Music Season in Chennai - 2007

2nd January 2008

We have attended more than 50 carnatic music concerts, in a span of 35 days. There were days, we attended four concerts a day. Even though, I was attending the concerts regularly in all the other days in the year, with a feeling that carnatic music is losing its patronage and people are not interested in listening Carnatic music. In November and December, I was proved wrong. People were thronging at the auditoriums, and all the auditoriums were overflowing. People waited for more than four to five hours in the queue to enter the auditorium to get vantage seats in free concerts. Even in concerts, which were not free, people waited to purchase tickets for limited available seats. For a free concert at Chettinad Vidhyashram, people were waiting from 2.00 P.M for 6.30 P.M concert. At Music academy, people were standing to purchase tickets, from 5.30 A.M onwards at the booking counter which was scheduled to open at 10.00 A.M.

All the leading Artistes were having full house, packed with even people standing and adjusting themselves in stages also. Ms. Aruna Sairam, in lady artistes and Mr. Sanjay Subramanian in male singers were drawing huge crowds beyond the capacity of the auditoriums, and all the other artistes also attracted good crowd. It was real festival with people well dressed, and arriving at the halls from 7.00 A. M onwards and spending the whole day in the auditoriums.

I will be interested to know, whether any where else in the world, a festival of this sort is being conducted for more than two weeks, continuously.

I will write about the other aspects tomorrow