Tag Archives: Chennai

by | December 15, 2011 · 1:00 am

The mad mad Madras music season

The Tamil month of Mārkazhi (mid-December to mid-January) has been associated with Krishna since ancient times, and historical connections between that month and devotional music abound.

Against this traditional backdrop, in 1930 the newly founded Music Academy in Chennai (formerly Madras) began sponsoring an annual music and dance festival during that month. Over the years the festival has grown steadily in size; some music lovers call this winter whirlwind of activity “the mad mad Madras music season”.

This according to “The Madras music season: Its genesis” by Sriram Venkatakrishnan (writing under the pen name Sriram V; Sruti 225 [December 2005] pp. 19–24). For decades Sruti has published detailed reports on the season, providing a rich accumulation of data on its history and development. In addition, Venkatakrishnan has written retrospective reports for the magazine on the season in selected historical years.

Below, the Hyderabad Brothers perform during the 2019 music season.

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by | October 7, 2009 · 8:53 pm

Sruti

Sruti: India’s premier magazine for the performing arts (ISSN 0970-7816) is a Chennai-based magazine. While its primary focus is the South Indian Karnatak music world and its related dance traditions, most issues include at least one article devoted to the North Indian Hindustani tradition; it also carries occasional features on Indian folk traditions. Sruti tends to concentrate on events in recent musical life and profiles of current—and occasionally past—performers. RILM focuses on covering the latter, including the former only when sufficient historical interest is indicated.

Research-based contributions from the independent scholar Sriram Venkatakrishnan (writing under the name Sriram V) are often included, providing notes on important persons or places in the history of the Karnatak tradition. Another regular contributor, S. Sankaranarayanan, writes philatelic reports on Indian stamps depicting musical subjects—a type of music iconography.

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