Chennai
January 10, 2016
I spent December 16-30 in Chennai, India to study some concepts of Karnatic music. I studied konokol and some talas with flute player Shanthala Subramanyam and since I was there during the Music Season, I also got to see a lot of concerts.
Karnatic music is incredibly rich and advanced and truly fascinating/challenging. I was just scratching the surface of this highly sophisticated tradition/language but I did get a lot of material to work on. I will keep investigating it and try to dig a little deeper…
Besides taking lessons more or less every day, I also got to see a lot of concerts, which was very inspiring. Besides just enjoying the music, I’m glad I got to see a lot of different settings and performers. It felt very valuable to get to experience so much of this music live and I especially enjoyed getting to hear many different percussionists, particularly Patri Satish Kumar, Guru Karaikkudi Mani, Mannargudi Eswaran, Dr. Umayalpuram K. Sivaraman, Vijay Natesan, Ramakrishnan & V.V. Ramanamurthy (Mridangam), N Amrit & G. Guruprasanna (Khanjira) and V Suresh (Ghatam).