B. Kannan is a key person at the renowned 'Nrityodaya' run by well known dancer and guru Dr. Padma Subrahmanyam. He also plays the veena at major concert venues.

In September this year in Chennai, Kannan donned a different role - as organiser of the annual Veena Fest which has been passionately promoted by the Delhi-based V. Raghurama Ayyar, now the adviser to the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) and once, head of PIB.

This week-long fest (hosted by Veena Foundation, IGNCA and Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalya, Bhopal) was held at the smaller hall of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Mylapore, Chennai and Kannan says he is more than happy with the way this fest turned out.

Firstly, because he brought an artiste's touch to the organisation of the event. Next, because the event gave him the opportunity to talk to and invite all veena artistes, senior, elder, professional and budding.

Also, the satisfaction of having a packed hall on some days of the fest and finally, because of the feeling the fest has created among artistes and rasikas that veena continues to have its place in classical music and more can be done in the future.

From Padmavathy Ananthagopalan to Jayanthy Kumaresh, from Kalyani Ganesan to S. Somya and S P Ramh, from Jayalakshmi Sekar to Mudikondan Ramesh and T N Seshagopalan, the line-up for the concerts was impressive: so were some of the concerts.

About 90 artistes went on stage and because Ayyar backed Kannan with funds, organising the show was that much easy.

Besides the fest - called Veena Navaratri - there was also a Viswa Veena Yagna.

A yagna in the sense that veena was played at different places around the world at different times in a 24-hour period. In Australia and Singapore, in Belgium, UK, France and in the USA.

Ayyar, who is passionate about the veena was gracious to hand over the organisational job to Kannan and on the last evening of the fest even performed for 30 minutes. Quite a man at 80!

Kannan says this assumption that the veena is fading out in classical music is not quite right. He says veena artistes are not given opportunities.

He hopes a fest like the recent one in Chennai will also enthuse parents to train their kids in veena. Perhaps, there is more to be done for that to take effect.