Chennai's music season .... cold winter !! - and Musicians stored !!!

Come December, it will the ‘winter season’ in Chennai – one used to see sweaters and mufflers on road …. Now it has given way to ‘ear-caps’ – Chennai, is hot all the time and when it is chill in the Margazhi, people do cry, that it is getting too cold. It is nothing comparable with that of Wisconsin, London, or even Delhi.  It is not biting cold, but to those ‘Chennai residents’ – the weather is bad enough !

~ and December also marks the ‘Margazhi season’ – the Madras music season – the famed Carnatic music festival in all the sabhas worth their name of Chennai.  It all reportedly started in the 1920s by a group of individuals who later went on to establish the Madras Music Academy.  Concerts would be held at various venues at different places every year, before the Madras Music Academy settled on its present venue at T.T.K. Road.  During the famed Madras Music Season, artistes descend down and perform at various Sabhas.  Going by their grade, class and reputation, they would get prime slots. Audiences too come from various parts of the globe to hear and enjoy quality music. 

There will be acclaimed critics – one of the oft heard clichés is – when a musician does not sing so well – ‘he/she must be sued for killing that raga’ ………… suing a musician ? Music plagiarism is the use or close imitation of another author's music while representing it as one's own original work. Either the idea (melody or motif) or the tunes (recorded portions) would be lifted and copied – sometimes resulting in legal fights too.  Nothing of that sort, much different one – as an Opera singer sued US Govt. over  claims that a botched operation during childbirth left her with excessive flatulence that has threatened to ruin her career. Amy Herbst, who previously performed with the Nashville Opera Company, reported to have claimed that a nurse-midwife at Blanchfield Army Community Hospital at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, performed an episiotomy during labour without her consent. She is reported to have sought $2.5m compensation for negligence, as well as pain and suffering, embarrassment and loss of income. Ms Herbst claimed in the lawsuit filed at Cincinnati federal court that complications from the operation have damaged her reproductive and digestive systems.

In another, a St. Louis, Mo., woman sued  the rap group ‘Bones Thugs-n-Harmony’  and one of its members for injuries she claims were inflicted by a swinging microphone at a Columbia concert. The Columbia Daily Tribune reported  that Allison Dees of Oakville says she was hit in the head at an April 2010 show at The Blue Note nightclub. She is suing both the Cleveland, Ohio, group and singer Steven Howse, whose stage name is “Layzie Bone.” The nightclub is not listed as a defendant. The lawsuit was filed a couple of years ago in Boone County Circuit Court.  In another instance, a man and his cousin at Chicago filed a lawsuit against rap group Bone Thugs-n-Harmony accusing  that a member of the group attacked them.   The plaintiffs alleged that Bryon McCane, better known as "Bizzy Bone," of hitting them on  the face and head while the two were on the band's tour bus after their show at the Congress Theater.  According to the Chicago Tribune,  the man had paid a promoter of the Bone Thugs-n-Harmony tour $80 in order for him and his cousin to hang out on the rap group's tour bus. The two commenced to spend about a half hour on the bus before McCane allegedly started to harass them.

Bone Thugs-N-Harmony is an American Hip-Hop band from Cleveland, Ohio formed in 1991.

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

4^th Dec 2014.