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LearnQuest Music Festival In Boston - A Way To Connect To Homeland,
says Durga Krishnan
Durga Krishnan is a graduate of Carnatic Music
College of Madras. She is among the principal disciples of well-known
Veena player late Dr. Chittibabu. She is a popular veena and
vocal teacher in the Boston area. She is one of the key persons
behind the three-day music conference organized by Waltham-based
Learnquest Academy of Music, a non-profit institution devoted
to providing formal instruction in Indian classical music –
both Carnatic and Hindustani. |
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She is also learning under the guidance
of Violin maestro Lalgudi G. Jayaraman for the past five years.
In an interaction with Sudha Jagannathan,
she talks about the challenges involved in organizing music
festivals in a foreign country.
What are the challenges involved in organizing Carnatic music
festival in an away place like the U.S. (Boston)?
Answer: Funding is the number one challenge. There is then this
task of getting enough people in the audience to justify the
caliber of the artistes.
What is the need for such a Carnatic music
concert in a place like Boston?
Answer: There is a huge Indian population that lives in this
area and many children are learning Indian fine arts such as
dance and music as a way to stay in touch with our culture and
values. So, it becomes important to expose those children to
another level by having these high caliber artistes' concerts.
For people like me, it is one of our connections to our homeland
and childhood.
What has been the response of rasikas?
Answer: We have a core music group in the Boston area that is
made up of about 50-60 families that will attend all the concerts.
These rasikas are also hardcore music fans and will sit through
the whole concert no matter how long they are. For festivals
such as the one we organize once a year, we get audience from
both Hindustani and Carnatic sides since we cover both systems.
What it takes to organize artistes (from
India)? What are the organizational problems and logistics challenges?
Answer: Organizing host families, transportation and hospitality
are the main issues. Luckily, we have several families who consider
hosting artistes as a privilege. Finding the suitable auditorium,
sound system and sound engineers who understand the Indian music
is also equally a challenge.
Do the artistes feel at home or do they
feel ill at ease?
Answer: Artistes are taken such good care of. I would say that
they feel right at home. Lot of the times, the host family would
also try to organize teaching work shops etc., so the students
here can benefit more and also the artistes can make a little
extra money.
This is the third year of concerts series
for LeanQuest. How difficult is it to sustain this in the years
to come?
Answer: The most difficult part of organizing such festivals,
as I have mentioned earlier, is raising enough funds. Though
we raised over 50k, we still lost about 4-5k this year, because
the artistes' fees and other expenses have gone up. Hopefully,
we can get some grant money and more sponsorship in the future
to fix that problem.
What kind of artistes and music the non-resident
Indians there wish to see and hear?
Answer: Real authentic and high caliber classical artists are
the ones the real music lovers want to see and hear. But there
is a big market for the semi- classical and light music, too
.
Do youngsters among NRIs also participate
in such musical extravaganza or is it dominated by the older
ones?
Answer: We give opportunities to local talents and younger talents,
as well as established artistes from India at our festival.
Our organization – LearnQuest - being an educational entity,
we definitely encourage young talents more than some other organizations
by holding recitals at the end of each semester. We give a lot
of opportunities to these NRI children who are learning music
and dance during the Navarathri festival that I organize at
the Hindu temple here in Boston. I also organize monthly dance
and music program by these students for the youth cultural committee
at the temple.
You have seen the December (Marghazi) music
season in Chennai? How different is the one organized in the
U.S?
Answer: The festival is done over a span of almost 4 weeks in
Chennai, but we do it during a week-end starting from a Friday
evening and end it on Sunday night. Holding the concerts for
a whole week long is not as useful, as many of us have to go
to work during the weekdays. Even in Cleveland where they do
the Tyagaraja Aradhana for the 10 days, the crowd is very thin
after the first week-end.
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