The Art of Living, Naadha Vaibhavam on 30 January 2011

5000 Musicians Perform Together - Chennai,India

Chennai, India, 30^th Jan 2011

The Art of Living’s 30-year celebrations with Naadha Vaibhavam.

Chennai, India

"In the magnificent tradition of celebrations by The Art of Living, Naadha Vaibhavam  on 30 January 2011, at Chennai,brings5000 Carnatic musicians to the stage, to create in unison – a symphonic soundscape, in the presence of H. H. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.

This outreach programme has a twofold thrust - to make classical music accessible to the masses & to offer an experience that goes beyond entertainment and individual virtuosic display to tap the spiritual reserves in performer and listener."

Art of Living celebrates 30 years of Service to Society by organizing a Musical Event, Naadha Vaibhavam, in Chennai. This very unique programme is devised and conceived by H. H. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar to honor and showcase the rich culture of Carnatic Music in Chennai, which is the Mecca for music lovers in India.

"Sangita gnanamu bhaktivina Sanmargamu galade manasa". Thyagaraja asked: Can the mind find salvation without the knowledge of music and devotion?

Music nourishes every form of life -- plant, animal and human. So say not just the saints of yore, but also the scientists of today.

"Unless we have a stress-free mind and a violence-free society, we cannot achieve world peace," declares Sri Sri RaviShankar, who guides the stress management and service initiatives of The Art of Living. Ours is a non-profit, educational and humanitarian NGO operating in 151 countries, has always recognised music as sangita yoga, a profound, potent means of combating aggression and violence, promoting inner harmony and world peace.

Therefore The Art of Living has organized many events of music and dance, not as a soloist's dazzling display, but as a congregational celebration of a community of artistes coming together joyously and purposively, as in:

• 3500 musicians performing together at its Silver Jubilee (Bangalore)
• 1200 dancers performing Mohiniyattam (Cochin), setting up a Guinness record
• 1094 sitar artistes from across the country creating Brahm Naad (New Delhi)
• 2750 Hindustani classical vocalists in a enchanting spectacle in Antarnaad (Pune)
• 500 Bharatanatyam dance artistes weaving traditional magic (Chennai)

In this magnificent tradition of spectacular celebrations by The Art of Living, Naadha Vaibhavam (30 January 2011, Chennai) brings 5000 Carnatic musicians to the stage, to create in unison their own symphonic soundscape. This outreach programme has a twofold thrust - to make classical music accessible to the masses & to offer an experience that goes beyond entertainment and individual virtuosic display to tap the spiritual reserves in performer and listener.

The megascale multiple resonance of Carnatic music, devotion-steeped as it is, can achieve meditative transcendence, uniting the individual soul with the all-pervasive Oversoul. In this nadopasana, worship through sound, singer and listener perceive no difference between Antarnaad and Brahmnaad. At such moments of heightened consciousness, achievable by not just the individual sadhaka, but by the entire global community, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's vision of a violence-free, stress-free, service-minded society no longer remains a utopian dream, but an achievable goal.