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Sanatkada festival ends: A cappella group sings its way into hearts
On their first visit to Lucknow, the group sang several of the crowd favourites as well as original singles released by them
The five-day Sanatkada Lucknow Festival came to a rip-roaring end, with the country’s first a cappella group, Voctronica, rendering an energetic and rousing performance on the Safed Baradari stage, late on Tuesday evening.
On their first visit to Lucknow, the group sang several of the crowd favourites as well as original singles released by them. Prompting the audience to rise to their feet and dance by the end of the performance, the six-member group sang their way into the hearts of Lucknowites. Between songs, they interacted with the audience, keeping people entertained even as they gathered their breath for the next number.
The a cappella group performs all songs without any instrumental accompaniment, emulating sounds of musical instruments with their voice. They sang some evergreen songs from the 80s, bringing it right up to the late 2000s, performing popular Bollywood songs with their very own twist.
The group’s enthusiasm evidently touched every single audience member equally, making them demand an encore, while the bass vocalist quipped, “Others have to tune their instruments, we have to drink water, give us a minute!”
They have been known to have performed with renowned music composers like Amit Trivedi and Salim Merchant, while having performed with and for several other nationally and globally well-known artists.
On the Sanatkada stage, they performed songs like ‘Raat Baaki Baat Baki’, a medley of Amit Trivedi compositions, an original called ‘Seven’, ‘Jiya Jale Jaan Jale’ by AR Rahman, and many more, using only their voices to sound like a full-fledged band. Most loved was a medley of old Indian advertisements that thrilled the crowd, while their encore performance even had festival founder Madhavi Kuckreja stepping on the stage to dance along.
The rest of the final day was true to the trend set by the first four, with two film screenings during the day and a talk on tribal ecosystems by rural entrepreneur Kavya Saxena.
Story-teller Laksh Maheshwari delivered a riveting session that had audiences hooked, with ‘Pyaar ki Yeh Kahani Suno’, and another literary session coloured the evening with the festival closing with a screening of the 1981 film Umrao Jaan.
Story-time for the tiny ones
The Kids’ Corner, a daily feature at the Sanatkada Festival, saw former IAS officer and author of children’s stories Dr Anita Bhatnagar Jain host an interactive story-telling session on the final morning of the festival at the Safed Baradari on Tuesday.
