Come April, many areas of Bangalore will host a series of carnatic music concerts as part of the 'Ramanavami' season. Typically the concerts begin around 6 pm and end three hours later. Historically, there have been two big venues for this series. The more famous of them is Fort High School, Chamarajapet. The other is in the courtyard of the Sheshadripuram College. The concerts go on for a month. Entry to the Sheshadripuram concerts is free; at Fort they are ticketed.
If listening to live music concerts is a vital ingredient in the learning process for the student of carnatic music, I did a fair share of listening at these two venues. In retrospect, as a kid I listened to so many stalwarts at these venues that attending concerts today does not hold much attraction for me. K. V. Narayanaswamy, M. D. Ramanathan, D. K. Jayaraman, D. K. Pattammal, N. Ramani, T. V. Sankaranarayanan.....the list of greats goes on and on. Even as I write these lines, I feel thankful to my mother for guiding me to these concerts without forcing me into them.
I remember listening to these concerts with rapt attention with just the right amount of fooling about. My cousin and I used to quietly play or be taken to the stalls to nibble at some goodies. At Fort, we met friends and family, sat on the wooden chairs outside the pandal, and then scrambled in when the downpour began (usually the monsoon arrives midway through the series). If we were in Sheshadripuram when the rain came, there were very few places to take shelter, unlike in Fort High School.
I've not attended these series in years, except for the odd concert. It is too much trouble to drive through maddening traffic only to listen to disappointing stuff. This time, I may attend a few concerts at both places; feel like doing that. I hear that most of the big Chennai artists have become too expensive to afford, especially for Sheshadripuram which does not charge any entry-fee. A pity, but then it may give some promising local talent an opportunity.
The full list of this year's programmes at the Fort High School is available here. I will try to put up the list of the programmes at Seshadripuram. I was unable to get that online.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Out of the question!
These days, the quiz bug has bitten me and a few friends. With lunch, we also chew up year after year of the Karnataka Quiz Association's (KQA) 'Mahaquizzer' question banks. Which takes me back to the times when I did a decent amount of quizzing.
I was in Std VIII when somebody sponsored this quiz in Chowdiah Memorial Hall. Every school could send as many teams of two as it wanted. My school sent 24. Yes, that's right. 24 teams. 48 students. With yours truly at the helm. Unbelievably, none of the 24 entered the final round; we were all eliminated in the written prelims. After this hiding, the feeble hearted gave up seeking answers to even existentialist questions like 'What's your name?'.
Some of us quizzed on undettered, even giving our teams fancy names. Two of my friends and I set the stage on fire during the prelims of the Std X inter-class event with the name 'Thunderboys'. In the finals, before we knew what was happening, we were bringing up the rear, prompting an unprecedented, mid-event change of team name to 'Blunderboys'.
When I walked into my first quiz event in the National Law School, Bangalore, as a member of the audience, I heard questions like, 'What do you call the plastic-protected tip of a shoelace?', 'What is the name of the canal connecting the nose to the upper lip?' and so on. After that, I thought it wise to forage for glory elsewhere and did not quiz even once in Law School while I was there.
It was safer to quiz in Sasken. In 2002, we were right at the top till the rapid-fire round, at which point we lost our wits and with them, the first place. I remember that quiz for the most innovatively named teams. The one that got the prize was called 'Quizbul Mujahideen'. Come to think of it, with a name like that, they could not have had much competition coming their way.
I am sure one of the most looked-forward-to events in quizzing these days is KQA's 'Mahaquizzer', the solo written quiz held simultaneously in several cities. If getting 'Mahaquizzer' is not easy, not to worry. The interesting questions give you a good enough kick. This time, the event is to be held simultaneously in ten cities, Guwahati being the latest addition to the venues. The tentative date is May 24. For all the 'Mahaquizzer' papers from 2005 to 2008, visit http://members.tripod.com/~asimha/.
I was in Std VIII when somebody sponsored this quiz in Chowdiah Memorial Hall. Every school could send as many teams of two as it wanted. My school sent 24. Yes, that's right. 24 teams. 48 students. With yours truly at the helm. Unbelievably, none of the 24 entered the final round; we were all eliminated in the written prelims. After this hiding, the feeble hearted gave up seeking answers to even existentialist questions like 'What's your name?'.
Some of us quizzed on undettered, even giving our teams fancy names. Two of my friends and I set the stage on fire during the prelims of the Std X inter-class event with the name 'Thunderboys'. In the finals, before we knew what was happening, we were bringing up the rear, prompting an unprecedented, mid-event change of team name to 'Blunderboys'.
When I walked into my first quiz event in the National Law School, Bangalore, as a member of the audience, I heard questions like, 'What do you call the plastic-protected tip of a shoelace?', 'What is the name of the canal connecting the nose to the upper lip?' and so on. After that, I thought it wise to forage for glory elsewhere and did not quiz even once in Law School while I was there.
It was safer to quiz in Sasken. In 2002, we were right at the top till the rapid-fire round, at which point we lost our wits and with them, the first place. I remember that quiz for the most innovatively named teams. The one that got the prize was called 'Quizbul Mujahideen'. Come to think of it, with a name like that, they could not have had much competition coming their way.
I am sure one of the most looked-forward-to events in quizzing these days is KQA's 'Mahaquizzer', the solo written quiz held simultaneously in several cities. If getting 'Mahaquizzer' is not easy, not to worry. The interesting questions give you a good enough kick. This time, the event is to be held simultaneously in ten cities, Guwahati being the latest addition to the venues. The tentative date is May 24. For all the 'Mahaquizzer' papers from 2005 to 2008, visit http://members.tripod.com/~asimha/.
Monday, March 9, 2009
The Chronicles of Matthew Bartholomew
I was a member of the British Council Library in Bangalore when I was in Class X. I do not know when I let the membership expire. I took a membership again recently. Of course the biggest change between then and now is the location of the Library. Then, it was on the first floor of the Koshy's building on St. Mark's Road. Now, it is tucked away in a dead-end street off Kasturba Road, occupying the ground floor of a multistoried office building.
Last week I picked up a Matthew Bartholomew omnibus containing the first and second in a series of fourteen books, with the fifteenth due later this June. The books are murder mysteries set in Cambridge of the Middle Ages. Matthew Bartholomew is a physician teaching at Michaelhouse, a college forming part of the nascent University of Cambridge.
In A Plague on Both Your Houses, the first novel of the series, even as the town is threatened by the Great Plague in 1348, there are a series of brutal murders in Michaelhouse. Even as he struggles to contain the 'black death' in the town, Bartholomew begins to ask uncomfortable questions about the murders. His amateurish curiosity and an almost stupid courage lead him to larger conspiracies and pits him against powerful enemies who will not hesitate to kill him. That is, if the buboes do not get him first.
http://www.matthewbartholomew.co.uk/camb.htm is the homepage of author Susanna Gregory. It gives the reader interesting information about medieval Cambridge and a context to appreciate the stories better. Susanna Gregory is the pseudonym of Elizabeth Cruwys, a Cambridge academic who researches into marine pollution. She worked in a coroner's office previously.
Last week I picked up a Matthew Bartholomew omnibus containing the first and second in a series of fourteen books, with the fifteenth due later this June. The books are murder mysteries set in Cambridge of the Middle Ages. Matthew Bartholomew is a physician teaching at Michaelhouse, a college forming part of the nascent University of Cambridge.
In A Plague on Both Your Houses, the first novel of the series, even as the town is threatened by the Great Plague in 1348, there are a series of brutal murders in Michaelhouse. Even as he struggles to contain the 'black death' in the town, Bartholomew begins to ask uncomfortable questions about the murders. His amateurish curiosity and an almost stupid courage lead him to larger conspiracies and pits him against powerful enemies who will not hesitate to kill him. That is, if the buboes do not get him first.
http://www.matthewbartholomew.co.uk/camb.htm is the homepage of author Susanna Gregory. It gives the reader interesting information about medieval Cambridge and a context to appreciate the stories better. Susanna Gregory is the pseudonym of Elizabeth Cruwys, a Cambridge academic who researches into marine pollution. She worked in a coroner's office previously.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Catch that note!
A large chunk of my Sundays is spent teaching Carnatic music. I have nine students now. Five of them are boys, aged between five and ten. Two girls and two ladies make up the rest. All the boys started their carnatic music lessons with me. Everybody in the female group had trained under other teachers before.
I must confess that before I started teaching music almost two years ago, I did not think much about music; I just sang. It is only now, thanks partly to the uninhibited curiosity of the children, and partly to my own wish to hear the students sing like I want them to, that I often think of music.
I do not know why some people sing more through their noses than from their throats, or why some ragas are more easily taught than others, or the rationale behind carnatic music's intricate system of taalas. How is one to hold a magnifying lens to the spaces between notes and observe and grasp the subtlest of melodic movements, or worse, even silences?
Then there is a whole range of cultural issues: the lyrics used in carnatic music compositions are not secular and cosmopolitan; they are by and large religious, or at least mythological. How am I to explain to children the meaning of these compositions? When translated, they seem like nonsense to the youngster, and may well turn his interest away from the art form.
Today, my understanding of the physiological, mathematical, aesthetic and scientific aspects of what I sing and teach is very shallow. I believe that a better understanding will help both the teacher and the taught.
I must confess that before I started teaching music almost two years ago, I did not think much about music; I just sang. It is only now, thanks partly to the uninhibited curiosity of the children, and partly to my own wish to hear the students sing like I want them to, that I often think of music.
I do not know why some people sing more through their noses than from their throats, or why some ragas are more easily taught than others, or the rationale behind carnatic music's intricate system of taalas. How is one to hold a magnifying lens to the spaces between notes and observe and grasp the subtlest of melodic movements, or worse, even silences?
Then there is a whole range of cultural issues: the lyrics used in carnatic music compositions are not secular and cosmopolitan; they are by and large religious, or at least mythological. How am I to explain to children the meaning of these compositions? When translated, they seem like nonsense to the youngster, and may well turn his interest away from the art form.
Today, my understanding of the physiological, mathematical, aesthetic and scientific aspects of what I sing and teach is very shallow. I believe that a better understanding will help both the teacher and the taught.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)