Chennai for the Season

According to the Lonely Planet (also known as The Guidebook for people who want to go somewhere but cannot), Chennai is not a tourists' paradise. According to the author, you would

...be pretty hard pressed to find much to gush about when it comes to Chennai. The streets are clogged with traffic, the weather oppressively hot, the air heavy with smog, and sights of any interest are uncooperatively thin on the ground. Even the movie stars, as one Chennaiite put it, are 'not that hot'.

Quoted from the Lonely Planet's Chennai page. Check it out!

Yep, as Anita says, Chennai is the "Detroit of India", with a secret so big that it's all over Chennai and nowhere to be seen at the same time. The Lonely Planet is not in on it!

The December Season, as we call it, overflowing with (some say too many) concerts and events and lecture-demonstrations throughout the month of December, is an amazing thing. Hundreds of concerts over the span of a month. Music is in the air. Nobody would look twice if a random, otherwise normal-looking person were to contort his or her hands and face in public (singing an imaginary RTP, or re-enacting some of the more "physical" singers' mannerisms).

Everywhere, you can see traces of it, from inter-Sabha buses to traditional clothes, to Kutcheri crawls (!), to Sabha canteen ratings; I've heard the Narada Gana Sabha is famous for other reasons than music alone. The Singaporean in me is looking forward to the food as well! It is almost a hidden festival; while the rest of Chennai goes on with its business, there is a festival going on that may well be more famous outside India than within. There are websites detailing everything about concerts from locations to artists, like kutcheris.com! They've even listed the SIFAS week-long programme in Chennai in detail, including things like information on the performers (Yes. I admit that I searched for my own name and found my concert listing! Talk about pressure!).

Seeing things like the kutcheris website and being a part of Sifas' second-ever foray into the Chennai music scene in December is a reminder that there is a world of music out there, bigger and livelier and also much more intimidating than the place we've come to call our artistic home. Every day, there are at least three dozen concerts going on: of those on the way to stardom, those who've made it, those who perform for lofty reasons, those who perform for those who listen, and anyone else who can shimmy their way (by hook or other means) into a slot at any sabha. You will miss more concerts than you can hope to attend.

Personally, it has been a gradual process, from finalising my concert list, learning and rehearsing what I have to perform, to getting everything pieced together, to overcoming minor illnesses along the way to concert readiness. The Sifas March festival is no less important an event to me than this December season, but for one aspect. Learning from masters and virtuoso performers, seeing so many of them in action in such a short, focused span of time really stretches your knowledge in a way that no Sangeethapriya/Youtube-spamming can ever match. Rare books, audio recordings, compositions and such are much more easily accessed there. The internet helps, no doubt, but it cannot replace the actual (some would say visceral) experience of art. Great art always leaves one in awe, with a gap in your mind where comprehension and knowing used to be. Many performers will be in pursuit of that awe, that gap in mind-space.

And now, me and my fellow students and alumni of SIFAS who are performing in Chennai have joined the ranks of participants, from being mere rasikas. There are youth slots in sabhas like the Music Academy, and you do get an idea of where you stand, in a global sense. We are small fish, swimming in an ocean of music. Awe is appropriate.