|
Metro Plus
Anniversaries of the Season
CELEBRATING THE 75th anniversary of its Music Conference this season will be the Music Academy. The first Conference, called the All Indian Music Conference, was organised to coincide with the Indian National Congress sessions held in the city that year. These, the 42nd Sessions, were the fifth that Madras hosted. At the sessions, held under the presidency of Dr. M. A. Ansari, it was decided to organise an All India, All Parties Conference to put forward a unanimously-agreed-upon scheme for a new Constitution. It was also agreed that the surplus the Reception Committee held after expenses should be used to build a Congress House in Royapettah — which was done and which is now known as Gokhale Bhavan.
The All India Music Conference in time developed into the Music Academy and, today, the Academy organises the Conference. At this year's Conference, special Platinum Jubilee Awards will be presented to Hindustani vocalist, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi and dancer Kamala Lakshminarayanan, better known, first, as Baby Kamala and then as Kumari Kamala. An outstanding Bharatanatyam dancer, Kamala became a sensation with her dancing on the screen and did much to make Bharatanatyam a much sought after discipline for daughters in South Indian homes. Today, she teaches the classical idiom in New York.
She was just four when Kamala, who was from Mayavaram, first danced on the stage in Bombay where her parents had settled. Spotted as a charmer with talent, she soon found herself dancing in several Bombay-made Hindi and Tamil films, particularly attracting attention in "Kismet" and "Ram Rajya". Determined that her daughter should be more than just a screen dancer, her mother brought her down South and Kamala became the classic Classical dancer under the tutelage of Vazhuvoor Ramaiah Pillai. By the 1940s, she was an annual attraction at the Music Academy and it was an association that was to continue well into the 1970s. But she never quite gave up films in those early years.
In many ways, it was two A. V. Meyyappan films that made her the lodestar many a mother wanted her daughter to follow. In "Sri Valli", she, as Randor Guy would say, "wowed" audiences with her cameo song and dance. Then came "Naam Iruvar" in 1947 — and Kamala became a legend. The patriotic songs, some with the lyrics of Subramania Bharathiar and others on the Mahatma, may have been sung by Pattammal and M. R. Rajeswari, but the brilliant dancing was her talent alone. It is to Kamala's eternal credit that she never turned classical into pop; that she, instead, popularised the classical form and continued to remain committed to the ancient tradition. It is in recognition of this that the Academy has now honoured her.
The other anniversary of the Season is the golden jubilee of the Mylapore Fine Arts Club. Apart from presenting three awards instead of the usual one, this low profile club is not planning any special celebration. It's quite content functioning as it always has — in a rented, thatched roof hall with rows of creaky old cane chairs for its rasikas.
S. MUTHIAH
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
|
