My journey with Karnatik music

Aditya Prakash

What is Karnatik music to me? It’s strange that I never attempted to articulate the answer to this fundamental question until recently. From childhood till now, Karnatik has been a sound I have held very dear to me. It has been my point of reference for me to understand and analyse all other kinds of music. It has been an anchor at home giving me and my family a sense of purpose and closeness, as well as disagreement and tension. As I started exploring my identity as a young American of Indian heritage, the journey between Karnatik music and I has been a shifting one of coming together and moving apart as I searched for identity and acceptance in America.

As I look back now, it is not lost on me how privileged my upbringing has been. I count myself lucky for the space my family has given me and for all the opportunities that have come my way. Despite that privilege, the disconnect that I was grappling with stemmed from my lack of understanding on what actually Karnatik music was at its essence, and what that meant to me, which I will elaborate on. The pandemic has been an important time of reflection and re-examination. It has pushed me to change making me to look into my journey and choices and sit in the discomfort of these spaces.

Upbringing

It helps to know a bit about my upbringing before knowing about my musical journey. I was born and raised in Los Angeles to a family steeped in Indian arts. My mother, Viji Prakash is a pioneer in Bharatanatyam in North America and is the founder of the Shakti School of Bharata Natyam. My sister, Mythili Prakash, is a world-acclaimed Bharatanatyam dancer. Karnatik and Hindustani musicians were always visiting us and rehearsing in our garage studio. Sri Shubo Shankar, son of Pandit Ravi Shankar, would spend months at a time in our house, composing haunting and catchy melodies for my mother’s dance dramas, some of which I still remember to this day. Smt. Lakshmi Shankar’s gorgeous voice, I got to hear in my own house! She sang and composed music for many of my mother’s productions as well. Other influential musicians who visited from India and stayed with us were Babu Parameshwaran, Debur Shrivathsa, V. Vedakrishnan and Mahesh Swamy to name a few – and I was fortunate to learn music from all of them. As a toddler, many days I would fall asleep to the intricate jathi rhythms reverberating through our house, and I would wake up to Karnatik and devotional songs being sung or played on cassette. In my young childhood years, I would follow my mother on her performance tours, tag along for her rehearsals and classes, and I would spend the rehearsal breaks learning and playing cricket with the visiting musicians. I cherish these memories very much.

School

Aditya performing a chamber concert in Bangalore at age 13

Once I left the safe and cozy home environment and started forming my ‘American’ identity (a.k.a. going to school), the confusion began. I was enrolled in the public-school system in Los Angeles, where I met people from different ethnic backgrounds. However, I was one of maybe three to four Indians in school, so I did not see many others like me. From a young age, my peers at school were predominantly white, with a smaller percentage of people of color. The social culture at school was a big disconnect from the culture at home – which was very much about Indian ‘classical’ art, culture and language. I also lived with my grandmother, who was very religious. My diet was mostly South Indian flavors and aroma; I was raised a vegetarian. I did not watch MTV and did not know a thing about pop culture, nor did I watch cable television (which was taken away from me as it was considered a distraction from Karnatik music practice!). I did not know the taste of a Big Mac from McDonalds, which seemed to be the birthright of every American kid! I tried giving mainstream music a chance when my friends played their favorite songs to me, but the sound did not resonate with me like the music I had grown up on. From the way my friends engaged with the music by rattling off lyrics, humming melodies and gushing about artists, I developed a sense that only this was ‘cool’ music.

Training

Aditya with his niece Rumi, sister Mythili, and his guru Sugandha Kalamegham in Chennai, 2017

Although I had a complicated relationship with Karnatik music since I was born and grew up in America, I could not stop myself from going deeper into this artform musically. It all started with my initial lessons from Debur Shrivathsa, who made learning extremely fun and engaging. His encouragement was a big reason I trudged through the tough early morning practices and not-so-fun beginning lessons. Then I began learning from Rose Muralikrishnan, a music teacher in LA, who continued to foster my learning and encouraged me greatly. In 1999, my parents thought it would be good for me to get a further push in my training and took me to Chennai to study under Smt. Sugandha Kalamegham who instilled in me the importance of listening to the yesteryear masters. Under her guidance I started gaining the skills needed for manodharma and began performing concerts slowly and steadily. I was also learning mridangam under Sri Neyveli Narayanan in Chennai.

I delved more into my love for Karnatik and there began an obsession with Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer’s music. My father saw this and took me to learn in the Semmangudi bani under the guidance of the great vidwans and senior disciples of SSI – Sri Palai Ramachandran and Sri PS Narayanaswami. By the time I was 12 years old, I was performing concerts in India and by age 15, I performed at The Music Academy and Gayana Samaj to name a couple of important institutions in India. I felt confident about my Karnatik sound in those moments, and was proud to tout myself as a Karnatik musician. In my parallel life back home in America, Karnatik music remained a clandestine pursuit. I began finding this back and forth confusing and tiring, and wanted to find a way to get my American friends and peers to respect and understand the music I was singing because it was a huge part of my identity. I felt I had to find a way to explain and justify the sounds of Karnatik to the Western ear because I wanted to be relatable to more people than the South Indian ‘mamas and mamis’ who were appreciating my music. At this time, a very important opportunity came my way, a world tour with Maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar.

The First Tour

My world really started to change when I started touring with the Maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar. Raviji had known about me through my family as my mother was quite well – known in the North American community of artists. His first son was also closely connected to our family as mentioned above. Raviji was always looking for young talent, and when he first heard me sing a Karnatik concert at his residence in San Diego, he was very impressed and asked me to be a part of his Festival of India III tour shortly after. He was touring an ensemble that performed his original compositions in an orchestral-style with both Hindustani and Karnatik instruments, and the music combined elements of both styles as well as occasional elements of Western harmony.

After Aditya's concert at Pt. Ravi Shankar's residence, 2004. L-R (1st row): Pt. Tanmoy Bose, Sri Palai Ramachandran, Aditya, Pt. Ravi Shankar, Smt. Sukanya Shankar, Viji Prakash. Back row (left to right): Kikkeri Prakash, V. Vedakrishnan, Pt. Partho Sarathi, Kamala Venkatesh, Mythili Prakash, Krishna Kutty

Being around Raviji was an eye-opening experience; to be around someone of his stature who was so humble, curious, and excited to share his knowledge, was a blessing for me. It opened me up to the world of Hindustani music and I fell in love with it. I had listened to Hindustani music many times in my youth, but never quite fell in love with it like I did when I was around him. I was also introduced to jazz and Western classical musicians through Raviji and his daughter, Anoushka Shankar, whom I also toured and performed with. Before this moment, I had no exposure to a cross-genre collaboration and hence kept the idea of fusion at a distance from me – the only setting I saw myself performing music in was in the Karnatik kutcheri essentially. In Anoushka’s performances, it was such a thrilling feeling to stand up and sing with guitars, bass, drums and sitar at music festivals in Europe and North America to 10,000+ people in the audience. I started to feel closer to the identity of the rockstars that my friends in school were listening to, while still staying true to my perceived Indian music identity – singing alapanas, swarams and in Indian languages!

Aditya in rehearsal with Pandit Ravi Shankar at his residence in San Diego, CA

At the age of 15, I witnessed first-hand, the scale of the professional, top tier touring life. We performed to sold – out audiences, filled with many non – Indian listeners of all ages, in world-class venues like Carnegie Hall, Hollywood Bowl and Disney Hall. We were staying in nice hotels, traveling in tour buses with beds, televisions, and a kitchen! These experiences made an impact in changing my perception of being a professional musician. Through Raviji, I saw that a serious, and rigorously trained classical musician can also branch out beyond the traditional format of presenting music and can attract a mainstream audience and be relevant beyond the Indian community. There was a feeling that I could be a Karnatik musician, but I could also step into other musical settings with ease and open this music out to a wider audience base.

When I around the school that I was a musician and performing with a legendary artist at the most famous venues in America. Peers at school were naturally curious about the music I was doing. Now that I had my friends’ curiosity and interest in my music, something that I had longed for, I felt I had to find a hook to keep them engaged in Karnatik music. I remember doing a lec – dem in high school on Karnatik music and more than anything my friends were intrigued by the complexity in my vocal abilities but there was never a connection to the music. After a few minutes of awe, I saw blank faces and felt a wall between the music and the audience. When I was singing for them, I felt like an exotic and fascinating museum piece that was on display. Around this time, in 2006, I had been accepted to the UCLA Ethnomusicology department, another important milestone which helped me find a different side to my voice.

College and Collaboration

During my second year at UCLA, I had attended a jam session party in a friend’s backyard. Usually at these parties, I would enjoy watching my friends play together and impress us with their virtuosic brilliance. They were all rigorously trained jazz musicians. However, that night at the party, I was called up to the mic to sing along with a keyboardist, bassist, drummer and guitarist. Although, we had listened to each other’s respective styles of music and engaged in dialogues about them, we never really put anything into practice together. I was hesitant at first, I didn’t know what I could do or how I could keep up with them; but something special happened that night. Not only did the music click between us musicians, but the audience in attendance stopped all side conversations, perked up to listen and got involved with the music they were hearing. My peers, friends, and college classmates were completely receptive to the music, and cheered along. I couldn’t help but feel cool! I felt accepted and heard by the people who seemed more like the American side of me. After the high of this went back to high school after my 3 – month tour with Ravi Shankar, word spread that after my initial experience I now wanted to learn more about how I could take this cross – genre collaboration deeper, and this is what led to the formation of Aditya Prakash Ensemble.

Aditya Prakash Ensemble in an intimate performance in Los Angeles.

Dennis Hannigan

The lessons I was learning in my Ethnomusicology studies came into play as we started to create the material and foundation for the Ensemble repertoire. I found many connections between the jazz modal system and the melakarta, raga scale system and I was also thrown into jazz composition classes which gave me an entry into the world of harmony. We released our first album, The Hidden in 2012 which was our first, initial response to this world of collaboration. I composed melodies for lyrics that impacted me: Akka Mahadevi vachanas, Gorakhnath’s verses on yoga, Meerabai’s poetry on love. I, along with my team, arranged the music for these melodies with a jazz ensemble instrumentation. In my latest album, Diaspora Kid, I was enamored with exploring the sound of modal jazz and finding how my voice can adapt to the technicalities of jazz and other Western styles of music. But the question in me remained: what role does Karnatik music have in all this? I wanted answers and I knew I needed a mentor to guide me further along in my journey.

Mentorship

It was at this point that I began mentorship under artists RK Shriramkumar (RKS) and TM Krishna (TMK). I had known RKS for many years, he even played violin for my Mridangam arangetram in 2005. A well – wisher of mine suggested I meet him and seek his guidance. From the first class in 2016, I felt I was in safe hands and was excited to be on the road to a deeper understanding of Karnatik music. I had known TMK from a young age, as a fan – boy who used to frequent his concerts; he had also been a judge in one of the few music competitions I had taken part in my teenage years. Shortly after I had started with RKS, I shared a long plane journey with TMK and struck up a conversation with him about Karnatik music and my role as a practitioner. I was excited and inspired to talk to him and spontaneously asked him if I could come train with him.

3. Aditya with Sri TM Krishna after Aditya's Music Academy concert in 2019. Also in the picture are Aditya's friends and wonderful musicians - Shiva Ramamurthi and Anirudh Venkatesh

Both RKS and TMK brought back the spark in Karnatik music for me – a similar obsession I had when I popped in my first Semmangudi cassette as a kid. They expounded on the detail and nuance of the movement of the gammakam, and the way they articulated this was astounding. They expanded my understanding of the phraseology of ragas like Begada, Varali, Sahana, Todi, Bhairavi, Kannadagowla, just to name a few.

4. Aditya with Sri RK Shriramkumar

I learned about the erasure of prayogams in certain ragas, the alteration in compositions that have taken place over generations. In this training, I was exposed to the magnificent text, Sangita Sampradaya Pradarshini, which they both have been vital in reviving. I began looking deeper into the history of this form, which I thought was my cultural inheritance, once I picked up TMK’s ‘A Southern Music’, a comprehensive commentary on the history and relevance of Karnatik music.

Over a year of slowly going through the book, important changes and reflections happened to me. I learned about my flawed perceptions of Karnatik music. My idea of Karnatik music was that which was told to me and reinforced by the practitioners and story tellers of the form. I did not know that I had a skewed and simplistic understanding of the history of the artform, which also furthered the gap between me and the form. Some words and phrases that come to my mind when I tried to define Karnatik according to what I thought was correct were: ancient, religious content, Hindu deities, high flown poetry in Sanskrit, Telugu, Tamizh, the trinity, temples, courts, Vedas, Shastras, serious music, main piece, sub main, tukkada, light ragas, heavy ragas, improvisation, pure and sacred. The sound of the music resonated so deeply with me, but the definitions of the music I had in my head did not. Karnatik music felt like an ancient, fossilized museum piece that I couldn’t engage with, but only admire from afar.

Because of this perceived gap in time, space and relevance to me as the ‘Aditya of the 21st Century’, I felt a distance; there was a sacred wall between me and the music. Once I learned that the history of this artform is not just a sacred, beautiful, happy – ending story that was rooted in the past, it became something real, something I needed to engage with. Because this space of engagement with the form started to open up, thanks to TMK and RKS, I was able to start the process to breaking down the sacred wall.

Another major influence in my journey of finding connection with my identity and music, is Akram Khan – the brilliant choreographer, dancer, and story – teller, whom I have been fortunate to tour and perform with for the last 3 years. From him, I learned the power of narrative and of shifting the emphasis of art telling stories of beauty and harmony, to art reflecting that which is not so harmonious; it was about art as a connection between me and my life experiences. I learned that art wasn’t just about veneration, devotion and upliftment but also about the uncomfortable realities that we see around us. I was learning that Karnatik music can also be an avenue for that reality.

5. Aditya performing with Akram Khan in XENOS.

During the lockdown at home with my mother and sister, there is so much that we went through together as artists and as a family. The idea of questioning what the art means to us and the purpose that it has today is a journey that we are on together as a family, each of us in our own ways. The dialogues re – examining the histories of both countries we call home, America and India, has been part of this interconnected search. Learning and engaging with the messy, complex histories of both our homes and finding a way to tell the stories of this discomfort and anger through our art form has been our similar journeys.

Photo Credit: Sushma Soma

My current musical project (which I hope to release sometime in 2022) explores my reaction to what I have seen unfold especially during the time of this pandemic. Xenophobia, corruption, immigration, hate and violence are some of the themes that my new music reflects. I could not help but feel extreme emotions during this pivotal, and historic period in our lives. I have also had to confront my own privilege and my complicity from years of apathy and disengagement from these difficult issues in my countries and my artform. The rage that is reflected in my new music, is partly directed towards myself. After being a practitioner of Karnatik music for nearly 25 years, it is only now that I feel I have finally found a way for me to engage with the artform in a way that is relevant to me, the ‘Aditya of the 21 st Century’, and I look forward to going deeper in that engagement. Though the pandemic has taken away performances and my artistic livelihood, it has brought me back to my home environment which is a space for music, growth, arguments, agreements, and honesty. Afterall, this is where my journey began.

Aditya Prakash Bio

Aditya Prakash is a Karnatik vocalist known for his powerful and emotive voice. He is currently under the advanced mentorship of Sri RK Shriramkumar and Sri TM Krishna. He has also been fortunate to study with Sri Palai Ramachandran, Sri PS Narayanaswamy and Smt. Sugandha Kalamegham. Aditya has worked with leading innovators of the arts such as Pandit Ravi Shankar, Anoushka Shankar, Karsh Kale, Tigran Hamasyan and Akram Khan. In 2010, Aditya founded the Aditya Prakash Ensemble, a group that highlights the intersection of many styles of music.

Photo Credit: Sushma Soma