PERFORMANCE IN CHENNAI

Like many societies steeped in tradition from centuries gone by, India seems at once new and old. It combines the spirit of ‘what’s new’ and ‘more of the same’ with an irrepressible zest. And traditions, whose Sanskrit meaning, parampara, is translated as ‘permanent and impermanent’, have a brilliant way of evolving with the times. When we talk of the countless art traditions of India, this staying power becomes a real boon. Who could be more aware of this than the art lovers of Chennai in south India? In this metropolis, perhaps better known for supplying IT professionals to companies across the world, the dust has just settled* on one of its most popular annual traditions, the Music Season, with preparations for the next one already under way. Taken literally, ‘Music Season’ is something of a misnomer for the explosion of music, dance and related arts that engulfs Chennai from November end to mid-January.

The Music Season has its roots in the Tamil month of Margazhi. According to the lunar Tamil calendar, the month of Margazhi falls approximately between December 15 and January 15. This is the most pleasant time of year in Chennai. (Incidentally, the port town was christened Madras by the British rulers, a name that stuck until the Indian Government reverted to the city’s original Tamil name not too many years ago). In a city where summer temperatures can barely be contained at 45 degrees Celcius, a milder season — where mornings start at 19 degrees and afternoons only reach 27 — is fondly referred to as winter. Babies are decked out in monkey caps and sweaters, and the old folks heat water for their morning bath. These details may appear unconnected to the Music Season. But they are all knitted in with the whys and hows of the performing arts extravaganza that draws tourists and non-resident Indians by the hundreds and thousands to Chennai every year.

Tradition of Margazhi singing
This winter month then, is a time when weddings and other festivities are traditionally not scheduled. Harvest time is still some way off, marked by the festival of Pongal in mid-January. The month is referred to as the shoonya, or empty, month. The wise seers of old prescribed religious rituals to make sure people got out of bed and were cleansed and ready every morning, instead of having a lie-in when there were no pressing errands to be done. So this month became associated with worship, especially Krishna worship, and the ‘empty’ time with spiritual spring cleaning. The precursor of today’s choc-a-bloc performance calendar, explain Chennai old-timers, is the custom of singing devotional songs and listening to religious discourses in this month. This is not surprising, since Indian classical dance and music have a strong spiritual connection. The Margazhi hymn singers were essentially groups of friends going down the quiet streets, singing in the misty pre-sunrise hours. The hymns were usually those penned by the 10th Century saint Andal, a highly revered figure in literature and Hinduism. Such neighbourhood singing groups still exist, but there is lots of parallel activity, and it does not limit itself to morning hours.

Cultural organisations
In today’s Chennai, almost every neighbourhood has its own major cultural organisation. Each of them holds a festival of music and/or dance — largely classical, but folk, fusion and experimental all find a place — lasting variously from a week to a month. The entire day is divided into slots, and the programmes follow each other with unrelenting punctuality. Often the mornings are reserved for lecture demonstrations or seminars. Performances begin from the afternoon. As performers grow in stature and popularity, they are allotted later and later slots. The evenings are reserved for the big stars. Over the years, not only has the month stretched to nearly two, but the festivals too have breached city limits. With the tourism authorities joining the bandwagon, there is now, for example, a major dance festival at Mamallapuram, site of the famous seaside temple ruins just outside Chennai.
For hundreds of classical dancers and musicians, based in Chennai as well as in other parts of India and the world, Chennai is THE place to be in during this season. Artists vie to be invited to perform. Students converge on the city, notebooks and pens in hand. Tourists and serious followers of Indian performing arts from across the world make their way to the city. “Are you coming to Madras for the Season?” is the most frequently asked question.
There are those for whom the trip is an annual pilgrimage. Families scattered across the globe set up reunions, and the most popular pastime is doing the auditorium crawl. Need one add it is boom time for hotels and sari shops? Looking at the traffic jams and state of the infrastructure in general, however, it doesn’t seem as if the government has seriously undertaken a study to figure out the economic implications of this visitors’ onslaught. But, whatever the inconveniences — the sudden showers that turn the roads into slush, the sweating crowds and the outrageous prices charged by the three-wheeler ‘auto rickshaw’ taxis — the devotees of the Season seem to take it all in their cheerful stride.

As for the artists, it is the season they work for all year. New themes, new compositions, new costumes — it is the time for premieres and launches. Books, CDs and DVDs on the arts sell merrily, not only from shops but also from makeshift tents and temporary counters at performance venues. You can’t ask for a better clientele. Or audience.

It is widely admitted that although payment rates to artists are abysmally low, and performers sometimes actually pay organisers to get featured, performing in the Season makes it all worthwhile. There are reasons for this ‘tolerance’. One is the sheer pleasure of following a hallowed custom, and the prestige that has come to be attached to it. After all, everyone who is anyone in the dance and music world is supposed to be there! Even if a little known artist gets a small audience, the few present are likely to be real connoisseurs. The other reason is practical. Organisers from across the world come to catch up with the latest on the Indian performance scene at this time, and if an artist is lucky enough to have one or two such in the auditorium, an international tour is assured. Financial loss then turns into a wise investment opportunity.

There is no doubt that with Chennai being a major centre for Bharatanatyam, this dance form features in the large majority of dance performances across the city. Ditto for Carnatic music, the classical music of south India. But there is a fair sprinkling of dance forms like Kuchipudi, Mohiniattam, Odissi, Kathak and others, besides classical music of north India. Naturally, the ones who face the fiercest competition are the Bharatanatyam dancers and the Carnatic musicians, especially the vocalists. The good part about competition is that it leads to virtuoso performances, and these can be seen with breathtaking regularity during the Season. But the Season is a great unifying force as well.

Performers of today
One excited heart seems to beat within all the artists, and one in all the spectators, united by the exhilarating present and the thrill of memories. Youngsters who recall childhood jaunts following their favourite performers across the city are stalwarts of today, commanding house-full audiences. Take T.M. Krishna, Sudha Raghunathan, Bombay Jayashri, to name a few who have moved to the top as classical vocalists only over the past decade or so, but whose lives have always been punctuated by the Season. Meanwhile, musicians like U. Srinivas (mandolin) and Ravi Kiran (chitra veena) have grown from child prodigies into middle aged stars.

As for the older set, like T.V. Gopalakrishnan, (mridangam, vocal), violinists like T.N. Krishnan, Kanyakumari, V.V. Subramaniam and his brother V.V. Ravi, and a host of others, the heads of their fans have greyed loyally with them.

Dancers, with a few exceptions, don’t allow themselves to go grey. But yesterday’s young girls are pulling in the crowds today. There are, to name a few, Malavika Sarukkai, Priyadarshini Govind, Urmila Sathynarayanan, Rama Vaidyanathan — all Bharatanatyam dancers with their own distinctive stamp, and favourites with various sections of admiring spectators. Older than them but still going strong are Alarmel Valli (Bharatanatyam), Madhavi Mudgal (Odissi), Leela Samson (Bharatanatyam), Bharati Shivaji (Mohiniattam), Sonal Mansingh (Bharatanatyam and Odissi) and others. Dancers like Anita Ratnam and Aditi Mangaldas, who started as exponents of Bharatanatyam and Kathak respectively, have notched up an equally worthy reputation as contemporary choreographers.

And when it comes to the veterans, still forces to reckon with in their seventies and even eighties, minor lapses in tone or movement are often forgiven as natural concomitants of age, by an audience drunk on nostalgia. This year, as in others, dancers C.V. Chandrasekhar, Shanta and V.P. Dhananjayan, Padma Subrahmanyam — all products of pre-independence India — drew rapturous ovations. There was Kalanidhi Narayanan, famous for her methodology for teaching expression and whose disciples like Priyadarshini Govind, Bragha Bessel, Roja Kannan to name a few, have made her a household name. Fondly referred to as Kalanidhi ‘mami’ (aunt) by one and all, she was invited to lecture on her art, which she did with simplicity and the force of conviction. But leading the pack of elders, doting and doted upon, was surely Vyjayantimala Bali, one-time film star, who held sway during the 1950s and ’60s. Long retired from films, this Bharatanatyam doyenne can give any younger dancer a run for her money.

The ‘sabha’ culture
The cultural organisations are ubiquitously referred to as ‘sabhas’, derived from a Sanksrit word although the local language is Tamil. The term, one presumes, has its roots in the Natya Shastra, India’s oldest extant treatise on the theatre arts, in which the sabha, or assembly before which the dancer-actor performs, is elaborately described. The requisite qualities of the members of a sabha and its leader — the sabhapati, who might be the precursor of the modern-day chief guest — are also enumerated. However that may be, the sabhas of Madras are well known for their packed festival schedules, their all-powerful secretaries who decide the fate of their chosen artists every year, and for their ‘canteens’ — the makeshift snack bars set up exclusively for the duration of each sabha’s festival. Hot crumply dosais, soft iddlis, crisp vadas, sustaining pongal, steaming coffee… perfect to feed an animated discussion on the merits and demerits of the performance just witnessed. Was heaven on earth ever so aromatic?

Another special event of the Season is the Arts Festival of the Kalakshetra Foundation. The aesthetically designed Bharata Kalakshetra theatre, situated on the Kalakshetra campus at the southern edge of the city, adds a unique touch to any performance. Founded by the late Rukmini Devi Arundale, one of the leading pioneers who helped revive Bharatanatyam in the early 20th century, Kalakshetra includes a teaching institution, performing unit, craft centre and other facets. The auditorium, designed on the lines of a Kerala temple theatre, has seating on chairs as well as on the ground near the stage. Spectators have to remove their shoes, as in entering a place of worship.

One sabha, besides the usual presentations by young and old artists, has a special event for NRI performers, sometimes drawing more opprobrium than approbation by so blatantly letting exchange rates filter into the selection process. It is interesting to read the brochures and banners of the different sabhas, many of whom have been presenting festivals for over sixty years, often with the same enthusiastic office bearers at the helm!
As the new millennium progresses, many of these energetic individuals are passing on, their indefatigable personalities only dimly reflected in garlanded photographs prominently displayed in the foyers where they once mingled with other art enthusiasts. Interestingly, this is one of the few ways in which unstoppable time makes its presence felt in the Season. Because the sheer simplicity of approach and the heavy bulwark of tradition ensure that even as the Season grows and adapts to modern times, its spirit, and even much of its outward form, remain unchanged. Cell phones may have replaced the old black boxes and computers have made their appearance in the sabha offices, but the auditorium seats, the curtains, the greenrooms often look as if they have been in use since India was a British colony! The motto seems to be, as long as they are useable, they remain. Substance, not appearance, is given priority. 
Stand in a residential neighbourhood of Chennai one misty morning before dawn, close your eyes and feel that slight, slight nip in the air. Hear the temple bells jangling, the snatches of bhajan singing. Smell the heady aroma of frying dosais and vadas. Would it have been any different fifty years ago? Only a day spent in auditorium hopping can help you decide.

*This article was written at end January this year
ANJANA RAJAN is
Principal Correspondent,
The Hindu
New Delhi