Dr. K.J.Yesudas in Seattle

Saturday evening I was getting all excited and ready for this concert by Dr. K.J.Yesudas, I was supposedly one of the volunteers for the event but I reached the place like a typical chief guest(atleast in India), 15 minutes late. Kane hall is one of most well equipped and acoustically well designed hall in university of washigton,seattle, took a quick stroll around the campus, some of the bulding there were almost a 100 years old, the department of Architecture & Urban studies seems was started in 1906. I expected parking to be a big challenge but when I reached the place found to my dismay a practically empty parking lot. The event was supposed to start at 7:00 but I could spot only a few heads at 7:15. By 7:30 there were a decent number of people, I got my tickets, got a pretty decent seating like 10 rows from the stage, thanks to a friend who was also the pricipal organiser of the event.

The event was organised by VCC-Vedic Cultural Centre, what was suprising was the huge ISKON presence and little too much of unwelcome solicitation. I don't know much about ISKON but some of their campaings irks me for their semblance with how the Christian missionaries go about doing their tasks. Anyways, coming back to the subject. Thankfully the introductory speeches were terse and the concert started at 7:50.

KJY said that he received suggestions from all quarters before the concert to keep the concert as light as possible with not much of heavy carnatic stuff. I was totally irrirated by this request from the audience, you call it a classical carnatic concert with percussionists on violin, gatam, mirudhangam and expect KJY to sing movie songs ? clearly showed the poor taste of people who had gathered. It was a packed house and the last thing I wanted was the concert turning into a kalyana kutcheri where you send slips/notes to the singer asking the singer to sing movie songs. So, KJY said he will not sing movie songs but assured that he has picked songs such that everyone would enjoy, he requested everyone to just sit back and enjoy. He has a touch screen display in front of him, looked like some tablet pc, not sure what he had on it, probably some sahityam, notes... With so many gadgets on stage for a moment I though he is going to lip sync. for an earlier recorded kutcheri :-)

He started off with a brisk varanam "sarasaangi ni pai" in sarasaangi, interesting thing at end of the varnam was the cat calls and whitsles, only thing that was missing was head bandging :-) the crowd reacted as if they just finished listening to Judas Priest's "Pain killer". Also, the camera flashes kept flashing every 10 seconds, gave the place a discotheque feel, fortunately none of the cellphones went "hips don't lie".... The next was "Vaathaapi.." in hamsadwani, pretty ordinary performace I would say, also this was the first time I heard someone sing neraval for "Vaathaapi..". Next came "Paavana guru" and I could smell sandwich, ketchup and samosas already, people were more keen on eating and probably felt it was an overdose of carnatic music while, I was dissapointed because this was barely even close to the kind of kutcheris we get to listen to in chennai during the music season. The next one was a song in "suddha saveri" it was apparently some regular kirthanai transalted to hindi, just to appease the hindi audience, why do they do this ? yeah "Music Transcends Language" ! it is like dubbing/translating "Allaypaayuthe kanna.." in hindi for the movie "Saathiya" :-). Next was a bhajan, he shared an anecdote at end the of the bhajan, it seems he was travelling from trivandrum to cochin when a group of people noticed him in the train and asked him to sing, recognising that the group was from north India he decided to sing a hindi song; at the end of the song there was perfect silence and one guy from the group seems went "we want a hindi song...", that had the audience in peals.

The next one was some simple small kirthanai in Atana followed by "Thaaye yesoda.." in thodi, alapana for little less than 2 minutes, not much help on the violin, either, ended the keerthanai with some neraval, swaram. It looked like the thani avarthanam was totally forgotten. After a 5 minute pause, he suddenly started putting adi thalam and the thani avarthanam.....was quite literally thani. Then came an abrupt 15 minute break for snacks, the ISKON folks were selling some food/prasadam outside. I quickly checked with my friend if it is going to me more bhajans after the break and he confirmed that. During the break I bumped into some TeeSeeUs folks, it was 9:45 and I thought it was time to leave. I must say Dr. Balamurali krishna's kutcheri in phoenix was much better. I would blame it on KJY's poor kirthanai selection and the very subdued ragam/swaram rendition.