HYDERABAD: Heinrich Heine once said “Where words leave off, music begins” but this event for World Music Day was the perfect amalgamation of words and music. Alliance Francaise organised a panel discussion ‘Voice Of Musicians in Telugu States’ at Lamakaan, a cultural space at Banjara Hills.
The event was organised to celebrate different genres of music and a variety of musicians. The topics of discussion ranged from patronage, livelihood, and contemporary trends in the musical backdrop of both urban and rural areas of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The discussion had a distinguished panel that covered artists from various genres like folk, classical, rap, Tollywood, ghazal and more. The discussion was followed by the performances of each of the artists.
The panel included musicians like Harini Rao, a Hindustani classical vocalist; Poorva Guru, a ghazal artiste at All India Radio; Saikat Basu, a vocalist and bassist of the band ‘The Songsmith’; Marsukola Kalavathi, a folk artist from Adilabad; Aishan Vali, a freestyle rapper from Hyderabad and the classical singing duo, TK Sisters. The discussion was moderated by Gautam Pemmaraju, a writer & filmmaker working in the areas of history, literature and art.
The panel discussion started off with the topic of how vernacular music is gaining success and popularity across the globe. Harini Rao mentioned that there is an increased amount of investment in Telugu music. Folk singer Marsukola Kalavathi spoke in detail about how she took up the art of storytelling in her Gondi tribe in the rural areas of Adilabad and how she is one of the very few women to be in this area. On the other hand, Saikat and Aishan spoke about how Hyderabad is opening up more globally in the music arena as well.
Saikat Basu, vocalist and bassist said, “Hyderabad has to potential to become one of the biggest cities in the world in terms of music in the next 20 years.”The discussion moved into the direction of more opportunities coming the way of the artists, to which the TK sisters said, “Even for festivals like Ganesh Chaturthi, there are classical concerts happening now. It is not how huge the event is but the fact that it is giving chances to the youngsters.”
Kranti Mandalaparthy, Manager of Lamakaan also mentioned that “Hyderabad as a city is very open to people experimenting with music and we are glad that Lamakaan is able to give an opportunity to such artists for the past 13 years.”
Cora, Coordinator of the event from Alliance Francaise said, “Our Director, Samuel Berthet came up with the idea of doing this. This event is a result of hard work of over a month. Jwalitha and I had a lot of help from Sumanaspathy who coordinated with the folk artists and made it possible for them to be here today.”After the discussion, all the artists were felicitated along with Gautam Pemmaraju.