By Fakir Hassen
Singers and musicians Bhushan Das, Gona Pillay, Edward Reddy, Keeran Krishna and Anil Rambaran (pictured), and others who either live in Lenasia or are hugely popular there have joined dozens of their counterparts from across South Africa, and even a few from abroad, in the ‘SA Musicians against Covid19’ campaign that sees them sharing their talents in Facebook videos during the current national lockdown, when they cannot perform in public.
The project was started as a way to keep people entertained for a few hours each weekend by a few committed cultural activists in Johannesburg who came up with the idea of bringing all singers and musicians together in an unprecedented musical extravaganza through the Facebook platform.
Lexy Shunmoogam, Chitra Perumal, Kreasan Moodley and Guru Pooven Pillay now have their hands full every day of the week keeping up with the demand from artists who want a slot on Facebook.
Almost every leading artist from South Africa who performs religious or cultural songs, especially in the Tamil community, has already been featured, with the organisers having to turn down many requests from performers in India and other countries.
“Our aim was to showcase the talent that we have right here at home, including providing a platform for the many children who are learning the art form with local teachers,” Shunmoogam said.
“We could hardly have foreseen how artists who have never ever performed together would be on the same platform at some stage, which has been a rather ironic result of the COVID-19 epidemic,” he said.
“What started as a small and humble initiative has now snowballed into a unique and almost unequalled 'Concert from Home' event, galvanizing tens of thousands of people across the world through music,” Shunmoogam said as he invited everyone to join in the unique offering, which this week is featuring priests from various temples performing Kavady prayers.
“The demand for light and film songs has also been huge, so we are planning to have a special weekend from 15 to 17 May where artists will perform in this genre only,” said Shunmoogam, who said no fixed date to end the project after the lockdown is over has been decided yet.
Log onto https://www.facebook.com/SAMagainstCovid19/ to be part of this exercise.
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