When a soul is completely immersed in love and devotion, music flows like magic. It was sheer passion for music that drove Dr Bhavani Prakash to perform a relentless 12-hour music marathon, completely rich in quality and time. However, a larger crowd could have made it a more beautiful day.
The event, which was held at Vani Mahal, started at 9am on Saturday in the presence of vidwans like P S Narayanaswamy, T R Subramaniam and K V Ramanujam, who were the honorary chief guests for the occasion. Other musicians like S Soumya, Suguna Varadachari, Jayalakshmi Santhanam and Lalgudi Vijalakshmi were also present at the event.
According to her, the concert was not to please others or for the applause, it was for the love of classical music and the spirituality attached to it. For the first few hours, she donned the identity of a veena player; followed by flute for few hours. It turned into a musical feast with the Jugalbhandi, where she played flute and veena alternatively, accompanied by a sitar player. Toward the end of the evening, it was exclusively vocal and unfortunately it was disheartening to see empty seats with very few old ardent music lovers choosing to stay till the end.
Said Dr Sitaraman, who had come alone with his wife, a veena player, to listen to the concert: “We chose to come here because we wanted to promote talent like this.” He added, “There are many concerts, but those recognised artistes don’t need the promotion. It is necessary that people know about musicians like Bhavani.”
One message that Bhavani wanted to share to musically-inclined youngsters of today’s generation is that, though there are Ipods and Iphones to listen to music — it is necessary for a classical singer to attend at least a few concerts to understand the challenges while singing on a stage. “It requires lot of creativity to sing ragaas and alapanaas. but children can develop the creativity only when they ‘observe and absorb’ the music by listening to others in person,” the singer advised.