But that is the challenge, to get an audience

[ShrutiLaya]

Rescued the following from the "other thread".

But that is the challenge, to get an audience. Quite often, we have only a few people in the audience ..

I think that organizations (not just carnatic music, but dance, sangams etc) operate thinking that their audience is the suburbanite with 2.5 kids, and ignore the other kinds of people (college students, students of music/dance, the general music audience which goes to World Music Institute concerts etc) who would attend events if they knew about them and the event was accessible. Personally I don't go to Sruthilaya concerts because they are in the middle of nowhere.

There were quite a few people at the Carnatica Brothers concert a couple of years ago, which was conveniently located (Flatiron district), and the Carnatica Bros are not "headliners" nor was the concert all that well-advertised.

We typically have concerts in a school auditorium in Queens, a densely populated borough of New York City, couple of miles from two major highways and right within a residential district .. hardly middle of nowhere! We ourselves travel 40 miles from the suburbs to make sure the concerts are held in Queens, in a central and easily accessible location. But I guess what Manavan means is that it is hard to reach by public transportation? mea culpa, but most suburbanites would find it equally hard or harder to go to concerts in downtown Manhattan ..

But we admit we are not doing a good job of reaching all the possible types of audiences. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions or help in reaching them. Please help!

- Sreenadh

[harimau]

This is the same problem faced by the public conveniences in India. They charge Re1 or maybe Rs 2 for the use of the toilet. I have seen men prop up their motorcycles against the wall of the pay toilet and relieve themselves nearby in the open. If they can afford a motorcycle, they definitely can afford the fee for using the facility but they won't.

To improve the sanitary situation, one IAS officer came up with the brilliant idea that people should be paid to use the public toilets. Then they will use the toilet and collect the Re 1 or Rs 2, whatever the government is willing to dole out.

By applying the same principle, organizers of Carnatic music concerts in the US should pay the audience for listening to the kutcheris. Perhaps then they will get an audience. In India this principle of not charging for tickets is being followed to some extent: most concerts are free. You should try that too as an option.

The other thing is to offer food either for free or at el-cheapo rates. The Hindu temples in various North American cities are full of bachelors who show up to buy a week's supply of puliyodharai and thayir saadham at $1 or $2 a box. So Sunday noons are the busiest time at the temple kitchens and dining area. Try this too. Make sure you get those cartons McDonalds uses to package food so that folks can stack them 20 high and carry them out to their cars.

[Sam Swaminathan]

That, Harimau, is a tongue-in-cheek statement! But then you are right ! We have been recently offering carnatic concerts followed by dinner or lunch and this has been well received by fee paying public as well as members. For after all, some of them do travel quite a bit to attend the concerts and by the time of thani avarthanam, their thoughts are on food, as to how they are going to arrange or cook or what ever. By eliminating this anxiety, we have managed to keep them interested in music for a full three hours and the best outcome of that was, they spent some quality time mingling with the artists as well when they joined the rasika crowd for their dinner or lunch. Unfortunately, food is not any thing elaborate...just a vegetable sadam and thayir sadam with pickles!

[ShrutiLaya]

@harimau Thanks for your insights. I'm sure we will now be thinking about you whenever we use the "conveniences" at our concerts ..

@swaminathan since you are doing it, you clearly must be aware of the huge logistical effort to procure and sell food at a concert, and the number of volunteers it needs who are willing to staff the cafeteria instead of listening to the concert (talk about love for music!). We have started doing it, but only for our long - full day or half day - programs.

- Sreenadh

[Sam Swaminathan]

A quick correction Shruti....we do not charge any thing for food. It is included in the price of the tickets for the concert. Nothing very high, just a few dollars over and above the normal. Yes, you are correct, you need volunteers to man the counters as well as help to clear the place and clean the area etc. The bigger problem is the disposal of the rubbish bags, for which we come out with some very clever moves. All in all, every thing works out nicely at the end of the day as the rasika members go away home with pleasant memories of a good concert and a decent meal!!

Our membership fee promises the members a minimum of 2 - 3 concerts per year free of cost to the members and a reasonable price for non members. In addition, members attend all monthly concerts free of cost plus the 3 major functions such as St T day, MD day and other composers' day. On St T day every one gets free breakfast and lunch. People do contribute for this by way a small amount of money towards the food. But this is only by their own volition. This follows the tradition in Mylapore Samajam where free lunch is provided every Aradhana day. For Dasa day there is a small entrance fee, but for members it is free. On the whole, we have some 150 or so members and we seem to survive for the last so many years. Let us hope this continues.

[ShrutiLaya]

Thanks for all the interesting tips. Our fee structure is similar, with 4 concerts included in the membership fee and most other programs being free of charge, children admitted free to all concerts. We have a half day Thyagaraja Aradhana program (free) where, after the traditional pancharatna krithi singing, we have three one hour mini concerts by selected local teachers. This year, we began offering food for sale at this event. We also have an all day composers day program towards the end of the year, where we rotate composers (we had Annamacharya, Purandaradasa and P.Sivan so far). This too is free, and again, last December, we began offering food. We find that practically no one contributes anything if we just put a donation box, so we charge nominal amounts for the food. Fortunately, rubbish disposal is handled by the custodians at the school we use, but we still need volunteers willing to sit in the cafeteria, away from the concert .. which seems an unreasonable price to pay for getting others to come to the concert.

- Sreenadh

[manavan]

[blockquote]couple of miles from two major highways and right within a residential district .. hardly middle of nowhere![/blockquote]

I'm sorry that your life is so circumscribed that a residential district near highways counts as somewhere to you.

There are list-servs/bulletin boards associated with music/dance/South Asian women in the arts/South Asian studies departments at the universities (I know Columbia has one) as well as venues like World Music Institute and Asia Society that play non-European music frequently... though I don't know that these are the sorts of people who would journey to the middle of nowhere. There are also radio shows, I haven't listened to the WKCR one in some years so maybe you've already thought of this.

Re: timing, the Carnatica brothers concert was after work at 7:30 which was really convenient.