by Heidi M. Pascual
The Indian Graduate Students Association's Summer Fest on August 6 and 7 at UW-Madison Union South was a perfect collaboration between Indians in the academe and Indians in the Madison community. The festival opened with a Rang Tarang (painting competition) for children and youth (right), with the topics of world peace, Indian mythology, and summer in Madison.
The winners were: Keerthana Pittala (1st place, Sr group); Karuna Mahadevan (1st place, Jr group); and Sadhana Pittala (2nd place). The next day, Geet Purvaaii (popular songs from Bollywood) were performed by singers: Ramya Sundaresan, Anuj Kapadia, Ravi Ramaswamy, Ravi Manghnani, Chandrika Sanwal, Deepa Sanwal, Madhu, Sainath Suryanarayanan, Ayeshah Ifthikar; with assistance from sound engineer Barry Rokusek and emcees Sumaiya Fidvi and Ranjini Tolakanahalli.
All Composer's Day
Carnatic music is the classical music of South India, as opposed to the classical music of North India, called Hindustani music. Lyrics in carnatic music are largely devotional, and most of the songs are addressed to the Hindu deities. There are a lot of songs emphasizing love and social issues. As with all Indian classical music, the two main components of carnatic music are raga, a melodic pattern, and tala, a rhythmic pattern. The singers keep the beat by moving their hands in specified
patterns. All of which are formed with three basic movements: lowering the palm of the hand onto the thigh, lowering a specified number of fingers in sequence (starting form the little finger), and turning the hand over. These basic movements are grouped into three kinds of units: the laghu (lowering the palm and then the fingers, notated as 1), the dhrtam (lowering the palm as turning it over, notated as 0); and the anudhrtam (just lowering the palm, notated as -- Condensed from Wikipedia |
