Austin, Texas, dubbed the Live Music Capital of the world, has developed a thriving Indian classical music and dance scene over the past decade. Two city organizations, the Indian Classical Music Circle of Austin and India Fine Arts, have been bringing top-notch musicians and dancers from India to Austin since the early and mid-nineties, respectively. Other community groups - both secular and religious - such as the Association for India's Development, Saheli for Asian Families, the Austin Hindu Temple and the Temple-based Hindu Temple of Central Texas also sponsor Indian classical dance and/or music concerts, often as fund-raising events. In addition, there are Carnatic (southern Indian) and Hindustani (northern Indian) classical music classes, Bharatanatyam schools, impromptu mehfils and jam sessions galore.

The University of Texas at Austin is home to several academic units and student groups that organize Indian classical music events. UT's Center for Asian Studies has an outreach program that co-sponsors 6-8 campus concerts annually with ICMCA. The Division of Musicology and Ethnomusicology offers sitar and tabla lessons. The Tamil Cultural Association at UT has been hosting the annual Thyagaraja Aradhana since 1993. Most recently, a campus group Naadasudha founded in the summer of 2003 put together Austin's first Shyama Shastri Day and plans to offer lecture-demonstrations and concerts for the student community.

Founded in 1996, Trikone-Tejas (TT) is a pan-Asian progressive student-faculty alliance dedicated to ending racism and gender-based prejudice through educational activities such as panel-discussions and workshops, as well as through Asian cultural events. It has included classical Asian music traditions as part of its cultural programming since its inception. The Rest of the Rainbow, a performance/spoken-word event organized by TT every year in October, has featured Korean and Indian traditional music along with poetry and other performance art. TT also hosted Melakarta Day in 2002. This was a special event featuring lecture-demonstrations by local artistes of rAgas from the sampUrNa and asampUrNa mEla paddhatis.

Guruguhaanjali 2003 is the fourth annual event in TT's Asian Music Traditions series celebrating the musical genius of composer Muttuswami Dikshitar. The program will feature renditions of Dikshitar kritis by a line-up of local and visiting artistes, and will be followed, time-permitting, by an open-mic session. It will be held in the Asian Culture Room of the Texas Union on campus.

Getting there: The Texas Union is located east of the Main (Tower) Building in the West Mall area on the UT campus, bounded by Guadalupe on the west and 24th Street on the north. You can get detailed driving directions by entering 2300 Guadalupe (Austin, Texas) as your destination on Yahoo! Maps. Also, click here for an expanded view of campus and on section 2 of that image for a close up view of UNB and accessibility information. Places to park - on 24th between Guadalupe and 21st, on Speedway between 26th and 24th, on San Jacinto between 26th and 21st. Ensure that the spot is not reserved - campus parking fines are steep! There is also parking in the UT garages.

Started in 2000, the Guruguhaanjali Austin page has been accessed times since.
This page was last updated Monday, October 27, 2003. Comments and queries to guruguhaanjali@yahoo.com

Thanks to www.sangeetham.com for making transliterations of DikShitar kRtis available.