Fusion is in.....

Fusion is the in-thing these days... Music too is not averse from it..
The Grand finale at November Fest organised by Hindu at Music Academy was just that. Four Great artists came together and the result was a seamless fusion of classical and western forms of music. All those present were indeed fortunate ones; for this was a concert which could not be missed..

Trilok Gurtu, the master of percussion and vocals.
Vikku Vinayakam, The first Indian Musician to get a Grammy Award, a great Ghatam player.
Prasanna, wonderful guitarist.
Selva Ganesh, master of kanjira.
And when all these get together, what you get is an extraordinary mix of Indian classical music and western music.

This November fest was one of the best musicals i have ever attended...

Would remember it forever.

Ghazal Bandhi - Hariharan and Mandolin Shrinivas

A very special jugalbandi called 'Ghazal Bandhi' which brought two great artists together - Hariharan and Mandolin Shrinivas. It was one of the concerts of the November Fest organised by Hindu.

Just a brief background of the artists:

Mandolin Shrinivas has a vast experience in jugalbandhi and has established extraordinary supremacy over the instrument, mandolin. Over the years he has adapted the instrument to carnatic music and leaves listeners awestruck at every performance. And this time too, he did just that....

Hariharan needs no intro... Here are some facts we dint know abt him.. He was trained in carnatic music by his mother. He had an early passion for ghazals and hence perfecting urdu diction was really important. He mastered it and then forayed into hindi cinema with music director Jaidev in the film 'Gaman' which resulted in the creation of a gem called 'Ajeeb Saane'. There has been no looking back since then.. Today, he is one of the most sought after artists for stage performances across the world.


The show began with a lovely ghazal 'Dil pareshaan hai raat bhaari hai'. Here goes its lyrics:
'Dil pareshaan hai raat bhaari hai'
'Zindagi hai ki phir bhi pyaari hai'
'Dil dhadakne ka aitbar nahi'
'Warna Awaaz to tumhari hai'

Wah Wah..

The show was just getting better with each Ghazal.. Then it was the turn of a Tyagaraja composition which was very popular amongst the masses 'Tulasidara...'

Time for a Break... (Coffee was provided free of cost at the venue as part of a marketing gimmick by a coffee powder company)

To be continued in the next blog... (as soon as I get time)

Athma's Disclaimer: Opinions and views are personal.

Muhurath Day

'Aakhir Naariyal phodne ka din aa hi gaya'.... (For those who dont know Hindi, it means that today is an auspicious day)
After all, today marks the beginning of my blogging career.

Let us see how it goes...

Right To Information Act

Right to information act commonly known as RTI was passed two years ago. How many of us know of this??? And even if we know, do we know how powerful this act is? I got to know about this some days ago, when i did some data collection on this topic. This was not accidental. It was for a documentary(Short film) on RTI, which i made along with a friend of mine called Suraj. This documentary was to be presented at IIT Bombay SJMSOM's B-School event Avenues '07.
It was a novel concept of having a short film for the promotion of RTI. Kudos to the organisers, Creative Commons, for organising the same.

You may find the newspaper article on the same at:
http://www.mid-day.com/news/city/2007/october/166168.htm

Also, you can view our documentary at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5rBRsECGZc
After working on this documentary, i have realised the power this act has. It can transform the system if we make judicial use of it. We just need to be more aware of the rights we have so that we can atleast start thinking of exercising them. Let me tell you, if each one of us decides to use this act atleast once in our lifetime, we can make a huge difference!!!

More Information on RTI can be found out at :
http://rti.gov.in/