Sound Season

Sankaran was apparently unwilling to give regular concerts for whatever reason might have been— he is essentially a modest person, not one to parade himself— but he sang for small audiences, and gave radio performances. And it was All India Radio that brought him into the mainline of music from the arid jobs he was trying out. In 1939 he went to AIR Tiruchi to give a concert and it is to its Director at that time that we should give thanks for music reclaiming Sankaran.

Prof. T.A. Raju of Bangalore, who was with the Indian Institute of Science until he retired and who passed away on 15 December 2000, was a benefactor of art music who encouraged and financed the publication  of three collections of valuable Carnatic music compositions. He published both works through Sruti Ranjani, an organisation his late wife Abhayam had established in the nineteen seventies. The first collection of songs he brought out was titled Meenakshi Sutha Kriti-s.

The practice of awarding titles to musicians and dancers has acquired the dimension of an epidemic, a plague in fact. All kinds of organisations now bestow, or rather give away, titles whether or not they have any credentials to do so. And the titles are conferred on musicians and dancers, not to mention patrons and so-called gurus and critics, regardless of whether they have qualifications, experience and stature to receive them. Of course, those who make speeches at award functions would make us believe that even a totally undeserving recipient of an award was exceptionally qualified and that, in fact, the award was long overdue. The plague is raging because musicians and dancers today are caught in a rat race. There is severe competition to secure what may be called market share— a goodly share of the performance opportunities, the limited audience and the review and publicity space made available by newspapers and magazines.