Austin,
Texas, dubbed the Live Music
Capital of the world, has developed a thriving Indian clas sical 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.
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