About SPIC MACAY :-
An idea originates and finds someone through whom it can manifests itself. That fortunate someone, experiences during the birth process, a feeling which is beyond description. Imagine for a moment that you are witnessing the creation of the universe. The “big bang” of SPIC MACAY came in 1972 at a concert of Ustad Nasir Aminuddin Dagar and Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar at the Broo
klyn Academy of Music in New York. After a few sporadic concerts (notable amongst them was that of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan) at Columbia University, New York, under the aegis of the India Club of Columbia University during the period 1972-76, the idea took a more defined direction in 1977 in India. However in 1979, a two-day programme again at IIT Delhi of Ustad Bismillah Khan, Dagar Bandhu, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan and Ustad Sitahid Parvez turned out to be a marginal success. MEFYS( Mechanical Engineering Final Year Students) organized the programme. It was at this programme that the name SPIC MACAY was first launched and the aim expressed was not to fight Westernisation but the process of deculturisation. The first lecture-demonstration series LEC-DEM’79 was also conducted in the same year when six Delhi based artistes, Pandit Birju Maharaj, Smt.Sonal Mansingh, Ustad Asad Ali Khan, Dagar Bandhu and Ustad Munnawar Ali Khan gave three presentations at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (Godavari Hostel), Lady Irwin College and Miranda House respectively. The name FEST for our annual festival was first used in 1980 and FEST 80 was conducted in a number of educational institutions all over Delhi. Fest’81 took SPIC MACAY to Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Bangalore, Calcutta, and Kharagpur. In 1982, the first lecture-demonstration series in schools was conducted when Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, and Smt. Sonal Mansingh gave three lec-dems each at Modern School, Barakhamba Road, Sardar Patel Vidyalaya & Ramjas School no.3 in Delhi. From then SPIC MACAY started spreading to many Schools and colleges all over the country. 1986 saw the introduction of folk arts& crafts into the gamut of SPIC MACAY. The scholarship scheme began in the year 1986 to help give students a glimpse into the age-old Guru-Shishya tradition. This was also the year that the first annual convention, was held at Hyderabad . In 1988 the first programme, was conducted abroad, Pandit Jasraj sang at the University of Connecticut at Harford. ‘THE EYE’ Magazine, was first released in 1991 as a thought provoking ‘written word movement’, for the Youth. In 1993, the first schools convention was held at Delhi Public School, R.K Puram. Virasat, a festival comprising performances, workshops in folk, classical arts, literature, theatre, cinema, yoga and other areas of our heritage was launched for the first time in Dehradun in the year 1995. As the SPIC MACAY movement spreads both geographically and in content, great care must be taken that the direction and intensity are not lost and that at least a glimmer of the original spark remains.
