The Maanga

Anil Srinivasan is the kind S Muthiah refers to — though Anil is obviously more talented than Sashi Tharoor ever will be.

Yesterday’s Madras week event was Anil Srnivasan’s commentary and rendering of Kritis and Symphonies with a Madras connection. The two aspects of the evening, though presented in a seamless manner, had two distinct flavors. Anil is an accomplished pianist and a competent consultant who sells his accomplishment quite well. He did hold the audience’s attention with some wonderful history of western music from this great city. Repeating it here would only make it sound less than what has been claimed and defeat its purpose. I encourage you to read on the first string quartet from these parts and the influence of Carnatic music on early European composers from Madras.

There was also the Kritis part, with  compositions on the two famous temples –Kapaleashwarar and Parthasarathy.

My more accomplished music lover friend tended to dismiss the history connect as forced and the music, average. Since there is a reason Muthiah made his observation, I concluded, the city needs its share of shallow people whose hyperbole will be the necessary self perpetuating myth. I do have a role to play. And I am.

As part of the Madras week events, Chandrachoodan made a short tiny presentation at the Goethe-Institut. As the topic indicates, it was more about photographs and less about lecturing. The audience were shown the several photographs photographed by several photographers who walk the walks.

Nice.

Given the generally positive opinion one has towards the person and the City, it’s rather easy to like the presentation even for an anti-photite. However, knowing that the man who is lecturing sells products for random companies, isn’t it fair to ask that he sell himself and his art with a bit more conviction? Maybe there was confusion regarding the target audience or the tone. Given the several experts in photography and in history who had assembled, maybe there was a conscious effort to not talk down or state the obvious. That though, hardly restricts building a case from the ground up. Even if there isn’t one.

Request to Chandru: Please use your blog more to involve those of us who aren’t exactly photogeeks.