sounds one would even imagine out of any kind of drums. He went on to his trademark style of rotating the sticks while playing on the drums and ended with the “Kutthu” beat leaving all of us SPEECHLESS.


The software professional turned musician then stepped onto the stage along with the Ustad. He was described as Oracle’s Loss and Music’s gain. He came onto the stage and started off with his swaras and voice modulations with such music notes which only the ustad and the maestro could deal with. He varied his voice modulations with such ease and at one point even the maestro could produce his note only by taking refuge in the screws of his instrument to produce the same. All this while the ustad was just supporting Shankar Mahadevan keeping up the tempo of the performance and did not showcase any of his prowesses. But everyone was so engrossed in the mixture of swaras given by the singer. These three people went onto to a jugalbandhi with each bettering the other in their own style. Every time we heard any piece from any of these artists we were short of words to praise them, but the relish was just short lived because we could not just ignore the next legend in line.

The breathless man, along with his counterparts had rendered the audience literally “CLUELESS” as to what had hit them without even their knowledge.



To Be Continued..........

1 comment:

Venky said...

oh brother! How i missed it!