On a balmy Saturday evening, at a concert held in a Kerala town recently, a recorder trio performed the hymn, ‘Fairest Lord Jesus’ . After the song, one of the musicians came right back on stage to play the violin for Bach’s ‘Break Forth’. Then came the Elvis song, ‘Where would I go but to the Lord?’, a solo with choral backing, and the same musician pitched in, but with his saxophone this time.
He then embellished a rendition of Vivaldi’s ‘Dominus deus’ with a stirring flute accompaniment. The cherry on top, however, was his vocal solo, ‘Why do the nations?’ from Handel’s ‘Messiah’.
Meet Mhathung Odyuo, the versatile musician, who, apart from the instruments mentioned earlier, is also adept at playing the cello and clarinet.
The pony-tailed youngster from the Wokha district in Nagaland arrived in Chennai seven years ago with the express desire to study western classical music. Why Chennai? Music training in Delhi and Mumbai is a lot more expensive, he says. Also, here you have many genres to choose from, including carnatic, contemporary and gospel.
The 29-year-old youth is the leader of at least five music groups in Chennai — he conducts two church choirs in Perambur and Kolathur, and three ensembles, one of which is the Evergreen Sisters, an all-girl recorder quartet hailing from a family belonging to St. James Church, Aynavaram. He’s the founder-conductor of the other two — The Octave Singers, a male-voice group, and Serenades Breve, an eight-member ensemble.
Mhathung, a student of The Trinity College, London, holds an ATCL diploma in western vocals. He has also cleared several grades: VIII in violin and theory of music, VI in flute, cello and recorder and V in alto saxophone. Last week, he finished his grade V in clarinet.
Mhathung’s mother, who works in the police department in Wokha, initially offered to get him a job in her department. His older brother is a commandant in CRPF. “There’s no one in my family who’s taken up music”, he says. “My neighbour in Nagaland was a choir director in a church and he encouraged me. When I was in class VIII, I learned to read tonic sol-fa notation (the set of syllables do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, and ti, used to represent the tones of the scale). One day, before singing Jim Reeves’ ‘I’ll fly away’ , I was decoding notes in sol-fa when my cousin, a classical guitarist, tore up the sheet. That’s when my journey with staff notation began.”
Today, this has helped Mhathung sing and write music without instruments. His diatonic perception can be the envy of many trained musicians.
“I’d not seen a piano till I came to Chennai”, says this small-town lad. He first knocked on the doors of the Galilee Academy of Music. Dinesh George, director of the academy, is all praise: Mhathung picked up the ropes quickly and began to perform too.
Mr. Jebaraj, father of Percy (Evergreen Sisters), says, “It’s sad that Mhathung is leaving Chennai to return home.The recorder was a novelty we had not heard of before he came on the scene.”
This talented teacher-singer-instrumentalist and B.Com. graduate has been offered a job in Patkai Christian College, Dimapur, to teach B.A. Music students. Apparently, this is the first time a college in India is offering an undergraduate course in western music. While teaching, Mhathung also plans to go to Kohima during weekends and train school kids.
