Award-winning music composer and singer Shankar Mahadevan recently performed for students of an NGO. He tells Arjita Mishra that music can be used as an important tool in education
As we entered in the FICCI auditorium, we saw more than 100 students rehearsing the title track of Aamir Khan’s Taare Zameen Par on the stage so as to impress singer and composer Shankar Mahadevan. One would easily notice the excitement of meeting the singer on the lighted faces of the students.
Mahadevan came to motivate the students of a non-profit organisation, Vidya — Integrated Development for Youth and Adults. The organisation completed its 30 years of existence and in these years, the organisation apart from helping those unprivileged children to get education, has also encouraged them to bring out their talent in front of the world.
The organistion has schools in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. Mahadevan runs an academy of his own along with his friend Sridhar Ranganathan called The Shankar Mahadevan Academy. His academy provides training to the students online as well and he had students from around 47 countries across the world. He lauded the work of the organisation and appreciated it as well. “The kind of work which Vidya is doing is really good and both I and Sridhar have been doing this for several years.”
He told us the concept behind providing online music classes to the students and said, “I and my academy believe that music is not only to be taught to the elite people, there are children with a limited background and you never know that you may get a super talented child or singer.”
The singer shared with us that music can be used as an important tool to educate the students. “Our policy is not just to teach music to become a singer, we want music to be used as a tool to make them learn. I will give you a small example, if, we teach a child about or traditions, culture or festivals by making a list then, they will try to learn but, if we just put it in a song they will get to learn it easily by singing that song,” said Mahadevan.
“Our aim is to put all the mathematical formulas or theories into a song so that they may learn it easily. like in today’s event, kids are going to sing songs in the languages that they don’t know at all. A north Indian would be singing a Tamil song today,” he said while pointing out his future plans regarding his academy.
The singer also interacted with students and he answered their queries. The forthcoming projects of Mahadevan are Rock On 2, Ghayal 2 et al. and on Diwali, his Marathi film is all set to release. The film is about classical music and the singer has also acted in it.
Along with the children, he held the audience spell-bound with Mile Sur Mera Tumhara. The highlight of the evening was a magical rendition of Taare Zameen Par with the children holding torches and illuminating the entire stage. The composer sang several other songs ranging from Tujhe Pata Hai Na Maa to Senorita.
The Vidya children trained sang and danced to folk music from across the different states of India to highlight India’s rich syncretic culture and diversity. In his address, Mahadevan congratulated and commended the children for their excellent display of musical talent. Then along with the children, he regaled the gathering with his musical composition.
It was an evening to remember that combined wholesome musical entertainment with a serious social message about educating and empowering the less privileged sections of society particularly the youth, children and women.