A musical evening

City-based Dakshin Dhwani, which has had a zippy year to its efforts in keeping the memories of old Hindi film songs alive, was given a special slot at Apollo Foundation Theatre premises on Saturday evening.

The Foundation Theatre which has come into existence since December has begun to attract varied performers from the theatre and classical arts stream and Dakshin Dhwani was the first music group to be invited for staging a performance.

The programme was titled ‘Beete Hue Lamhe’ and the team sung a varied mix of songs from the 1950s to as latest as 2016 when one of its young members belted out numbers from films like ‘ Dhoni’. The objective was to remember the greats who had left behind their footprints on the sands of Hindi cinema.

The amphitheatre had a small but well-informed audience which savoured the karaoke music as the evening chill was kept at bay by the energetic performance. The works of over a dozen music directors who set to tune their evergreen hits was taken up, both as solo and duet songs.

Even as the rest of the city was awaiting the dawn of the New Year, the singers took the listeners back in time with the songs reliving the era of the icons gone by which ranged from Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand at one end and Rajesh Khanna and Shashi Kapoor at the other.

As an excited Dakshin Dhwani performer put it: ‘The endeavor to keep alive memories is as important as ushering in the new players who will be adding to the musical stock tomorrow’. Indeed!