Hyderabad :

Telangana government has declared a week long ‘Nagoba Jatara’ in Adilabad district as a state festival and sanctioned `10 lakh for the conduct of the Jatara this year.

Adilabad district officials proposed to organise the tribal festival at Kesalapur village in Indravelli mandal in Adilabad district from January 19 for seven days.

Orders to this effect were issued by the state government on Friday to organise the festival. The jatara is an important religious event wherein devotees of the Mesram clan of Rajgonds worship the serpent god Nagoba.

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Hyderabad / by Express News Service / December 13th, 2014

Hyderabad :

Have you ever tried your hand at composition? What did you do with it? If it’s still lying in your store, it’s time to make it live like Nalinikanth Josyabhatla did in 2008 and reunited himself with music, his passion which he once had to part away with. In association with Hyderabad Western Music Foundation, he is on a quest to inform more and more people about it by conducting workshop, which was held during the weekend. “The participants included music lovers from the city from the age group of 10 to 55 who wanted learn how to produce music without having to hire the orchestra for it,” he informs.

During the two-hour workshop, the participants were taught about the concepts and elements involved in music production using computer softwares and were made to understand the music production process in general. “We can not say that the participants learnt the skills perfectly, but they did get encouragement and guidance,” he says. A live demo was held for the participants at the end of the workshop where the software used to give demo was harmony assistant, garritan personal orchestra (GPO) samples, cubase essential mixer and audacity editor. Apart from that, softwares like sibelius, finale, noteworthy, VSL can also be used, he informs.

Hyderabad Western Music Foundation and he are planning to come together again to conduct a series of workshops on compositions of Western classical music.

A mechanical engineer by education, producing music himself was not an easy task. “When I first started, I began by looking for softwares online. I first stumbled upon harmony assistant. After that though, I managed to find more softwares as I was not satisfied. I knew the sound can be made better so using various softwares to make the music sound real. I won’t say that the music sounds 100 per cent real, but I have managed to reach 70-80 per cent,” he admits.

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Hyderabad / by Pratima Shantaveeresh / December 09th, 2014

Penning most novels in Telugu is his acclaim, but not content, Suryadevara Ram Mohan Rao has already come out with two works in English. And he is working on releasing two more English novels next year.

The popular Telugu author with 107 novels to his credit in a writing career that span nearly three decades is also looking at possibilities of his maiden English novel ‘The Enemy of Mankind’ adopted for a movie by Hollywood.

“Some story promoters from Hollywood have liked the novel which is science fiction genre with genetics as backdrop and are on the job of promoting it for a movie. I am waiting for a response from them,” he says.

Mr. Rao’s second English novel ‘The Dictator of the Dark’ was released this month and it narrates the tale of a hero who gets framed while trying to expose frauds at the high level. “The plot is racy and spread out at global level,” he says.

The 56-year-old author was bitten by the writing bug in 1985 when he was working with the AP Dairy Development Corporation. His first novel ‘Model’ was serialised in a daily newspaper and deciding to take up writing full time, he quit the job in 1989.

“Since then, I have been into novels apart from assignments for movies in the form of story, screenplay and dialogues. I worked for more than 45 films,” Mr. Rao says.

He fondly remembers the good old days of Telugu fiction writing when he picked up the pen and avers, “Then it was a Yandamuri Veerendranath and Malladi Krishnamurthy wave and people were really hooked to reading. Sadly, passion for reading lost out to television serials”.

From stories that oozed romance to plots laced with suspense to narratives set with historic backdrops, he has done all. “I think the younger generation is slowly moving towards reading. Orders for reprint of my several novels I feel, is a testimony to that,” adds Mr. Suryadevara Ram Mohan Rao.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by T. Lalith Singh / Hyderabad – December 09th, 2014

Hyderabad :

It was a magical evening of storytelling at a cultural space in the city. The session conducted by Deepa Kiran transported everyone to many different worlds.

The community storytelling session was part of Hydourite, the performing arts festival. Deepa Kiran is founder of Story Arts India and is based in Hyderabad. She is a professional storyteller, education consultant, writer and voice-over artist.

The storytelling session saw Deepa sharing fun folktales and getting the audience to guess, sing along, and move along to the lilting rhythms and melodies woven into the stories. Engaging children with simple folk musical instruments like todi, shakes, tambourine, damru and wind flute, she had the audience’s attention hooked till the end. The storyteller used different languages like Hindi, English, Telugu and Tamil in the 90 minute journey as it unfolded three short stories and few songs. “Sun lo sun lo ek kahani, jisme raja tha na rani, ek mendhak duba pani mein,” sang children along with Deepa as she narrated the story through songs. With her own sound-effects and background music with folk instruments, she added life to the enchanting evening.

Among those present at the session were Nitin Sharma, a parent who said, “This is a wonderful event and should happen more frequently in the city. It helps children in enhancing their creative skills by triggering their imagination.”

Another was a student of class 2. “I like telling and listening to stories. I liked the way she was playing and adding tunes with musical instruments the most, ” said Siddharth. With storytelling fast becoming a lost art form, Gautam Deshpande said, “Somewhere we have forgotten this art of storytelling. Back in our times, our parents and grandparents always had time to entertain us with interesting stories. But it’s different today, I’ve no time to tell my child a story. It’s very good that someone like Deepa is taking time out of her life and engaging people this way. I too was taken back into the magical days of childhood.”

Explaining the importance of the art, Deepa said, “It triggers imagination. It is creative and relaxing. Children are overloaded with readymade techniques in digital space which makes them a passive recipient. But, unlike movies or games, in storytelling actions happen rather than just being delivered. It’s a call to everyone to get back to the era of gazette free story time”, she added. Recently, Deepa’ first book, ‘The Royal Mistake – Print cum Audio’ was released to a good response from the readers.

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Hyderabad / by Nidhi Gupta / December 01st, 2014