In order to revive the interest in our traditional art forms, both in musical and performing arts among the younger generation the Sri Ram Centre For Performing Arts and Bharatiya Sangeet Sadan organised the Swami Haridas Tansen Sangeet Nritya Mahotsav at Modern School Barakhamba. The festival endeavoured to commemorate the legendary guru-shishya parampara that was prevalent during the Moghul period between two of the greatest musical geniuses of India: the venerable saint-musician, poet and composer of Brindavan Swami Haridas and his illustrious disciple Mian Tansen.
This festival which started 11 years ago is a lyrical tribute to the music aficionados and aims to keep alive and spread their heritage towards a cultural ‘renaissance’ and resuscitation of the musical ethos. The Mahotsav holds an array of music, dance and vocal recitals presenting some of the best artistes of the country. The festival originally started at Vrindavan with Swami Shri Gopalji of Vrindavan and then shifted to Delhi. Now, for the last 15 years this festival has been continually organized in Delhi and the main initiator of the festival has been the well known Kathak dancer, Uma Sharma.
Commenting on the festival Uma Sharma said, ‘I want to keep up the spirit of real music among the people by promoting it globally; this festival is a token of respect to all masters for their amazing work and I hope it continues on successfully.’
The festival which continued for three days saw performances from maestros like Zakir Hussain, Vinay Bharat-Ram, Ashish Khan, Shubha Mudgal, Uma Sharma, Rajan Sajan Mishra, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Iqbal Ahmed Khan, Shujaat Hussain Khan and Mangiyaars of Rajasthan.
Some of the renowned personalities who attended the shows were actress Sushma Seth, actor Ashish Vidyarthi, artist Neeraj Gupta, author Alexshendra Venus Bakshi, Kathak dancer Uma Sharma and Shiv Nadar.