V. Sai Subramaniam who (along with vocalist Palghat Dr. R. Ramprasad) is the recipient of this year’s Kalki Krishnamurthy Award, is the first morsing exponent to receive the prestigious honour in the over 25 years since its inception. According to ghatam exponent G. Chandrasekara Sharma, Sai is, in fact, the…
Indian classical music received a unique shot in the arm when leading Carnatic musician and teacher, senior violinist A. Kanyakumari, was mentioned in the United States’ Congressional Record, the official written annals of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. Raja Krishnamoorthi, of the United States’ House of…
When Jayalakshmi Balakrishnan suggested to the family of the Late Sundaravalli Ammal that some of the lady’s compositions be set to tune and performed, she also knew exactly whom to entrust the task to. Most know K. Arun Prakash as an erudite and avant-garde mridangist. However, besides percussion, he is…
A smiling young man opens the door to a beautiful house and sings 10-12 second snippets of 73 Indian classical rAga-s in quick succession when prompted, effortlessly and instantaneously, whilst casually walking around the home. The camera follows him around, shooting without any cuts, for the entire ~14 minutes. Abby…
With time on their hands and normalcy nowhere in sight, Carnatic musicians are resorting to thought provoking, interesting and carefully curated video series’ to engage with others. This reflects a change from the first lockdown fourteen months ago which resulted in a surfeit of ad-hoc, generally poor-quality programming, in what…
Senior musician N. Vijay Siva recently inaugurated Vande Sangeetam, a video series with a difference, on his YouTube channel. The first episode titled Kaveri Saveri sees Vijay ensconced at the Kapila River, pristine water streaming behind him. He talks of the importance of rivers to civilization and the fact that…
From the 1st century CE Sangam period to the present day, there have been numerous female composers from the southern-most states. While some were revered as saints, most were ordinary women who straddled all household domestic responsibilities – some being closet-composers out of necessity. Under the auspices of Kala Prashala…
Women in percussion are so few that their gender alone makes them the cynosure of attention. Bengaluru-based Bhagyalakshmi M. Krishna, however, has gone beyond that, earning respect for her skills on the morsing, the identical adjectives used by her fellow artistes serving as testament. She has shared the stage with…
Praveen Sparsh’s recent passion project, Unreserved, puts the mridangam in settings outside its traditional confines, and marries it with sounds he painstakingly recorded over the years on treks, at traffic signals, airports, rail and bus stations. To hear music, or the potential for music, in noise – or what the…
Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer (SSI) strode Carnatic music like a colossus. However, none in his family followed in his footsteps. His eldest daughter, Santha Kasy Aiyar, explains, “My father was categorically against his family pursuing music professionally. He felt musicians were perceived as lower in the social ladder than those formally…