If you're a fan of Tamil cinema music, a treat awaits you this weekend. A global six-hour long online concert 'Oru Kuralaai' (In One Voice), bringing together over 80 artistes, including Academy Award winning music composer AR Rahman, will be live-streamed through Facebook on Saturday.
With the coronavirus pandemic putting an end to live events and stage shows, there are several artistes who have lost their livelihood suddenly and have been pushed to bankruptcy with no hope of revival anytime soon.
"I watched a video of a musician saying that he's now going to sell vegetables. He said it's okay but that he had come into the music field out of passion, without any support. I thought this was not right," says popular singer Srinivas.
It is such incidents which prompted Srinivas to establish USCT (United Singers Charitable Trust), a nonprofit organisation, along with reputed musicians Unnikrishnan, Sujatha Mohan, Rahul Nambiar, Ranjith Govind, Haricharan, and Saindhavi as trustees.
And now, the organisation has put together 'Oru Kuralaai', along with Silver Tree, an event and talent management company. Over 80 artistes, including AR Rahman and actor-politician Kamal Haasan, have participated in the show.
"We have a chat with Kamal in the show and he also sings a little bit. There's a chat with AR Rahman also and he performs too," says Srinivas, offering a sneak peek into what's in store.
Singers Hariharan, Shankar Mahadevan, Shreya Ghoshal and several other big names are part of the line-up in this exclusively Tamil concert.
"I was moved by their compassion. We all have our differences, our egos and issues, but everyone kept aside everything and came together to do this. It's a great thing," says Srinivas.
"Most people recorded the songs from their home, some went to the studios," he says, adding that by now, musicians have become experts in figuring out the lighting, recording and other details which need to be taken care of while performing from home.
The live-streaming from the USCT Facebook page will happen at different timings, according to the geographic area. For India, it is on September 12, 6 pm. The performance can also be accessed from music composers GV Prakash and Anirudh's social media pages. The US, South East Asian countries, Australia and New Zealand are among the zones for which the livestreaming will happen.
Though the concert is free, users can contribute with a donate link that will be made available along with the performance.
"There are so many orchestra people, those who perform at weddings, temples...they've just been smashed. For how long can they hold on? We got together and did this for a cause. We hope people will also open their hearts and their wallets a little," Srinivas says.
The USCT has formed subcommittees to identify musicians who are in need and the funds collected will go to them.