Influencers with a purpose

Do you remember singing and practising to the tunes of your music teacher in school? Have you ever thought that your music teacher was a genius like Beethoven or Mozart? Though music was part of the school syllabus, the focus however remained on singing. To bring about change in this notion, musical siblings Bindu and Ambi Subramaniam are on a mission to empower and provide the best quality music study to kids.

Coming from a family of musicians, it is no surprise that Bindu and her brother Ambi took after them.  “My parents and grandparents were musicians and music has been an important part of our everyday life,” she shares adding that music has helped her grow as a person. She says, “Music is a great outlet for for feelings and expressions.

Everyone has a relationship with music. For me, music has always been a place where I find and take inspiration.”

They plan to train musicians and create some memorable music at  their academy, SaPa. She says, “The idea was to help create the next generation of musicians. We have helped a lot of local talented musicians by giving them the tools that they need. We wanted to make high quality music available to all kids irrespective of background.”

Bindu opines that while there is plenty of opportunity to get an education in music, what is lacking though is a cohesive system in place. She adds, “Factors like the guru-shishya relationship have worked really well in the past. What we need now require is to cohesively organise music education. It should be available from pre-school to PhD. Focus should be on music and everything related to it. From composing, music business to producing.”

 On the work front, the siblings have have their hands full producing music with SubraMania as well as The Thayir Sadam Project. She shares, “I’m working on some new songs with SubraMania and with Thayir Sadam. And in case you are wondering  what is Thayir Sadam all all about, she says, “On Thayir Sadam Thursday, we release new pieces of music on social media. Our latest one was Superheroes Without Capes.”

This song was basically about how children are the real superheroes and they have the power to change the world. “To build a campaign around this project, we allowed children to make their own version of the songs, record and post on social media,” she shares adding that the responses were great. They got hundreds of kids singing in different languages, with their own lyrics as well as instrumental versions. Unlike other artistes who put up music after a gap, Bindu and Ambi release it every week. Why every week? “It’s stimulating for us as creators to keep making something new and sharing it with our audience and it’s also a lot of fun to keep making music.”