Oldest choir group in country keeps religion aside

Preserving the tradition of singing choirs for so long, particularly amid ever changing political climates, religious festivals and intervention of technology is no easy feat. Perhaps that’s why the late composer MB Shreenivasan - the pioneer of Indian choral music - all those years ago, decided to keep his compositions devoid of political, film, or religious influence.

The compositions practised by the MYC are clean and revolve around themes like environment, and moral values. “MYC is completely secular. The members might be Christians, Hindus and Muslims, but we keep our religion aside once we sing’” said D Ramachandran, Artistic Director, MYC.

Every Sunday evening for 50 years now, a group of 60-year-olds get together at the Children Garden’s School in Mylapore and sing choirs for three hours, before they go about their weekly routine. Ramachandran, a member of this group, since January 1971, said “We were teenagers when we joined the choir. Now, we’re all over 60, but still remain young at heart.”

Shreenivasan founded the MYC in 1970 with an ambition to spread the genre far and wide and keep it going amid future generations. The MYC members began spreading the message in schools and colleges in the city and state, and even went on to receive support from NCERT and SCERT for their compositions. “Yes, we toured extensively back then simply to spread choir music among the younger generation. In fact, NCERT even published a booklet of our choirs and distributed it to students,” added Ramachandran.

A group that only used to sing Tamil compositions back in the 70s has now roped in other languages to its roster. About 12-14 languages feature in the compositions now, including southern languages like Malayalam, Kannada and Assamese, Gujarati and Hindi. “Besides, we also train younger members in workshops in summer. We bring in new members – from junior to senior levels – so we can train them exclusively. The training happens every Saturday at 1 PM at Bala Mandhir,” Ramachandran said.