There were generous dollops of NRI references and US buzzwords (NYT, Wharton...) while introducing Sobha Narayan (they called her Sutradhaar!) and Chitra. The programme featured a smattering of film songs old and new with Rajni, Jaya Bhaduri, Mohan Lal and others singing and dancing in YouYube clips and Chitra force-fitting those songs to Carnatic idiom with famous krithis sung in tow.
I felt it was going a bit too far when they said a Malayalam film song in Jog of HM was resembling Mahaganapatim in Nattai!!!!
The Keynote/PowerPoint efforts of Sobha were of High School standard, with many howlers. One such was this (I am paraphrasing her notes):
HM and CM were quite similar until they incorporated the harmonium into Hindustani music. Due to its limitations, the harmonium could not reproduce gamakas, and its direct consequence was that HM ragas lost gamakas and HM became one with flat notes. Carnatic music saw this danger and prevented the harmonium from entering the scene, that's how CM is full of gamakas (=oscillations) still.
Wherever Sobha may have picked up this line, I am not convinced. I invite erudite comments...what about instrumental HM like sitar, sarod, sarangi, flute etc.? How come I hear a lot of gamakas when I hear Ravi Shankar, Vilayat Khan, Shahid Pervez? Listen to the Veena Sahasrabudhe clip I shared elsewhere, don't you see glides and slides and even oscillations?
The two genres are quite different, and harmomium has limitations, but is Sobha's final conclusion about HM valid!?
You can see I am trying to get some paisa vasool from my time invested in that programme. At the same time, Sutradhaar and such labels on presenters is fine, but it shouldn't become an exercise in spinning a yarn!
:p