In an earlier post I had lamented about Trivandrum and especially Swati Tirunal College of Music not remembering SSI on his birth centenary. This got answered when all the music colleges in Kerala got together and put up a fine music & dance festival for 4 days (26 through 29 Nov) at Trivandrum. The tastefully decorated venue at the SST College of Music, Trivandrum was named after Neyyatinkara Vasudevan. The inaugural function featured among others a presidential address in chaste English by Umayalpuram Sivaraman and a Keynote address in informal Malayalam by T.N. Krishnan. The duo combining with TV Vasan on Ghatam presented a concert later in the evening. The concert featured Marubalka reminding one of the high energy levels with which SSI used to render the song. This was preceded by the concert of Palai CK Ramachandran who used to uphold (?!) the sruthi for SSI.
There were thematic programs on Bhadrachala Ramadas, Annamacharya, Swati Tirunal, Muthiah Bhagavathar, Pancharatna kritis and Bhajans. The program included a couple of lectures - one on the Arithmetic of laya by Palghat TR Rajamani and the second on New Facts on Swati Tirunal by Dr. Achut Sankar Nair. Dr Nair qualified in Computer Science and currently working as Director of Biotechnology at the University of Kerala presented little known facts about Swati’s life and works. Instead of letting passion and emotion rule the talk he presented hard scientific evidence that he has painstakingly collected over the years from the Internet and archives in Trivandrum and London. The artifacts included newspaper clippings and journal references published from UK, Australia and elsewhere. He is making this presentation at Music Academy on 17 Dec.
The program included several vocal and veena concerts by local talent. A noticeable aspect is the fact that Kerala produces a large number of Ghatam, Kanjira and Morsing artists (I guess the number must be more than what Tamilnadu produces). They are at 80+ percentile level but handicapped in moving to 95+ percentile level by lack of opportunities. You can catch a glimpse of many of them in a program called Srutilayam on Amrita channel (8.30 AM to 9 AM). The Bharatanatyam students put up an excellent version of Bhavayami Raghuramam.
In summary it was a well conducted event for which the faculty members at the college had put in lot of hard work. Very thoughtfully, the pandal was not marred by sponsors’ banners. The time management could have been better if they had restricted the number of events in a day to five instead of six. A delay of 15 minutes in each ends up in a cumulative delay of 2 hours at the end.