Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

For the art lover: A sample

It is the entertainment sector that is experiencing a boom, but our business is always steady. Generally speaking, visuals attract. Hence there are takers more for the video stuff. But the audio album ha sits own patrons. We are the first to have introduced digital music. We have more than 300,000 tracks with us. For this music season we are coming out with a six-CD-pack of the best of Sangita Kalanidhi special. Listeners can enjoy the songs rendered by Ariyakkudi Ramanuja Iyengar, M.S.Subbulakshmi and D.K.Pattammal. In the instrumental section we have flute Ramani and violinist T.N.Krishnan. Among the composers we have Muthaiah Bhagavatar and Papanasam Sivan with percussion experts Palgat Mani Iyer and Umyalpuram Sivaraman completing the list. We have also brought out special albums of Kunnakkudy Vaidyanathan, Bombay Jayshree and Kanyakumari.

Kosmic Music has the vision of making music purposeful and meaningful and produces a range of albums — from classical to pop, devotional to disco, folk to fast-track . Thoroughbred professionals, an international-standard studio, state-of-the-art infrastructure, and a collective passion for music form the backbone of the company. Non-Film music is growing at 15-20 per cent, but the overall industry growth is sluggish at 3-4 per cent. Loss due to Piracy and unauthorised downloads.

Domestic repertoire consistently accounts for more than 90 percent of the total music market in India.

Our recent releases are ‘Voyage 3’ Fusion by Rajhesh Vaidhya, ‘Mookapanchasathi – Sanskrit Devotional’ by the Bombay Sisters, ‘Krishna Sandhya’ bhajans by Anup Jalota, ‘Live at Darbar Hall’ by Bhimensen Joshi, ‘Enchanting Mantras’ by Sadhana Sargam and Hanuman Chalisa by O.S.Arun. Our dance DVDs include Kathakali and Mohiniyattom.

It has been a marriage of tradition with technology! We have been using our technological prowess to create a slew of instructional and entertainment products on esoteric subjects such as Carnatic music, Bharatanatyam, Vedas and Yoga marketed under the brand name Swathi’s Sanskriti Series. We have been in the field for the past seven years think the music industry is growing day by day.

This time round, Swathi unveils ‘Vara Veena,’ a comprehensive disc of veena lessons presented by none other than the late veena maestro R.K Suryanarayana. Culled out of some rare and exclusive video recordings of the legendary veena exponent, it attempts to pass on the quintessence of his genius to the next generation. The five-DVD pack covers Sarali Varisai, Jandai Varisai, Alankaram, Geetham, Swarajathi, Varnam and Thillana. ‘Vara Veena…’ The other new addition is the seven-CD pack of Yoga. There are several music CDs which will hit the market in the second week of the music season.

We combine art and entertainment, mnaing cinma and classical arts. For this season we have come out with various classical vocal, instrumental and fusion releases with artists such as Balamurali Krishna, Kunnakkudy Vaidyanathan, Kadri Gopalnath, Nithyasree Mahadevan, O.S.Arun and Rajhesh Vaidhya. ‘Seetha Kalyanam’ and ‘Sundarakandam’ by Vishakha Hari are worth mentioning. Our releases include Sanskrit and Tamil devotionals, plays, serials and animation. Our motto is to give the buyer more at less cost and so we have priced each VCD Rs 49 and each DVD Rs. 69.

We take stock of the situation before the season starts every year. The past year has revealed a distinct inclination towards Audio CDs. This is a healthy development that lends itself to the manufacture of economical volumes of a particular programme. Also we are encouraged to field new talent. And audio cassettes are on their way out.

On the visual side, people prefer live classical performances. Some programmes of this kind have appeared and met with limited success. The main constraint today in the growth of this market is the number of DVD/VCD players. With the availability of playing devices, the situation is bound to improve.

Our productions include ‘Sundarakandam’ by Velukkudi Krishanan, ‘Sudha Madhuri’ by Sudha Ragunathan, ‘Shaaswathi’ by Nithysashree Mahadevan and Saulabyam by O.S.Arun. In the audio CD category we have ‘Pancharathana Krithis’ by Lalgudi G.Jayaraman, ‘Live concert at Philadephia’ of Sudha Ragunathan, ‘Varam’ by O.S.Arun and A.K.C.Natrajan’s clarionet.

Good music is always in demand. Music these days is not limited to CD and cassettes. Digital downloads, ring tones and caller tunes are a huge area of interest for teenagers and young adults. Even those up to the age of 40 and are net savvy have the inclination towards these new formats. The music industry has definitely been hit hard by piracy and the digital music revolution with film and pop music taking the brunt. In keeping with the demand for visuals, we strive to create beautiful treats in the form of animation films for children, yoga demonstrations and captivating dance performances. So as long as people have an ear for music, we will keep producing albums.

Our new releases for this season includes classical music mp3 featuring – Kunnakkudy Vaidyanathan, Kadri Gopalnath, E. Gayathri, and fusion. We have also released four DVDs of Sudharani Raghupathy and Srekala Bharath. The ‘Learn classical instruments series’ has tabla, mridangam and Sitar.

The music scene is vibrant and we are trying to keep quality stuff flowing through our CDs. This season we have Sanjay Subramanian’s live concert at the Gokhale Hall, ‘Maya’ by Anil Srinivasan and Sikkil Gurucharan, ‘Paddhati’ of old masters including Thanjavur S. Kalyanaraman and Prof. Ramanathan and the Kutcheri category includes concerts of December 2006 and ‘Kshethra’ features ‘Arupadai’ by Gayathri Girish.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail