Music Season’s Greetings!
I don’t write as much about Carnatic music anymore, so when @MadRasana asked me to be in conversation with Dr S Sowmya, I jumped at it.
It’s not hardcore classical. More like a dive into a musician’s mind. Do share/ comment.
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Baradwaj Rangan 
gsriram72
December 14, 2019
Dear BR,
It was an excellent interview.
I wish you had asked her more on her methodology / preparations for a concert and how she approaches them.
Wish you do more such interviews with the stalwarts of Classical Music and write about them.
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shaviswa
December 14, 2019
Very interesting interview but thought Soumya was ambiguous about her chromatic experiences. I think she just said something and did not expect your to continue to harp on that 😜
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KS
December 14, 2019
Lovely conversation! Makes one yearn to be a part of this musical world!
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vairaagya
December 14, 2019
Baradwaj Rangan, you must have heard of Synesthesia
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Kay
December 14, 2019
I know nothing about Carnatic music but still enjoyed the interview. I wish she had explained more about how she sees colours in the ragas.
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krishikari
December 14, 2019
She was lovely and genuine. I understand from painting how you can get into “the zone”, its hard to articulate but it’s more like deep concentration than a trance, but for musicians it could be trance like and seeing colours I have often heard about, seems natural. I don’t have a musical bone in my body but enjoyed this interview.
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brangan
December 15, 2019
Thanks, all 🙂 Was a welcome change doing this, dipping back into Carnatic music.
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Madan
December 15, 2019
lol @ hot to warm.
I am not a huge fan of her work but from watching her in music competitions, I knew she would be a great conversationalist.
Great interview, BR, one of your best as far as music goes. Great questions to get to the heart of how she thinks about her chosen space within music.
Two things stood out to me. First, when she said she wouldn’t just sing what came to her mind but analyse and understand the work first. It brings out the difference between classical and other genres. To my mind as a general listener of many genres (as opposed to a devoted Carnatic aficionado) it does come across as as a lack of spontaneity (and I say this for all three – Hindustani/Carnatic/WCM with Hindustani maybe having the most scope of the three to surprise listeners). I may be wrong to believe so but this is my perception and this is part of why performance of light Indian music or rock/blues/jazz is so popular because it has that spur of the moment spontaneity. We know that many great songwriters in these genres even write their music like that, just at the snap of a finger. But these will also not have the depth of classical music because so much more preparation and thought and indeed respect for the material goes into classical.
The other thing she said cuts across genres – that she prefers an audience who would take in her music with an open mind rather than judge her for what she did or did not give. Musicians do, I think, feed off the vibrations (to use a very pretentious sounding word) from the audience. I have seen Shreya Ghoshal live both at Shanmukhananda Hall and at a school ground in Borivli. The first show was magical, almost miraculous and this was partly so because the audience was deeply engaged right from her first song for the evening and sang along with her when she did medleys of old Hindi songs. She appreciated the audience ‘back’ for singing along the words correctly and (largely) in key as well. This is the dream concert where the audience and the performer start ‘talking’ to each other. OTOH, at Borivli, the audience just didn’t seem to be able to get into the show, for whatever reason. Maybe just the sheer pain of getting to the venue! So here she did a good, professional job, but her magic too was less in evidence because she wasn’t getting any inspiration from the audience to lift her level. You can see this sort of thing even in sports at times, particularly tennis, where the audience is closer to the action vis a vis cricket or football and it’s just one player on each side of the court rather than two teams pitting their might against each other.
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Bhavadas Varma
December 15, 2019
She should have told bhakti, anandam (of course the interviewer has mentioned), manodharmam (even though she told creativity), daivadheenam, anughraham of Guru
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SingaLinga
December 16, 2019
As a musician myself, I’m a big fan of your erstwhile long-ish interviews with Carnatic artistes. I think I can recall the discussion with Bombay Jayashri very well.
I was relieved when I noticed a few things in this interview:
1. No typical Carnatic Music related / Season-related questions. Cue: Musical Journey, Thoughts about being the Sangita Kalanidhi designate & so on. No ‘me too’ based Qs
2. Perspective of seemingly an “outsider” – Though I guess you’re hardly one as can be seen from your well-researched questions
Some adjectives commonly used while describing Sowmya’s music in Carnatic circles are – cerebral, thinking musician, analytical, rounded deep music, alattal illadha sangeetham (music sans frills). I believe all these came across in her replies mostly.
Somehow, I felt that every time you were trying to delve & probe deeper into her psyche and what the music does to her, her responses remained superficial for the most parts. On some questions, I realized she did not understand the question fully too. For instance, the question on singing a song that has appeared in a film as part of a concert. Even after explaining a few times, though she said she wouldn’t mind doing it – it didn’t seem like she really meant it. I was super pumped when I saw the teasers for this one. After watching the full interview, I felt that you were quite serious about it while she was much more conversational & having fun with ‘Baddy’ 🙂 – which is not a bad thing at all, but maybe that contributed to the slightly frivolous responses.
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Rajan
December 16, 2019
Vairaagya..
The firs time I heard the word “Synesthesia” was in this blog after Baradwaj’s interview with Sid Sriram. I will have to watch the 3 videos in full to find the right time stamp which is a good excuse to rewatch it. The excitement on the faces of Sid and Baradwaj’s faces during the ilayaraja part is amazing.
SingaLInga..
T M Krishna had a much clearer answer to the idea of presenting film song on carnatic stage. But then as Baradwaj said in the interview itself he’s T M Krishna.
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shaviswa
December 17, 2019
I am not a fan of film songs in a carnatic music kutchery. Should not dilute the experience as film songs even if they are carnatic styled compositions are inherently light to cater to a non-classical music fan.
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