A band of brothers

“It’s a lot like a marriage,” says Shashikiran, one half of the Carnatic vocalist duo Carnatica Brothers. “Ganesh and I would initially give solo performances, but when we got together, it was truly a marriage of music, ragas and instruments,” he says.

Shashikiran and Ganesh might not be direct siblings, they’re cousins, but right from their childhood, they had the same upbringing and were even taught by the same guru — Chitraveena Narasimhan — who happens to be Shashi’s father.

Ganesh, who is six years younger than Shashi, tells us how it all started. “My guru is my mother’s brother. When I was just six months old, he took me to Chennai from Bengaluru, where I was with my family. I don’t recall the first time I started learning music because it feels like I was born into it,” he says.

For Shashi, growing up under the wings of a father as great as his was a blessing. “I come from a family of musical geniuses. My grandfather Gotuvadyam Narayana Iyengar was a famous musician who played in the Mysore Palace. So for us, music was not a hobby, it was a language. It came naturally to us,” says Shashi.

While growing up, the two brothers would often practise together. “We would often have competitions. Father would train Ganesh, me, my older brother and sister. The four of us would compete with each other,” recalls Shashi.

However, despite growing up together, the idea to collaborate happened only in 2001. “I used to perform with Shashi’s older brother Ravi Kiran. As a kid too, he helped me with music and I gradually started playing with him during concerts. I started as a support musician, but slowly I was also the lead in his ensemble,” says Ganesh, who, along with Ravi Kiran, then started the band Asia Brothers.

The idea to work with Shashi happened by chance. “Shashi was always into vocals and I too had done a lot of vocals before. One day, we happened to talk about this and before we knew it, we were performing together,” he adds. For a duo backed by strong traditional musical values, they are known to delight their audience with a lot of improvisations.

For instance, when they were performing in France and Germany, they used words from the languages in their songs. “We change our performance according to our audience. If we’re performing in front of a very traditional audience then we stick to hardcore Carnatic music, but when we know we can experiment, we go all out,” says Shashi, who admits that he is the risk-taker between the two. While the ragas remain the same, the words tend to change.

The duo has travelled all over the world and has more than 4,000 performances together to their credit. “Our most memorable performance was in 2006 when we performed for 24 hours straight and set a world record,” explains Shashi.
Shashi and Ganesh complement each other.

“We’re a very comfortable pair, we work well together. I have a base voice, where as Ganesh has a high voice. When both these meet, the performance is amazing,” explains Shashi, while Ganesh adds, “We have no defined roles. We instinctively know where one has to take the lead and the other has to be supportive.” Shashi and Ganesh have come a long way from when they started. Ganesh says, “We might not be own siblings, but the connection we have is much more. It’s the connection of music.”