Yesterday, I attended a concert, a violin - Mohana veena jugalbandi, of Mysore Manjunath and Viswamohan Bhat. This was at the 72nd Ramasevamandali concerts held in the grounds of the Fort High school Bangalore. Before the start of the concert Bhat took the microphone and started talking. I usually do not take such talks seriously and only half listen to them (Don't ask me how that is done!!!). You may call me a cynic, but such talk is usually all about how the artist "loves" the audience of Bangalore (or Mysore or Pune or Timbuktoo where you happen to be and he or she happens to be performing)
But, this speech jolted me to attention with the second sentence. Here is a transcript of it as far as I can remember it.
"Good evening. I thank you all for coming to this concert. pause.... ignoring the two hundred TV channels ..... and IPL. I wish we had at least one channel devoted to Indian classical music. Even animals have three channels. (Said with a beautifully self deprecating smile)
In this place of Sri Vijay Mallyaji, I would like say that it will cost about 0.5 percent of his expenditure on IPL and Force India to run a channel like that. So I request Sri Vijay Mallyaji to ....."
I felt like crying. Now that World Space has been shot into deep outer space, this plea sounded more poignant.
As for me, if I have a 24 hr music channel on the air I will unsubscribe from the cable and will watch the four Tennis grand slam finals in some friend's house!
Are the Mallyas of the world listening?
It would be nice to have a channel for music, even though I dont watch IPL or Tennis or anything continuously. I may listen to music channel also as casually and when I need. But I am sure it will be of great value.
ReplyDeleteI am also peeved that hardly we get music albums from many good not-so-known musicians. Like all walks of life including all forms of art, music is also commercialised and promoted by PR. That is sad indeed. The business and hype aspects runs most of the world. We must find a way to live with it. I am not lamenting.