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CHENNAI, INDIA, December 23, 2003: For years they were not considered good enough to perform in India. But expatriates who have been quietly and diligently learning Indian musical traditions abroad for years have now found a big platform here, thanks to the Hamsadhwani festival. The annual event, which began here this weekend, has come to be known as the non-resident Indian (NRI) music festival and hundreds attend the concerts. “The urge to be recognized by India brings us all here,” says dancer Durga Mani. Durga, for instance, was born and brought up in Singapore. She is doing a bachelor of contemporary arts from an Australian college, specializing in dance. Every year she spends a couple of months in Kolkata with the Dancers’ Guild to work with a new group. She also learns from Krishnaveni Laxman, her guru at the Kalakshetra dance school in Tamil Nadu. She had performed a few years ago for Hamsadhwani. This year, Durga told IANS, “I am a little nervous.” Durga’s performance will be accompanied on the violin by Sasidharan, her fiance who is from Malaysia, and S. Selvapandian, also from Singapore. “In Malaysia, Indian classical music and dance has more forums than in Singapore,” says Durga. “So to be able to perform before an Indian audience is important for us.”



A visit to India in December has become a ritual for some of these non-resident Indians who live and work abroad but want to keep the Indian traditions alive – especially music and dance. In Chennai, for long people who learnt bharatanatyam, violin, mridangam, carnatic music, and other southern Indian performing arts abroad were not considered good enough to stage performances in India.



Ten years ago, however, the organization called Hamsadhwani began to change that. It began providing a platform for NRI artistes in Chennai, arranging small concerts where they could come and perform. Today the organization has 300 members and 2,000 NRI artistes are associated with it. “From just four concerts a year, Hamsadhwani today organizes 30 concerts every year,” says R. Ramachandran, secretary of the festival and the spirit behind the movement. The performers are paid US$65 per performance and accompanying artistes — often they too are from abroad — are also paid. Expenses have become huge, but Hamsadhwani is soldiering on, says Ramachandran. A lifetime membership of $217 is now taken from NRI patrons and artistes who want to perform on the Hamsadhwani platform.



An artiste can come in to India every year and perform to a discerning Indian audience. The festival began this year on the lawns of a youth hostel, with Seshampatti Sivalingam and Washington-based teenager Rohan Krishnamurthy. Rohan, 16, has been making ripples in the Carnatic music world with his mridangam performances since he was 10. He not only comes to India every December for Hamsadhwani but has become a much sought-after accompanist in many a festival here.



The event will go on till January 7 and among those who will perform will be singer Shobha Shekhar from Australia. She has not only gained acclaim on the Hamsadhwani platform but nowadays is also invited to perform at the prestigious Music Academy here. US-based Anuradha Sridhar and Lalgudi Srimathi Brahmanandam will perform a violin duet. Geeta Sundaresan, a vocalist, hails from Muscat; Jayalakshmi Shekhar, who plays the veena, is from Malaysia; and the Iyer brothers – Ramnath and Gopinath – run a music school in Sidney. Singer M. Yogeshwaran is from Britain while singer Sankar Ramani is from the US. Ganga Grace, a bharatanatyam dancer, is a Croatian who lives in Germany.

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