Arohanam By Another Route

A Chennai group presents Carnatic music in unconventional ways to enrapture the young

- G.C. Shekhar

IT is not the familiar, formal setting for a Carnatic music concert. The venue is a pri­vate theatre and the audience is seated just a couple of arms’ length around the per­ formers. The musicians themselves are perched in the middle of the hall, facing each other from four corners of a small square, not in the traditional way of the main per­ former being flanked by accompanying art­istes. A 360­degree camera planted in the middle of this musical square would record the concert, to be seen on VR headsets later.

As soon as members of the audience plug their headphones into specially provided consoles and settle down in their cushioned chairs, singer Sandeep Narayan begins his concert, which is also a live recording. In three sessions of 45 minutes each, he and his team perform Carnatic kritis (songs) which can later be downloaded, to be listened while doing your workout in a gym or going for a jog.

Narayan’s soiree is Carnatic music’s latest format—the workout. On that Sunday evening an audience of about 45 rasikas participated in third session of the Carnatic Music Workout of MadRasana—an organisation that hosts Carnatic music on different platforms outside the confines of the mighty sabhas and concert halls.

Started by Mahesh Venkateswaran, a former MD of Cognizant Technology Solutions and Carnatic musician-turned-film-music-composer Sean Rol dan, MadRasana has used innovative methods to take Carnatic music to new, often uninitiated listeners. The name MadRasana itself signifies many things—a mad passion for things that youngsters summon up, rasana for good taste and of course ‘Madras’, where it is all happening.