Celebrating the festival of colours and music, the Ekatvam Holi Music Festival returns for its fourth edition. An initiative by the Entrust Foundation, the festival brings together performers, connoisseurs, critics and mentors for an evening of carnatic, hindustani and fusion music. Rajmohan Krishnan founded Ekatvam as an ode to his father, who passed away in 2015. Since then, the foundation has been working towards elderly care and giving back to society. We speak to Rajmohan to find out everything about the upcoming music festival and what’s in store for him next.
“The idea of the festival is mainly to propagate and give a platform for Indian classical musicians. If you look at the music topography, you will find only the top musicians are being called and given opportunities. We have taken up the responsibility to give a platform to upcoming good musicians. We do enough marketing on the various social media platforms to ensure that people come and watch these performances, which will give a lot of confidence to these artistes,” begins Rajmohan.
Rajmohan believes that in cities like Bengaluru and Chennai, it is carnatic music that is mostly propagated and hindustani music takes a backseat. Through his organisation, he wants to bring forward not just carnatic and hindustani music but other Indian art forms as well like classical dances including odissi, kathakali, bharatanatyam and kuchipudi.
The festival brings in up-and-coming artistes as well as the ones who have already made a name for themselves. “We are forced to amalgamate both of them together so that there is the audience assured. Slowly, we are thinking of moving the topnotch artistes into a different platform, which will be ticketed and the money will be used to promote classical music in general,” he reveals.
This edition of the festival will also have two inaugural award ceremonies. When asked to elaborate on the idea, Rajmohan says, “There are a lot of Karnataka-based musicians, like Ananthakrishna Sharma and Ravindra Gururaj Katoti among others, who suggested us to do something that recognises artistes from Karnataka. So, we have instituted two awards in the name of the chief court musician Mysore Vasudevachar and the renowned hindustani musician Gangubai Hangal. The Mysore Vasudevachar Award of Excellence and Gangubai Hangal Award will be presented to professor R Visheshwaran, who is a veena maestro and Indian classical vocalist Vinayak Torvi, this year, respectively.”
Rajmohan says that the major challenges are in terms of donors and sponsors. “Large organisations can come forward and promote cultural festivals like ours by sponsoring, but we have not had any kind of help that way from Karnataka-based organisations. My appeal through this is to help us overcome this challenge by providing financial support,” he adds.
Entry free. March 22 to 25, 4 pm onwards. At The Bangalore Gayana Samaja, Krishna Rajendra Road, Basavanagudi.
Email: alwin@newindianexpress.com
X: @al_ben_so
