Agra musicians to rock Beijing music Olympiad

AGRA - Five musicians from the Taj city are set to rock Beijing at the World Conference of International Society for Music Education, considered the Olympics of music, from Aug 1.

Lovely Sharma, Debashish Ganguly, Debashish Chakrovorty, Vilas Phalke and Shantanu, members of the Kriti Ensemble, will participate in the event which will have musicians from 100 countries.

“It is a rare honour for India as we are getting 10 minutes to present our programme during the inaugural ceremony. Around 100 countries are participating in the week-long conference that is considered the ultimate in this discipline,” Sharma, the only D.Litt in Sitar in India, told IANS.

Sharma said for the ceremony they have planned a special composition of “Tarana” accompanied with tabla, sitar and guitar.

“A young Chinese dancer will join us with a kathak performance, for which she has been rehearsing for the past three months on our composition,” Lovely said.

“We don’t promote fusion confusion, but go for the pure ragas and stick to the traditional format. You can not detach an element of ’sadhna’ (spiritual orientation) from the classical Indian music.

“We will present programmes in four sessions, follow it up with a 90-minute long presentation in a nearby town. All of us are looking forward to the event and are confident we will bring laurels to the Taj city and our country,” she said.

Author of seven major books on Indian classical music and 40-odd research papers, Sharma has been a pioneer in introducing music therapy sessions for prisoners in Indian jails to de-stress and reorient them.