Chennai | Konarak Reddy celebrates 50 years of music with Madras 1968 concert at Alliance Française

Konarak Reddy's guitar concert Madras 1968 celebrates 50 years of music, blending nostalgia with AI-generated background videos.

English sculptor Henry Moore once said, “There’s no retirement for an artist; it’s your way of living, so there’s no end to it.” While there may not be retirement, there is a transition into a certain sense of ease in one’s art. For guitarist Konarak Reddy, this transition has been shaped by life before and after battling cancer. “I think it’s that time of my life when I should play small venues and interact with the audience,” says Konarak who has been a musician for over 50 years, ahead of his performance in Chennai.

This guitar concert titled Madras 1968, hosted by the Alliance Française, is part of a series of performances across South India in intimate venues, including Tiruvannamalai and Puducherry after Chennai. Madras 1968 is all about Konarak revisiting the nostalgia of his childhood. Having grown up in the city where he also learned to play the guitar, his focus is on paying tribute to it. “What I’m doing with this concert is just reminiscing and playing bits of only my music. I have learnt such varied things – Indian music, western classical, jazz, rock – at different stages of my life,” he says, adding that this concert will also include background videos generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI).

He adds, “I learnt classical guitar in Madras when I was 13. During a Chemistry lab experiment, the sulphuric acid burnt my chin, so I couldn’t go to school and decided to learn the guitar,” he says, recalling his first-ever band. “I and a few others started a band. It was me, a guy from Alwarpet, and his brother, who was only 10 years old and played the bongos. So we had our first big show, and we became a big, small-time hit because we were so young,” he laughs.

Recounting his history with the city, Konarak speaks about how his family moved frequently, living in areas like Valmiki Nagar, T Nagar, Nungambakkam, Alwarpet, and more. We had so much history with the city, and I’m simply retelling these stories, but musically,” he adds.

Bangalore 1974, performed at Bangalore International Centre in May this year which served as a prelude to Madras 1968, explored his connection with Bengaluru. It was in Bengaluru that Konarak learned to play the piano. “There were no guitar teachers in Bengaluru at that time, so I learned the theory and started transcribing those notes into guitar music,” he says, adding that there will be a video showcase of this, including glimpses of how Bengaluru looked back in the 1970s.

“The way we Indians experience music is very different from the way the world experiences music. There’s a whole world that exists in these experiences, and I want younger generations to incorporate them into their lives,” he says.

Madras 1968, celebrating 50 years of Konarak Reddy’s music as part of the Guitar Book of Revelations concert series, will be hosted at the Alliance Française of Madras on November 15 from 7pm onwards.