Celebrating feminine sensibility through music, poetry

Mumbai: A music-recitation-dance concert will be held here Saturday to celebrate feminine sensibility and to commemorate the contribution of women in poetry, an organiser said.

"Main Kaun Hoon? (Who Am I?) is a unique music-recitation-dance concert which focuses on works of eminent women poets of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh like Sufia Kamal, Dilruba Shahana, Parveen Shakir, Amrita Pritam, Mahadevi Verma, Zehra Nigah, Kishwar Naheed, Noorjehan Sarwat and Bahinabai Chaudhari," said Shaila Hattangadi, a classical singer and one of the organisers. The concert is supported by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR). "Combining musical renditions of ghazals, nazms and geets with dramatised and choreographed recitations of path-breaking poetry, the concert looks to evoke and enhance the lyrical beauty of each poem through the seamlessly woven magic of music and drama," Hattangadi said. Main artists of the concert include Hattangadi, along with her two sisters Shobhana Rao and Nirmala Jaishankar. The other team member - anchor and narrator Salima Raza - is a well-known theatre artiste from New Delhi and niece of the legendary Zohra Sehgal. "Raza will be doing the dramatic recitation of poems which are moving and are difficult to adapt into a dance or music format. Having had vast experience in the field, Raza`s recitation of a poem by Zehra Nigah where describes the agony of a 13-year-old boy in the war-torn zone of Afghanistan is very moving," Hattangadi said. IANS