music my love

Music has always drawn me whatever be the genre ,though never good at it futile attempts were made in learning carnatic vocal and later the guitar in my young days ,The famous music director Ilayaraja was a student of my guitar master at the same time as me ,( this goes to show it isnt the master who makes the difference it is the student !!)
my daughter Sruthi has more than compensated for this with her mesmerising singing ,

I believe Music rendered from the soul takes one close to our maker ,and the right music soothes us and is a salve for our ilnesses ,I did a small study on music for chemotherapy patients in Kochi and found melodies in the background did bring down the symptoms .

Dasettan our Gana Gandharvan too believes in this and has given his mite for research in this field ,

it is documented that music helps in learning in children specially the compositions of Mozart .

So I never missed an oppurtunity to listen to and attend music shows whenever possible .

In U.A.E I recently saw two of them .

One was Ishai Mazhalai in Dubai by the Tamil Mandram to which a friend was gracious enough to take me along .

I remember Abaswaram Ramji in my college days conducting a light music troupe ,he is the brother of Padma Subramaniam the famous Bharatanatyam exponent ,

with a penchant for sarcasm he called himself Abaswaram and used to hand over aspirin tablets for headache and ear plugs to people who came for his shows but all this negative publicity made him popular but his shows were professional and had good singing so they were a sucess ,with a career which included catering ,conducting music shows and stints in film industry ,AIR and TV Ramji kept his magnum opus for his later years .

He started a professional music troupe of children from 4 to 14 years in the year 2000 .

he screened more than 800 children to select his dozen and has never looked back ,the small ones growing up and conducting more than 90 shows in and out of India ,recording for ace music directors like A.R.Rehman ,and becoming experts in track singing .

I was stunned to hear the children singing song after song from old to new with verve ,oru naal poduma the old hit of Balamuralikrishan to Sivaji the Boss were renered with professional nonchalance

Ramji with his peppy walk shaking his salt and peppered head was everywhere in and down the stage ,

it was a real feast indeed .

The next show was the philharmonic orchestra in Al Ain ,classical western music has to be appreciated with some knowledge ,for a novice like me it was just a huge collection of well dressed people with massive harps ,drums ,trumpets ,sweet violins and melancholic flutes ,all this moved by a master pupeteer ,the conductor ,whose posterior was visible for most of the time expect when he turned around with a grin and bowed to the applause ,

the music itself was less appealing to me ,a western classical music illiterate ,while the well dressed opera special audience specially the gentler sex was a better attraction and so were the excusite dates handed over by traditionally clad Arabs in the fine Al Jahili Fort .

The crescendo came when the lights blew out leaving a silent audience looking at the desert sky .

The conductor made his bow and slinked away with his team for a much needed break and I took it as an oppurtune moment to make mine !!