Concert @ Home venue

Meaning of Rasaanveshanam

What is Rassanveshanam?

The scripture says, rasO vai saH. That means that God is Rasa. Even in the Gita, the Bhagavan says, rasOhaM apsu kauntEya, meaning that He exists as Rasa (even) in water. So all the essence of beauty, melody, mood and aesthetic enjoyment, which is Rasa, is God himself.

Rasa means the juice of life. Nectar.

To enjoy Rasa, we need a rasika. To someone who is immune to beauty and aesthetics, Rasa will be absent in anything. To enjoy the nectar in a flower, we have to become a butterfly or a bee.

In our context, we say that in order to enjoy Carnatic music, we need to apply ourselves, much like a butterfly goes in search of nectar. Anveshanam is that search. A search in which we are eager, sensitive, humble and grateful. In empathy with the artiste. With no preconceived notions.

Our mind will be engaged, but first our heart. So we receive the godly joy of music directly into our soul.

The role of the mind is to enjoy the classicism of it all, mainly the Lakshana, or structure. The elegance of construction, the beauty of geometry, the symmetry of rhythm, the sonority of shruti, the joy of anticipation, the delight of great accompaniment. The beauty of tone, the poetry of lyrics. The prayer of words, the immersive feeling  that the singer and the composer have conveyed to us.

We believe that music is greater than the musician, definitely greater than the rasika, and greater than everything else. It is greater than the sum total of all these elements. That is Rasa.

And we are in earnest search.

Come join us in Rasaanveshanam!!!!

Recce Photos -HTML 5

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What's new ... Nov. 2013

I shared the following update in rasikas.org today:
QUOTE

Rasaanveshanam is a group we created with the intention of

1. Travelling to the sanctified places of Carnatic music to experience the vibrations of composers, their inspirations and influences first hand 
2. Getting together to enjoy music and have interactions with musicians and experts up close in a great ambiance. 
3. Delving deeper into Carnatic music. The group is coming together (albeit slowly). 

We decided on Concert @ Home to start off item 2. in the list. We have a superb venue and a core group. We are reaching out to musicians..... The effort so far is Bangalore-centric.
(You will find my mention of Rasaanveshanam- first referred to as the Lonely Planet tour :) in rasikas.org from some time ago).
 You're most welcome to join!!!

UNQUOTE

Rasaanveshanam Recce Photos - April 2013

Rassanveshanam Recce - April 2013

Update after the Recce:

Dear fellow-rasikas,

You may remember our ideas from before about Rasaanveshanam  (see below). 

I beg your excuse for not giving you updates for some time.

Sundar and I made a recce trip to Kumbhakonam, Tanjavur, Tiruvarur, Thiruvaiyyaru, Mannargudi etc. some weeks ago. We had a wonderful time reading about the trinity, listening to some great music, and visiting the holy places. I provide you a link below to see the photos:

http://bit.ly/recceRSVNM

Last weekend, Mr. Shailesh Ramamurthy conducted a mini Rasaanveshanam session at his home. He is a wonderful singer, flute player, researcher, musicologist and composer of merit who shies away from publicity. He is a beacon for finding our way in the land of the trinity. He performed on flute and also sang many rare Dikshitar krithis. Some of the items rendered I recall are

1. Sri Ragam - Varnam

2. Sri ragam -Sri Muladhara

3. Kanakambari (Kanakangi) - Kanakambari

4. Phenadyuti (Ratnangi)- Sri Dakshinamurti

5. Asaveri - Kumaraswaminam

6. Nata bhairavi - Sri Valli

It was an exhilarating session, with great mridangam accompaniment by the young Akshay Anand, a student of Sri K S Kalidas, who has been mentioned as a budding talent from the Pazhani school, in Sruti magazine and also who won the Senior Mridangam competition at MA in 2012.

We wish to hold many more sessions like this, informal, in someone's house, where an expert like Shailesh or Keerthi will be kind enough to sing and explain the nuances of the ever-great compositions of the trinity to us.

With you all in your Rasaanveshanam,

Sachi 

GOOD NEWS : we think we can cut the cost of the trip down to Rs.15K!!!!!!!!!!!

The original idea of Rassanveshanam

This was the message we sent out to our rasika friends in early 2013:

A group of Carnatic music rasikas will converge from Chennai and Bangalore into Kumbhakonam, sometime in Nov./Dec. 2013 to  embark on a five-day itinerary to explore the places, temples, listen to and discuss the krithis and inspirations of the Carnatic music trinity.

They will be helped in this by experts within the team - musicians and musicologists.

They will br staying at a spacious clean moderately priced resort next to Cauvery.

They will travel in a Volvo every day to lovely places from Tiruvarur to Tanjavur to Srirangam to Mannargudi. The base camp will be Kumbhakonam.

No more than 3 hours travel each day, but even that in comfort and with music and discussions on board.

Evenings spent with lovely music and lovely vegetarian dinner dinner in an excellent setting.

Photos, videos and jottings from each of the 30, to be later edited, complied and published.

New friends thanks to room-sharing, close brush with the best of Carnatic music.

The rasikas will travel back with richer-than-you-can-imagine memories to their urban lives.

Cost ex-Kumbhakonam will be per person around Rs 20,000  including stay, meals and travel and also the cost of information kit that will be provided consisting of music and books.

If you would like to join, sign up now! Seats will fill up fast as you can imagine.