Margazhi music without modern trappings

A temple in Mylapore is host to the Ekantha Sangeetha Sevai festival, mic-less concerts in the glow of oil lamps

It is a pleasant Margazhi morning. As you take a stroll down Sundareshwarar Street in Mylapore, the lively strains of Tyagaraja’s ‘Sarasa sama dhana’ fills the air. As you approach Raghavendra Swamy temple, past R.R. Sabha, you realise the melody is coming from R.K. Shriramkumar’s violin. Curious, I enter the temple and find the senior musician performing in the warm glow of earthern lamps. The atmosphere is serene and the setting intimate. Melakaveri Balaji’s mridangam strokes and B.S. Purushotham’s kanjira beats echo through the hall with wooden roofing where the performance is being held.

Margazhi has transformed; it had to. Halls remain abandoned, only slowly starting to see audiences hesitantly meander in to catch some live music. The transformation has allowed violinist and curator Murari Vadakkancheri to expand his pet project — Ekantha Sangeetha Sevai.

“I started the festival in 2019 in a small way, alongside the Swagatham music series that I used to conduct in this temple. Concerts for Swagatham, however, were in the afternoons and evenings,” says Murari, son of violin maestro V.V. Subrahmanyam.