Invasive tourism will not faze culture hub Chennai
Unesco’s Creative Cities honour comes with its own set of challenges, but the city has the resilience to deal with it
Following Unesco’s imprimatur on October 31, 2017, Chennai, famed for its rich musical heritage, has joined Unesco’s Creative Cities Network as the CreativeCity of Music. Thecityhasbeen anirresistibleforceinmusicsincetheearliest period of recorded Tamil history. One of the most virtuosic early exponents of Carnatic music was Purandara Das (1484-1564). The immortal kritis of saint-composers from Thanjavur,Thyagaraja,MuttuswamiDikshitarandShyamaShastrihaveinspiredgenerations of musicians and continue to be part of the living repertoire of Carnatic music celebrated in festivals suchas the Vaggeyakara .
The charm of the classical repertoire still manages to attract Tamil teens brought up withastrongsenseoftheircultural heritage. Consider young vocalists Anahita and Apoorva,whostartedtheirtrainingwiththeir grandmother,ShantiJayaraman.Srivastha, a flautist who learnt the flute from his father PVRamanaandAmbiSubramaniam,sonof Dr L Subramaniam, who proudly traces his musical lineage back to the trinity of singer, saint-composers.Sodo,UshaUthup’sgranddaughter Ayesha Elizabeth John, AR Rahman’s son Ameen, among others .
There are more than 350 cultural institutions, 25 large institutional performancespaces and several neighbourhood grassroots venues.TheMadrasMusicAcademy,theNarada Gana SabhaSri Parthasarathy Swamy Sabha, Sri Krishna Gana Sabha, Sir Venkatasubba Rao concert hall, Tamil Isai Sangam and the Kalakshetra Foundation are iconic venues with a distinct old-world charm.
Musically, the season kicks off with a big festivalinNovember,whichfeaturesaplurality ofgenresinintimatesettings.It worksasa preamble to the month-long festival held in December,theTamilmonthofMargazhy,traditionally dedicated to spirituality.
WaltzingintoUnesco’sCreativeCitiesNetworkcomeswithitsownchallenges.Thecity will have to work within the framework of UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and effectively demonstrate culture’s role as an enabler for building sustainable ecosystems. Unesco’s validation is bound to lead to a tide of invasive tourism, in what is playfully called ‘Unesco-cide’ but Chennaiis notacitythatgetseasily fazed byattention. It hasbeensplayingitselfopen,butinaguarded way.Ghatam,khanjira,Thavil,Mugaveenai and other instruments are still in vogue and organisations such as the Kalakshetra have begun restoring their traditional performancespaces. Chennaiwill continue to retain the charmofitsclassical repertoire evenasit dabbles with technology, multiplicity of genres, the quirkyandeventheimplausible. Why do we want to be happy? That maybe a silly and yet a million-dollar philosophical question. Also, it is not that easy to answer. Even then one can say loosely that we want to be happy in order to have a sense of thrill and fulfilment.
And, what is happiness? The most simple and easy way of defining it would be: “A feeling of goodness.” If we go for a religious interpretation, we have French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: “It is an