Bringing concerts home -Shilpa Sebastian R,THE HINDU

It is that dream concert you have been wanting to go to for weeks. The event is just round the corner, but unfortunately it is far away from where you live and children below a certain age are not allowed. You debate on two options — you give up on the concert or you go for it, while all through you worry about the little ones you have left behind at home.

Sailing in the same boat? Well, then Jagali is your answer. Jagali Katte is not a new concept for most Kannadigas. In the old days, most home makers and grandmothers would sit on a concrete bench called Jagali and share stories while they continued with their household chores like cleaning rice or leafy vegetables. While they did this, they would narrate stories to younger children and socialise with their neighbours.

It is this concept that Saraswathi Anand, Arjun Swaminathan, Madhuri Aggarwal and Nitesh Aggarwal have worked on. Their Jagali however, involves no chores, but offers you musical concerts, book readings, storytelling and more. The best part about Jagali is that it is open to children too, irrespective of their age.

“Jagali is a platform where we bring performances to our home and also curate performances for families,” explains Saraswathi, who opens her home once a month for concerts. “Performances have become very rigid today. The crowd invariably is a passive listener or a watcher. There seems to be a disconnect between the performer and the audience.”

“There used to be time when concerts would happen in schools or in temples where halls would be let out for musicians. The family would attend these events and make it an outing, which was entertaining as well. Today, all that has stopped. People rarely go out for concerts or events and if they do, they leave their children behind. Entertainment has become individualistic as each person has his or her own preference. Children are probably not a part of most performances as most venues expect total silence or that children should not move around,” observes Saraswathi.

That is when they decided to start Jagali, where parents could bring in children and invited performers who did not mind having a toddler yell, while he was demonstrating an intense raga.

“We also felt that if children are left out from concerts, how will they learn to appreciate art or inculcate a liking for the performing arts?Most parents depend on schools to expose children to such arts, but how much can schools too do with teachers racing to complete the year’s syllabus? Children are being kept occupied with mobile phones. We are parents too and realised that we also were leaving our children behind while watching a play or listening to a concert. We did not want that to happen. That is when we decided to bring concerts home and open the space for the entire family,” explains Madhuri, a food stylist, who has a blog called Mad about Kitchen.

That is how Jagali, which started eight months ago in Saraswathi’s home in JP Nagar became a “common ground for performances, families, parents and children.”

Though the founders come from a different professional backgrounds, they share similar cultural interests. Till date they have had musicians performing everything from popular music, jazz and Hindustani to Blues and folk music.

Names such as Prakash Sontakke, Urban Folk Project, Sameeer Rao (a student of Hari Prasad Chaurasia) have performed at Jagali. “We take a collective decision whether the crowd will like it or not. As the venue is an informal setting, we noticed that we have a repeat crowd.

The venue is our living room, which accommodates 60 people and every concert is free,” says Arjun, who is also a photographer and a documentary film maker.

“Every time we speak to an artiste to explain Jagali’s motto, we also tell them that children will not be kept away. Artistes have been open to performing at Jagali. There have been quite a few performances where the children sat right through in absolute silence. They loved jazz and dhrupad music and have been enchanted by Vikram Sridhar’s story telling sessions,” says a happy Saraswathi.

Ask them what they get out of it and the quick response from Arjun is “Fun. We get to meet people with similar interests, socialise and also expand our horizon. We look forward to organising such events.”

“It is stressful at times as people don’t reach till 6.30 pm. But the good news is that Jagali has audience not just from the neighbourhood, but also from as far away as Yelahanka.”

Artistes are pleased to perform at Jagali as they “find it an intimate space. Prakash Sontakke will go the extra mile to demonstrate how a particular raga can be sung in various notes or how a classical raga has been used in a film song and so on. Hence, it also becomes educative for us and we get a new perspective about a raga. Every event is interactive and casual. People have conversations with the artistes,” adds Madhuri.

“Most of the artistes have loved performing at Jagali. We have video testimonials online about this. Most have said they perform at Jagali for the love of the arts,” Says Arjun.

As each of the founder member have day jobs, they use the social media platform to promote events at Jagali.