It was an evening to remember - a date with the Queen of Melody.
S. Janaki performed at the International Conference Centre in Birmingham, UK. The powerful performance was flowing with such ease that the audience found themselves under a spell. It was a great display of languages and voices in Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Hindi. Most of us who know her music grew up with it, especially her duets with Yesudas that are legendary. Yesudas, the inimitable living legend and S Janaki performed at Madras recently which was a spectacular pageant of melody and rhythm.

It was reassuring that after all these years our ‘Queen of Melody’ is still there, among the very talented female singers like Chitra, Sujatha and Radhika Thilak. Narayana and Purnima who also performed at the concert showed great promise; Narayana captured the audience with ‘shankarabharanam’.

The concert was organised by ‘Shri Venkateswara(Balaji) Temple’ to raise money for building the temple. The organisers showed such dedication and commitment that the audience responded with great vigour. One hopes that many people will come forward to help in this venture.

© E Menon