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LearnQuest Music Festival In Boston - A Way To Connect
To Homeland, says Durga Krishnan |
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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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