Ashwath Narayanan – Podcast
“…being sure of my music. Never get carried away by what peers do or get pressurised by anything that might seem like a fancy trend but is not something that is natural to me….”
Ashwath Narayanan on his Guru-s’ advice.
Carnatic vocalist Sri. Ashwath Narayanan tells us about his musical and educational background and training, of balancing music with an office career and more. At the end of his talk, he sings a composition of Maharaja Swathi Thirunal Rama Varma in the rAgam Poorvi KalyANi.
This podcast is part of the Quarantunes series, featuring Indian Classical Musicians, recorded during the worldwide shutdown resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Released one by one, the full series is at https://lakshmianand.com
After learning the basics for two years from Smt. Jayalakshmi Sundararajan, Sri. Ashwath learned directly from Sangita Kalanidhi Palghat Sri. KV Narayanaswamy. After Sri. Narayanaswamy’s demise, Sri. Ashwath joined the tutelage of his aunt, Smt. Padma Narayanaswamy, from whom he continues to learn. An A graded artiste of All India Radio, Sri. Ashwath was one of the earliest winners of The Hindu SaReGaMa MS Subbulakshmi prize in 2013. He has received other awards including the Kalki Krishnamurthy Award, the Isai Chudar and many more. Sri. Ashwath won the Outstanding Vocalist (Junior) award from The Madras Music Academy three years in succession from 2014 to 2016 and the Outstanding Vocalist (Sub-Senior) award the following year as well.
He has a degree in Industrial Biotechnology from SASTRA University and works in an Information Technology company.
I can compliment Sri.Ashwath Narayanan, for being a student of .P.S.Senior secondary and of Sastra. Why these institutions are most sought after. The answer is simple. The Competition is always among the best. Glad to hear the great names of musicians who passed out of P.S. Ms. Soumya, last years Music Academy, awardee. Fortunatrly for Ashwath, the IT company he works patronisers and supports music talents among employees . Ashwath bound to be a musician when his family is itself a Gurukulam. Mr.KVN as guru at an young age, most blessed Ash. He was able to pick up the speed in the second half of the interview touching more on the technical aspects of Carnatic music, and the creative talents that had grown along with his musical knowledge. One of the lengthy podcasts I can say in this series so far. It looked more of a open book, as Ashwath openly admitting he was not great in his Academics, as he was well groomed for Music only. What I liked most in Ashwath is, he mentioned the long list of friends names who are travelling with him in music right from the School days. In his case his Mother ( a teacher is always) too was strict as was his aunt the music teacher extracting more from the young man. All those who take to classical music as profession or not, would have been impacted by the greats of MSV, Ilayaraja, at some point of time, and the songs scored by them before learning active Carnatic music. Yes . From the tapes, CDs, to music apps in Smart phones. Ofcourse, without a mention of Covid19, today , one cannot move forward. Ashwath, as all others wanted , the World to be more normal, and for this we want the Virus removed totally, as quickly as possible.