Friday, July 13, 2012

Svaramed at Auroville


Svaram is a place in the midst of a bamboo forest, created to discover music instruments out of everything that would bring out the feel of music in everybody independent of knowledge and training. Located inside Auroville makes it even more special.
The first time I heard about Svaram was when I took a random trip to Auroville explored the shop at the Auroville visitors centre, but then I dint know they had a musical research place. 2 years later, during my second marathon at Auroville, me and my friends took a casual bike ride inside Auroville and heard some drum beats. Moving towards the music, led us to svaram. The feel of Svaram is fantastic, the place is truly spiritual.
The place manifests independence and encourages talent and ideas.  Being a person who can play the percussions and having owned some of the small drums of svaram, I started playing the djembe, the best djembe I have ever played was still half painted. After playing for around 15mins, I realized I was only in the showroom opposite to the research place, where the real research music happens out of everything possible.
The first thing that caught my eyes was a LPG cylinders modified and hung around the place, the first one I played was set to mohanam ragam. Admiring that for some time, I fell for a huge African styled base drum. Looking from a distance, art work on the drum was fascinating, the size was by itself a beauty. The heavenly feel when you play the drum in confluence to the sound coming from the bamboo forest, make you feel like "I AM GOD". After a few of minutes of playing the drum, Prakash from the Svaram team joined me and we had an absolutely brilliant jamming session.
The marathon was the next day and it was shut down time for Svaram. I had a quick walk inside the place and when I was about to leave, "THAMBE" it was Karthik, he asked me where I am staying and for how long, and asked me to play with them at the marathon tomorrow. People of Svaram team up at different places along the trail of the marathon, with the instruments to encourage runners, believe me it works awesome on your run, and when you are going to join the team playing with them,it works even better. I joined the Svaram team near the finish line, after I finished my run. Initially we performed as a group and the group welcomed a stranger drummer in me. Myself and Prakash continued our jamming sessions, joined by kids and lady dancers.
I would personally recommend everybody interested in music to visit Svaram, and when  you are going call me, 2hours was not enough . People can also work hand-in-hand with Svaram and help them in their research. Svaram also helps to research on one's music ideas.
One could see every musical instrument that Sivamani uses with his drum kits or probably even more at Svaram, but the feeling of playing them cannot be comprehended by just reading this. If you really are acumen about this idea, you need to be there.
Music must release oneself from the mundane thought and Svaram does it perfectly well.

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