/ARTS WEEKLY/CULTURE-INDIA: Voluntary Movement Keeps Performing Arts Alive

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sudeshna Banerjee

NEW DELHI, Dec 30 2002 (IPS) - It was a moving ‘dhrupad’ (classical singing) performance by the famous Dagar brothers back in the seventies that fired Kiran Seth, then an engineering student at Columbia University, into forming a movement to ensure that India’s rich tradition in classical music did not die unsung.

Seth, now a professor at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), has reason to be satisfied with the initiative he took to create the Society for Promotion of Indian Classical Music and Culture Among Youth (SPIC-MACAY) on a purely voluntary basis.

Strapped for funds but never ideas, Seth persuaded some of India’s best known musicians, dancers and dramatists to perform and also provide lecture demonstrations free of cost for students at schools and colleges.

Today, SPIC-MACAY manages to have a presence in 800 academic institutions and holds about 100 concerts and 150 other programmes on an average year, but still never charges an entrance fee for any of its events.

On average 350 to 400 school and college students and young professionals attend each concert. Other events include lecture- demonstrations, ‘baithaks’ (informal sitting) with leading artists and FESTS or music festivals.

Today, if SPIC MACAY has a presence in 150 cities and towns in India and 50 cities abroad (including Britain, the United States, Canada, Gulf and Australia, it is owing entirely to voluntary effort by well-known performers and interested young viewers.

The year 2002 has been special for SPIC-MACAY, for it marked the silver jubilee year of the movement that marked 25 years since its inception.

In all, there were 2,000 SPIC-MACAY events this year, a testimony to the fact that it has gone beyond being a forum to promote classical Indian music among the youth to one that has various activities ranging from drama, art, puppetry, folk art and much more.

But all this is a far cry from SPIC-MACAY’s beginnings in 1978 when the Indian Institute of Technology hosted the first show, conducted with the help of final year engineering students only, recalls Seth.

"Nobody would come forward to sponsor us so we created the Trust for Education to Promote Progress (TEPP) and ran our shows on interest money from the deposit – even the Department of Culture was indifferent initially,” he adds.

But today things are different. Everybody has praises or the voluntary effort that has helped revive cultural awareness among the Indian youth by strategies such as rendering tunes from the immensely popular world of film musicals into classical performances.

"I never knew that music has only one language. I thought classical is very different from what we hear in the movies. Although we do have a music class in school, we never knew the relation between different kinds of music," chirped an excited kid after sitting through a concert of the sitar.

Many aspiring performers also get a chance to interact with the maestros or avail of fellowship programmes, which have been a great success.

For their part, professionals and artists involved with the movement are very appreciative and even impressed with the knowledge that India’s ‘Gen-X’ now has about its country’s cultural heritage.

"It’s the total commitment and sacrifice that has helped this voluntary work to reach its goals," agrees Santoor maestro Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma.

"A few decades ago we hardly saw young people at classical or even folk concerts. Today things have changed drastically. I am really impressed, when I see kids and students coming up to me after a lecture demonstration and asking serious questions,” he adds.

”A lot of interest is generated by the inclusion of music in the school curriculum for music but real understanding comes on when a student attends a live performance – and the credit for that goes to this movement," says famous Kathak dancer Pandit Birju Maharaj.

But all that praise and goodwill do not add up to adequate funding. In spite of its silver jubilee, SPIC MACAY managed to get aid worth less than 300,000 dollars from the government, a sum barely adequate to fund the 2,000 events it put up this year.

Although the society is expanding its performances almost everywhere in the country, funding the artists for their performances often becomes difficult and the movement is hard put to keep just five employees on its rolls.

"Fundraising is a major constraint. If more funds could be brought in through private partnership, things would be really different," explains eminent music critic Prakash Wadhera.

Compared to the vast sums normally spent on professional performances, SPIC-MACAY has to make do with around 400 dollars for each performance and that includes remuneration, board and lodging for the artistes, said Seth.

With adequate funds and patronage, the movement could reach into the badly neglected rural areas and also to more audiences abroad, rather than remain confined to educational institutions in India’s towns and cities.

/ARTS WEEKLY/CULTURE-INDIA: Voluntary Movement Keeps Performing Arts Alive

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sudeshna Banerjee

NEW DELHI, Dec 30 2002 (IPS) - It was a moving ‘dhrupad’ (classical singing) performance by the famous Dagar brothers back in the seventies that fired Kiran Seth, then an engineering student at Columbia University, into forming a movement to ensure that India’s rich tradition in classical music did not die unsung.
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