Music School
A survey conducted showed the need for a music school in this part of Chennai as part of the development of Hamsadhwani. And so the school was ‘born’ and appropriately the doyen of carnatic music Sri Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer inaugurated the school. We were pleased that in the first year itself we had about 160 students on the roll. The response has been more that what we expected. We teach Vocal, instruments like Violin, Flute, Veena, Mridangam and even Key board. And we have students learning Bharata Natyam also.
The services of Mr. M.K.Chakravarthy, retired Administrative Officer of Tamilnadu Iyal Isai Nataka Manram as the Correspondent of the institution is worth to be mentioned here.
We have a proposal on hand to prepare the deserving students for the Government Technical Examination (Lower and Higher Grades) if they desire to acquire the qualification in Music and Dance.
Society
Hamsadhwani is conscious of its debt to society. When earthquake hit Maharashtra, we organized a Mandolin concert by U. Srinivas, collected a sum of Rs. 84,000 and our Secretary personally handed over the cheque to Hon’ble Shri Sharad Pawar at Mumbai. While thanking the Secretary of Hamsadhwani , Shri Sharad Pawar remarked that among the various contributions he had been receiving for relief from various organizations, Hamsadhwani’s gesture was indeed precious because a South Indian organization dedicated to Classical Carnatic Music did not forget their brethren in far away Maharashtra, We also collected funds for Gujarat Quake relief and for tsunami victims.
Hamsadhwani has a vision for the future. The list is long but we may mention a few here:
- To help scholars, vidwans, social workers who may not have means during their last years.
- To offer scholarships to boys and girls who are less fortunate, to pursue art and the like.
- To have a two way traffic between the two systems of music. Our vidwans to perform before predomintaly North Indian audience up North and Ustads and Pundits to perform in Chennai.
- To foster Harikatha, Nadaswaram, folk music and art.
- To have more debates etc. on various subjects of public interest, not merely music.
- To assist NRI’s and others to foster classical music abroad. To establish contact with Universities and Cultural organizations abroad.