Promoting Indian classical music among youngsters, in the wake of influence of Western classical music, Bollywood music and other filmy music, is not an easy task.
Though there are many organisations in the city promoting Indian classical music, they have limited themselves to rendering selfless service in one genre of Indian classical music, that is, Carnatic Classical music. Nadasurabhi Cultural Association is one such example for promoting carnatic classical music.
Harini Raghavan, the general secretary of the organisation spoke at length about the activities of the organisation and their future plans in promoting Carnatic Classical music.
Nadasurabhi which was started in the year 1993 by a few musicians and music lovers, initially conducted programmes at the residence of one of the founder members. "The organisation then took proper shape and started to grow under the stewardship of air marshal (retired) P M Ramachandran and D S Gopinath who were successive presidents during the initial years. The aim was to promote Carnatic music at all levels and for all age groups."
The association conducts several music festival every year. A week long annual festival is conducted during November in which established artistes perform. Also, a three-day youth festival is held during February in order to provide an opportunity to young and upcoming artistes. This organisation also encourages both vocalists and instrumentalists.
She added, "Besides, a three-day Karnataka Vaibhava Festival is held during August where priority is given to artistes belonging to Karnataka and also to highlight the contributions of Karnataka based composers and artistes for the cause of classical music." In this concert, artistes will render the songs of Purandaradasa, Mysore Vasudevacharya, Muthiah Bhagavatar, Mysore Sadashiva Rao, Maharaja Jayachamarajendra Wodeyar, as well as those of contemporary composers like Vasantha Madhavi. Special events like commemorating the birth centenary of Madurai Mani Iyer and others are conducted every year.
Besides conducting concerts, the association also conducts children’s music competition during May every year to identify talent in young artistes.
However, the organisation also change the senior members of the executive committee yearly and induct new members to allow new ideas to flow into the organisation. "The committee is not a fixed group of persons. In fact, today we do not have a single person in our current committee who was in the original managing committee," explained Harini.
Some of the artistes who have performed here include T N Seshagopalan, T V Sankaranarayanan, R K Srikantan, T N Krishnan, M S Gopalakrishnan, Sanjay Subrahmanyan, T M Krishna, N Ramani, Vidushis Sudha Raghunathan, Sowmya, Sikkil Sisters, Vedavalli, Ranjani-Gayathri, Priya Sisters, T S Sathyavathi and others. Among the young artistes Sikkil Gurucharan, T N S Krishna, Abhishek Raghuram, Saketharaman, Sriranjani Santhanagopalan, Amrutha Venkatesh and Aishwarya Vidya Raghunath and have showcased their talent here.
When asked about the library facility, she said, "We have most of the important and rare music books with the executive committee and members can borrow the same for reference purposes." The organisation does not have an auditorium of its own to conduct programmes and is dependent on other venues.
Speaking about the future plans of the organisation, she concluded, "It is a dream some day we should have our own place - a far fetched one, perhaps, given the land prices in Koramangala."