For Dr. N. Rajam, who just added the Maharashtra government’s Pt. Bhimsen Joshi Lifetime Achievement Award to her already full kitty of honours (including the Padma Bhushan, the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship, and the Padma Sri), the many challenges she faced in the music world are no different from how…
This is a detailed on-camera interview I did of Pandit Arijit Mahalanabis, Guru and Founder of the Society for Indian Music and Arts (SIMA), based in State College, Pennsylvania, USA. Before a live audience, Pandit Arijit expounds very candidly on all that is wrong about our classical arts, the state…
Spontaneous, versatile, grounded – some of these adjectives come to mind when one thinks of Anupama Bhagwat, the young Hindustani sitar player. Currently touring the U.K. and the U.S., she was one of the artists to participate at the prestigious Darbar Festival in London. Possibly the largest festival of its…
“I am a devotee of Carnatic music, but not a practitioner,” says Arijit Mahalanabis, Hindustani vocalist from the U.S., and founder of the Seattle Indian Music Academy (SIMA), one of the largest institutions teaching Indian music abroad. Arijit, who is in India after 21 years, takes an organic approach to…