As nadaswaram and thavil fall silent, artistes find themselves in dire straits

M. Neelakantan remembers a time not too long ago, when there weren’t enough nadaswaram and thavil musicians available to render the ‘mangala isai’ at weddings and temple festivals.

“With just around 500 of us, and nearly a thousand marriages being conducted in the city during the peak season, there was actually a shortage of artistes,” Mr. Neelakantan, a third-generation nadaswaram artiste with 25 years of experience, told The Hindu. That situation has changed drastically after the lockdown, as the ban on public gatherings and temple services has left these trained Carnatic instrumentalists out of work.

With the ‘kutcheri’ or public concert circuit falling silent, survival has become a question mark for many nadaswaram and thavil players, especially those who were relying on contractual work at temples and social occasions.

“Our ‘set’ (ensemble) of five musicians could earn up to ₹5000 per person from weddings. Now, people are avoiding us completely; and those who booked us before the lockdown want their advance payments back,” said Mr. Neelakantan.

Many musicians have been badly hit in the lockdown because of a lack of savings, said Subhan Kasim, a Srirangam-based nadaswaram exponent.

“Those who have got teaching positions in government music colleges or permanent arrangements with temples, have been able to survive, but nadaswaram players who rely on daily bookings are facing setbacks,” said Mr. Kasim.

Currently spending his lockdown in indexing over 200 hours of audio recordings of his guru and grandfather Sangeetha Kalanidhi Sheik Chinna Moulana, Mr. Kasim is considering compiling a database of needy nadaswaram artistes, because they don’t have any representative body. “Out of the nearly 1000 nadaswaram artistes in Tiruchi district, around 300 people are very poor,” he said.

He is also an executive member of Global Carnatic Musicians Association (GCMA), which has been helping out artistes in distress during the lockdown.

Carnatic vocalist R. Kashyap Mahesh felt that the lockdown may have actually helped artistes to step outside their closed circle and become more socially responsible. “Most of our life is spent in pursuing our own career growth, but this pandemic alert has made us aware of the many inequalities in our musical community,” he said.

Mr. Kashyap Mahesh has been conducting phone interviews with veteran Carnatic musicians in Tiruchi and uploading them online in an audio series called ‘Sangeetha Santhippu’ (Musical Meeting).

“Makers and repairers of musical instruments like veena, mridangam, nadaswaram and ghatam fully depend on the musicians for their their livelihood, which has almost gone because of the lockdown. More steps should be taken to help these people,” said Mr. Kashyap Mahesh.