This is the story of the Shillong Chamber Choir, a brilliant band that has held the nation spellbound with their exuberance and delightful repertoire of musical medleys for 15 years.
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Shillong Chamber Choir[/caption]
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Shillong Chamber Choir was formed in 2001 by Neil Nongkynrih, a concert pianist who returned to Shillong after thirteen years in Europe. The media-shy artist had studied music at Trinity College in London, and had also tutored Grammy winner Philip Selway of the British rock group Radiohead. Nongkynrih (Uncle Neil to his pupils) decided to become a music teacher and converted his residence in Pokseh, in the heart of Shillong, into a home music school. He then searched out talented children from villages or from modest backgrounds and trained them in music. Under his tutelage, 25 young boys and girls of the Shillong Chamber Choir performed for the first time at Pinewood Hotel in Shillong in 2001. Their outstanding music, that included pieces from Khasi folk music as well as Handel, Bach, Gershwin, Mozart and Nongkynrih’s own compositions, ensured that there was no turning back after that. [caption id="attachment_75764" align="aligncenter" width="1002"]
Shillong Chamber Choir[/caption]
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In 2009, for the first time in the musical history of northeast India, the Shillong Chamber Choir collaborated with the famed Vienna Orchestra for a couple of concerts in Shillong and Kolkata. In 2010, the choir also won Gold awards at the World Choir Games in Shaoxing, China for all the three categories in which they had participated – Music Sacra, Gospel and Popular. However, it was after winning the reality talent show, India's Got Talent (Season 2) in October 2010 that the choir finally shot to fame. Few people know that, initially, the choir was reluctant to participate in the show because of their classical repertoire which they thought would not be appreciated by the masses. When they finally made it to the audition in Kolkata, they sang 'Kabhi Aar Kabhi Paar', the only Hindi song that the only Hindi-speaker in the group, Donna Myrthong, knew. However, the judges loved their music and they were selected. The rest, as they say, is history. [caption id="attachment_75763" align="aligncenter" width="950"]
Shillong Chamber Choir with Amitabh Bachchan and Vishal Dadlani[/caption]
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Since then, have gone where no Indian choir has gone before - from crooning for the Obamas on their India visit to winning medals in World Choir Championships and now to performing with Amitabh Bachchan in the Global Citizen India concert. Their story was even featured as a study chapter in the English Syllabus of the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) in 2013. In 2015, Nongkynrih, who believes that music is the true expression of who he is within, was honoured with a Padma Shri for his immense contribution to music in India.Also Read: Sitar, Sarangi & More: Watch This Cover of a Coldplay Song with an Indian Classical Twist
Today, the Shillong Chamber Choir has a choc-a-bloc schedule, with concerts lined up well into 2017. Over the years, the choir's repertoire has expanded rapidly to include fresh and funky renditions of popular Hindi songs like 'Eena Meena Deeka', ' Humma Humma' and 'Senorita' - a long way from the time when 'Kabhi Aar Kabhi Paar' was the only Hindi song they could sing. With concerts lined up till the end of this year and into 2017, audiences can look forward to fresh renditions by the SCC of medleys of "Mera Naam Chin Chin Chu", "Eena Meena Deeka" and "I Got Rhythm"; "Lag Ja Gale" with the Godfather theme; "Humma Humma" with a popular western funk tune and many more. [caption id="attachment_75765" align="aligncenter" width="960"]
Shillong Chamber Choir at a performance[/caption]
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Shillong Chamber Choir's USP has always been their ability to give an interesting twist to medleys that offer listeners a blend of the familiar and the unfamiliar. Each concert throws up surprising, yet crazy fusions of Bollywood and western classical numbers, like the 'My Heart will go on'/'Dil Hai Chhota Sa' and 'Eena Meena Deeka/'I Got Rhythym' medleys. One of the concerts that remains closest to the choir's hearts is when they performed in Patna to an audience that included professionals to rickshaw-wallahs. They warmly remember how everyone, regardless of what background, had loved their folk opera. For the members of the brilliant Shillong Chamber Choir, home is a bungalow in the heart of Meghalaya's capital city that belongs to the choir director, Neil Nongkynrih. All the members stay like a family, sharing the responsibility of the household work, rehearsing their songs, practising their instruments, writing new compositions and some also preparing for their school and college examinations. Asked to describe life at Uncle Neil's home, the choir members say that it all revolves around a lot of discipline, a lot of music and a lot of warmth. [caption id="attachment_75769" align="aligncenter" width="650"]
Shillong Chamber Choir members with their 'Uncle Neil'[/caption]
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While discipline is a key factor in the choir's rehearsals, there is no regimented time set aside for practice sessions that go beyond rote-learning of sound and words. One room in the sprawling bungalow is a workout studio where the group performs cardio exercises to loosen up the body or rehearses dance moves to warm up. This is followed by singing western classical pieces like those of Gershwin, Schubert or Mozart pieces before rehearsing their latest compositions. Constant reinvention is another thing the choir pays a lot of attention to. The choir has sung in over 15 different languages, both regional and western. However, it's their innate humility and deep love for music that forms the backbone of the choir. The story of every member of the Shillong Chamber Choir is a testimony to the healing power of music. [caption id="attachment_75766" align="aligncenter" width="960"]
Members of the Shillong Chamber Choir[/caption]
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Jessica Shaw Lyngdoh, a 27-year-old English Honours graduate, says the choir helped her discover something deeper and meaningful in life while 23-year-old Dorea Rangad, who performed her first concert at age 14, believes that the Saturday music lessons with 'Uncle Neil' transformed her life completely. Rishilla Jamir, a graduate from New Delhi's St Stephen's College, met the choir in Delhi and came to Shillong with them. She feels that singing with the choir has helped make her musical foundations stronger. Ibarisha Lyngdoh, the young lead soloist, joined the choir when she was just 12 and believed that her music is her way of giving back to her country. These are just a few of the many examples of how music transformed the lives of the choir members.You May Like: VIDEO: Disco Deewane Like You’ve Never Heard Before – in a Magical Mashup by Shillong Chamber Choir
Choir director, Neil Nongkynrih, feels that it is this process of metamorphosis, along with the peace they all find in the chaos of concerts, that has helped the band stay together for so long. As for what makes each of their renditions touch a chord in every heart, a choir member replies in an interview to the Firstpost,
"It’s perhaps got to do with the surroundings we live in. The calm and pristine hills leave an impression on our souls so clearly as to reflect in our music. And music is very sensitive to the condition of one's heart. We practise more on how to work as a team, on humility, on how to love our neighbour more than ourselves and then the melodies follow."Next in the pipeline is a restaurant where the choir will serenade guests with a live performance over a gourmet menu. Also, along with live associations, they are also looking forward to YouTube collaborations in the near future. Nongkynrih has also written an entire folk opera in Khasi with the aim of preserving the little-known language - the choir also makes it a point to include a song or two in Khasi in every concert they do. Check out their FB page and website here.
Mangalamapalli Balamuralikrishna[/caption]
M Balamuralikrishna[/caption]
Vadya Vithika has a wide display of Indian tribal instruments[/caption]
For example, the Tiwa community of Assam is well known for its soulful music, varied musical instruments and lively folk dances. Instruments like Khram (a long cylindrical drum that typically uses deer skin as the playing surface), Pangsi (a flute made of Bamboo), Singa Pepa (another kind of flute made of the horn of Buffalo) and Taal (a rhythm instrument consisting of two metallic cymbals) are used to play foot-tapping music during festivals like Jonbeel Mela, Borot Utsav and the spring festival Sagara Misawa.
Vadya Vithika has a wide display of vulnerable Indian tribal instruments[/caption]
Open Sky community members[/caption]
The community believes in making available a safe haven for artists, where they can showcase their art and feel accepted.
Core team of Open Sky: Aishwarya Iyer (left), Deepten Sarkar (middle) and Shruthi Mohan[/caption]
Open Sky Slams take place in different premises like cafes, rooftops, public gardens, orphanages, rescue homes, and government schools. Participants showcase different art forms like music, theatre, poetry, dance, comedy and magic on stage.
They have a unique approach. “Children, today, have no clue of what Hindustani classical music is as they hear Bollywood music more than anything,” says Dakshayani. “We are losing this traditional art in the process. The idea was to create an interest in classical music among children. Once children are interested, it is easier for them to understand the music form.”
In order to achieve this, the couple founded the 
Prior to setting up the 
“To make the session more interesting, we also sang a lot of film music in the 
Since their pilot study was accompanied by positive feedback, Mandar and Dakshayani decided to introduce a music appreciation course in 
Their greatest challenge has been to make Indian classical music relevant to the present generation. This involves devising new teaching methods rather than sticking to the traditional guru-shishya teaching style. “It is difficult to work with music teachers as they have a rigid perspective on music,” Dakshayani confesses. “They have been taught to look at and think about music in a certain way by their gurus traditionally. Due to this, they don’t understand how kids want to be taught, and they don’t know how to connect with them.”
The couples’ version of a secondary school music course is completely different. “You want children to ask more questions and not just follow blindly. Unfortunately, teachers in the field are exactly like that. They don’t understand that children may not know a lot of the things they are talking about,” Dakshayani continues. “One of Baithak’s teachers was going to talk about different forms of classical singing – 
“Artists today are playing to the gallery. Classical music has become more commercial and just another commodity in the market. It’s not looked at art for art’s sake,” says Dakshayani.
The couple aims to challenge blind notions about Indian classical music by making it mainstream. Their future plans include arranging for school concerts by local artists every month. After a 45-50 minute performance in the school hall, the children will be permitted to ask questions. The intention is to generate an interest through experience.
“A musician once told us that classical music is for the classes, not masses,” Dakshayani smiles. “What they don’t realize is that the best classical musicians come from the humblest of backgrounds,” she concludes.
You can check Baithak Foundation’s
A young Rahman with his mother Kareema Begum[/caption]
A young Rahman[/caption]
Young A R Rahman with musician and playback singer Yesudas[/caption]
Rahman (extreme right) and the fellow members of his band, Roots.[/caption]
A R Rahman at his studio[/caption]
The Keyboard ARR used for Roja[/caption]
A R Rahman recording for Bombay Dreams[/caption]
Former president Prathiba Patil presenting the Padma Bhushan A R Rahman at The Presidential House in New Delhi on 31 March, 2010.[/caption]
Chong Chiu Sen[/caption]
Steve Gorn[/caption]
Saskia Rao de Hass[/caption]
Ken Zuckerman[/caption]
Shankar Tucker[/caption]
Actor Tisca Chopra performing at Kommune's event 'Storytellers'[/caption]
The Storytellers’ sessions were a place to experiment with the format, where the storytellers were aided by workshops to help them hone their skills. The only rule: every story needed to be based on reality. Soon, Kommune started experimenting with poetry, coming up with spoken word poetry and beat poetry performances.
Following the great response in Mumbai, Kommune started hosting shows in Delhi and Bengaluru and has plans to tour smaller cities in the near future.
Roshan Abbas[/caption]
With new avenues for the genre opening up, the quantity of content being generated has vastly increased. There’s just too much of content out there, a blundering amount, says Roshan.
Jagjit Singh[/caption]
A young Jagjit Singh[/caption]
Jagjit Singh used to do live concerts for AIR Jalandhar[/caption]
Jagjit Singh and his wife Chitra Singh[/caption]
The couple's two most famous albums.[/caption]
Jagjit Singh with Lata Mangeshkar[/caption]
Jagjit Singh with his good friend Gulzar[/caption]
Jagjit Singh with Nida Fazli.[/caption]
When five stalwarts collaborated for a song.[/caption]
Graffiti wall at the Good Graffiti Fest 2016[/caption]
The bowls used in Jalatarangam.[/caption]
Today, artists generally prefer china bowls, numbering around 16 in normal use. The number of cups depends on the melody. In order to play this instrument, the player arranges the cups in a half-circle in front of him/her to be able to reach them all easily.
He/she pours water into the cups, and changes the pitch by adjusting the volume of water in the cup. The player then softly hits the cups with a wooden stick on the border to get the sound. However, playing this instrument is not at all easy. It requires a lot of skill to produce music leading to trance.
Jalatarangam, the instrument.[/caption]
Poets of the Krishna cult have mentioned the wonders of Jalatarangam in their literature work. Many contemporary players of Carnatic music do attempt to produce Gamak (a fast meend or spanning 2-3 notes, normally deliberately forceful and vigorous, and repeating in an oscillatory manner), often in the face of skewed sounds and lack of required control.
Kottayam TS Ajith Kumar performing in a show[/caption]
Jalatarangam is a unique type of music, and the most soothing one as well. We must highlight and promote it to release it from obscurity, and once again leave its audience with ecstasy. The idea of water waves, when laid together with proper techniques, releasing sound that is so alluring, is truly transcendental.
This article originally appeared on 
Kesarbai Kerkar
Kesarbai Kerkar receiving Sangeet Natak Akademi Award from Indian President Rajendra Prasad in March 1953
A NASA supplied artists' representation of the TRAPPIST-1 solar system[/caption]
On Wednesday, NASA held a special press conference announcing the discovery of this star system, which is located 39 light years away in the Aquarius constellation of the Milky Way Galaxy. What has space scientist excited is the fact that three of the seven planets fall within the star's "habitable zone," a range of distances from the star that would create the right temperatures for liquid water and conditions right for extraterrestrial life.
With this discovery, outer space is shaping up to be a more tantalizing target than ever - and this makes the Voyager 1 probe, which is still sending back data and making discoveries from the edge of interstellar space, probably mankind's best chance of reaching it.
The recently opened cafe is the brainchild of music therapist Santosh Ghatpande, music enthusiast Anand Kolharkar and Hindustani classical vocalist Sawani Ghatpande.
Santosh Ghatpande (right) and Anand Kolharkar[/caption]
After the course, he started conducting music therapy sessions, along with his wife Sawani, for close groups in Pune.
“We teach how to sing, write and compose a song. We design our activities in a way that we enable participants to facilitate their learning and learn life skills, social skills, spoken English, History, reproductive health, and menstrual hygiene. We conduct workshops in government schools, low income schools, private schools and NGOs across India,” says Delhi-based Anurag.
It is divided into four segments: vocal covers skills like empathy, confidence, discipline, respect, social awareness; writing covers critical thinking, punctuality, visioning, importance of planning, responsibility, social consciousness; rhythm covers team building, leadership, management; and composing inculcates thinking out of the box, critical thinking, brotherhood, makes one conscious about social problems.
“We have worked with over 50 schools and over 150 NGOs across India. We conduct workshops, which have two formats. - the short term workshops that vary from two to six days along with long-term ones which are hour-long weekly workshops with a group of maximum 30 participants. At the end, the participants compose their own music and if budget allows record the track,” shares Anurag.
He adds that at the end of their workshops, which are called Learning Through Music, the participants have composed songs on topics like washrooms, water, gender, girl education, education, friendship, brotherhood, being creative and many more.
“Through workshops in schools, we have been able to help increase about 90% students’ grades by five to 35%," says Anurag.
The group, which draws inspiration from the works of mystic poet and saint Kabir Das and admires the ethics and principles of Mahatma Gandhi, comprises eight vocalists, out of which six vocalists are trained in Indian classical, two are trained guitarists from Delhi School of Music and one is a trained drummer from Rock School (Delhi).
Music stage shows are their main source of income, which has been supporting four of their projects for last four years. In 2014, Manzil Mystics also composed music to the 
Kavish Seth[/caption]
Chintamani[/caption]
“We belong to the fisherman community. My grandfather then my father and then me, we all wrote and performed on our own songs. Collaborating with Zubaan has given me audience other than the usual ones I was satisfied with. Moreover, there is so much to learn when you meet other artists from various states,” says Chintamani.
Ghatam Suresh Vaidyanathan during a performance.[/caption]
Ghatam Suresh Vaidyanathan with his favoured instrument.[/caption]
A Ghatam Suresh Vaidyanathan performance.[/caption]
Almost two decades later, Suresh believes he made the right choice. He says, “The younger generation look to me as someone who can guide them with just one performance.” At a recent performance, he was thrilled to see a band of young musicians who admired his work and waited to meet him after the show.
He says, “All this is possible only because I was able to work more on the technical side, and now I’m being celebrated as someone who has revolutionized ghatam techniques.” He credits his success to Vinayakram and his other guru, Narayanaswamy Iyer. Both his teachers had distinct styles which influenced his playing, and have helped to mould his skills.
Today, Suresh has his own students who are influenced by his unmistakable style. He says, proudly, “Now, when people hear them playing, they can say, ‘They’re following Ghatam Suresh.’ This is what I would call my humble achievement.”
Piyush Mishra[/caption]
Piyush – What do I say about my childhood! I was an introvert, very quiet and shy. Everyone would suppress me at school, at home. I didn’t get a good childhood.
Piyush – I would advise that do what you want to. It is your right to choose your profession, your passion. No one else will understand what makes you happy -not even your parents, your friends or any philosopher or guide.
Piyush Mishra with his elder son, Josh[/caption]
Photo source - Facebook
Piyush – They have already… my older son, Josh, is in first year of the Hotel Management course in IHM. The younger one, Jai is very small now. He is in class 6 but he loves to cook too. I am sure he is going to become a chef. They don’t like art and why should they. My father never liked art, but I did.
Piyush - I went to Bombay in 1989 but came back within a year to Delhi. I think that was the best decision I ever took. I didn’t know how to struggle and those days were different. I understood that even if Bombay was made for me, this was not the right time. I came back to Delhi and then started theatre, which did really well.
Photo Source - Instagram
Piyush – See, you have to first judge yourself if you are capable of doing it or not. You have to be your own mirror and see a clear reflection. We all come to Bombay and think that if given a chance we are no less than Amitabh Bachchan or Shahrukh Khan. But you have to first understand the thing that Amitabh or Shahrukh has and you don’t. And you need to work on that.
