Playback singer Chinmayi during her eclectic and cross-lingual performance at the Made of Chennai food and music festival at YMCA Nandanam on Saturday.
| Photo Credit: R. RAVINDRAN
Chennai does not so much celebrate its birthdays as it hums them into being, and that hum — equal parts spirit and stillness — defined The Hindu’s Made of Chennai festival this year. Held at the YMCA Grounds in Nandanam on Saturday, August 29, the food and music festival marked 387 years since Madras came into being, and did so the way the city knows best: through sound, spice, and sheer multi-plurality.What began at 4 p.m. as a seemingly relaxed evening of DJ sets and food stalls lining the periphery of the ground soon transformed into something far more resonant, both for the enthusiastic crowd, whose energy reverberated with every beat, and for the musical artistes who performed, among them Paal Dabba, Anthony Daasan, joined by his wife Rita, and the pop-rock band Makka. The show-stopper of the evening, however, was Chinmayi, her eclectic and cross-lingual performance carrying an added charge of homecoming for the crowd.While the Carnatic and retro-rock strains of band Vihara, along with the echoes of Ilaiyaraaja and Rahman’s timeless compositions, charmed many in attendance, it was ultimately the tapestry of the evening as a whole, its people and its unhurried mannerpresentness, that emerged as the true highlight.
