CHENNAI: The crowd huddled close at the mosh pit, headbanging to the rock band Beta Funktion’s stormy music. Despite performing at larger venues around the city, the first Fête de la Musique 2014 concert at the Alliance Française of Madras was a special one for the band of five, who had kickstarted their train of performances on the same stage a year ago.
A couple of original compositions followed some famous 80’s rock ‘n’ roll tracks. While the audience simply headbanged to the tracks they did not know the lyrics of, they joined in the chorus for Led Zeppelin’s ‘Lonely lonely lonely time...’ from Rock and Roll. The Beta Funktion’s show was, however, the second part of the concert.
For the first part, the stage saw a host of performances by students and teachers of the Alliance Française. If you had been a little lenient on pitches and ragas, they would have sounded just right for a musical evening. With the right mix of Bollywood numbers — Tum hi ho from Aashiqui 2 and Tu hi meri shab hai from Gangster, English hits like Sweet child of mine by Guns N’ Roses and melodious French tunes, the evening was a quite a diverse musical package. One of the students even performed a couple of Tamil songs that he had composed himself.
The icing on the cake was when a professor went up on stage to perform a mashup of a French classic and an Indian Meera bhajan — with ease, bringing melodies from the East and West in sync.