Bhoomija’s Sunny Symphony celebrates inclusivity in music

Special children performing the inaugural concert at Bhoomija Jackfruit Festival
| Photo Credit: Courtesy: Bhoomija

Sunny Symphony, presented by the children of Srishti Special Academy, Bengaluru and directed by versatile artiste MD Pallavi, was an ode to the connection a concert could bring when not confined to conventional performance parameters.

This was the inaugural concert of the Bhoomija Jackfruit Festival, curated by eminent musicians Shubha Mudgal and Aneesh Pradhan. Pallavi also hosted the show with a warmth that seemed to embrace the children on stage and among the audience.

The show was about showcasing how evocative music could be when singers are given the space to forge their own relationship with a song. The decision of the festival programmers to centre stage musical journeys rather than outcomes helped this.

Gayathri Krishna, founder and managing trustee, Bhoomija Trust, credits this quality of the concert to Pallavi. She put together the songs and brought in singers Prathima Bhat and Meghana Bhat, who trained Srishti’s children for eight weeks at its campus on Bengaluru’s outskirts.

Versatile artiste MD Pallavi hosting the show
| Photo Credit:
Photo courtesy: Bhoomija

“Last year’s Jackfruit Festival was inaugurated with Pallavi singing for Srishti’s children. The children enjoyed it immensely,” Gayathri recalls. As a step forward, the festival team wondered if they could reverse the audience-performer equation this year by bringing the children on stage.

“This also met the Academy’s goals towards inclusion, and the concert and the process impacted the singers and students,” says Gayathri.

The show featured songs by popular composers and poets, and these were chosen for the “curiosity and wonder” they inspired, says Pallavi. The focus was to choose songs that were simple, relatable and mostly known to the children. And so, the singers made the song their own – even pronouncing some words with heightened clarity and emotion, leading to a moving listening experience.

Pallavi is not formally trained to work with children with special needs, and she approached the group as she would any group of children. “We realised as we were teaching them that we didn’t have to do anything different… They were as receptive as any other group of kids. They had their energetic moments and low-energy ones. We just had to be open to them,” she says.

Pallavi attributes the children’s confident performance to Meghana and Prathima, who “met the children thrice a week, taught them the songs and practiced with them.”

Krishna Udupa (keyboards) and Sumukha (percussions) at the show
| Photo Credit:
Photo courtesy: Bhoomija

Supported by musicians Krishna Udupa (keyboards) and Sumukha (percussions), the children sang solo or in small groups, inhabiting the melody and rhythm of each song. The last song sung by a larger group displayed how much the children enjoyed collaboration.

Festival curator Shubha Mudgal says she was “particularly happy” to see the audience from last year become performers this year. Speaking about inclusion she says: “I could be wrong, but I have not seen any major efforts towards inclusivity in the field of Indian music. Neither do I feel that an easy solution is available. Each of us will first have to be mindful and make an effort, however tiny.”