Carnatic connections

Among the plethora of ‘covers’ and versions of popular tracks like Cheap Thrills and Shape of You that audiences were bombarded with over the last few months, there were two that resonated most with listeners across Tamil Nadu — and surely, you loved them too. We are, of course, talking about the Carnatic versions of both these songs, which would have made even Sia and Ed Sheeran proud!

The ingenious concept behind these viral videos and many more, which are ruling social media today  —is IndianRaga, which was founded at MIT Boston, around five years ago. This World Music Day, we take a look at this admirable initiative that is truly taking Indian music global — one scintillating  raga at a time! Here’s co-founder and CEO Sriram Emani talking to DC...

Early beginnings:
IndianRaga is a new-age arts education venture that trains talented musicians and dancers to be full-fledged performers. We teach you how to collaborate, apply your training to create new works, and give working knowledge of audio-video production that is critical for every artist in the 21st century.

I was always passionate about the performing arts, but it took concrete shape during a class at MIT Media Lab when I was a student. After developing the IndianRaga business plan as the final class deliverable, I submitted the same for competitions. IndianRaga won the MIT IDEAS Global Challenge (Community Choice Award) and the US Creative Business Cup, along with a grant from the Council for the Arts at MIT, and we hit the ground running!

Maintaining Indian sensibilities while being based overseas:
What is ‘Indian sensibility’ today? How does one define it? We’ve been at a very interesting vantage point, observing how the diaspora community wishes to have the most classical, traditional options (which makes it so much easier to do this overseas in the traditional domain), whereas a significant part of the community in mainland India is looking to try different collaborations and approaches.

Of course, this is just to generalise. There are strong and significant exceptions, but in summary, it has been exciting and encouraging to maintain what we traditionally know as Indian sensibility through our work in North America.
India and Indian culture are at an all time high in terms of growth and being ‘cool’. We are at a point when nationalistic pride is also surging, and many young people are looking to learn more about our culture. Bhangra, yoga and now turmeric latte have taken the west by storm, and we are seeing a huge surge of interest from the West in what our traditional arts have to offer — especially given how incredibly complex they are!

Planning big:
Our next venture is the launch of our flagship Indian Raga Fellowship in India as a limited edition. Applications launched recently online, and any artist from anywhere and any age group can apply in a variety of genres of music and dance. The final Fellowship collaboration week will take place in Mumbai in December 2017. We are already seeing strong interest from some of the most incredible talent across the Indian subcontinent, with applications pouring in from all states in India, and also Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and UAE.

Visibility and What sets Indian Raga apart as a talent platform :
Honestly, it is our strong focus on creativity and innovation, and daring to go beyond tried and tested approaches. At our core we also believe in the value of deep, rigorous training in the classical arts. What also sets us apart is that we think of ourselves as a platform for collaboration and not competition.

We are entirely digital in terms of our operations and administration, but when we do Raga Labs and Fellowship, the teams meet in person for the final production. We have already done three Chennai Raga Labs, and whenever we have a group of six artists ready to do a Lab, we have the ability to quickly put one together in Chennai through our instructors, audio, studio partners and videography partners there — so we encourage anyone in Chennai!
There are no centres or on-ground locations that we are investing in at the moment, but we do have grand plans as we expand shortly.

‘The Shape of You’ classical cover going viral

Sriram: None of the musicians or video editor or executive producer (me) were in the same city. We brainstormed over a Google Hangout session, and sent recordings to each other via e-mail. Each musician took their video in their own city (Aditya in New York while he was traveling on business, Vinod in Minneapolis, Mahesh in Dubai), and sent it to video editor Karan Bakshi in Mumbai. The Carnatic Cheap Thrills, EDM Thillana, and an EDM Alarippu are our other popular videos!

Mahesh Raghvan: The main intention behind the collaboration was to come up with a piece that would relate to a wide audience using Carnatic music. Since Ed Sheeran’s Shape Of You was the song on everybody’s mind, we decided to do a Carnatic style improvisation on it.

Aditya Rao: We had never physically met each other in person or as a group! It truly shows the power of remote collaboration, which is being adopted by composers and musicians globally on a larger scale. Outside this collab, I’ve had the honour of working with some world class composers and musicians, such as A.R. Rahman, Manikanth Kadri, D. Imman, and Carlos Santana.

Vinod Krishnan: The genius behind this is that when an entity like IndianRaga provides the platform, motivated artists will jump in and create brilliant content like this in no time. What’s even better is that all of this was done remotely and you wouldn’t even notice it because of the content and how it was presented.