Nadathur Foundation is organising the Nada Sambhrama concert series, a Navratri concert that will feature Carnatic classical singer Sikkil Gurucharan. The singer is a recipient of Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar Award and is considered a youth ambassador for Carnatic music. The singer talks about his passion for music from his residence in Chennai.
Coming from a family of famous flautists, the Sikkil Sisters, you never considered becoming one?
I have been asked this many times and I always say no. Probably because I did not express any interest in learning the flute, hence they did not teach me or vice versa. I am happy where I am today and so are they.
You have a Masters in commerce and have also acted in films including Sarvam Thaala Mayam and Putham Pudhu Kaalai. Would you have pursued these had you not become a singer?
Perhaps. My family ambience instilled a love for the arts in me. Everywhere I turned there was either music or theatre. My father was into theatre and the conversations at home were related to the performing arts. I did not face any pressure when it came to my education. I enjoyed studying, more so after 10th standard when I studied commerce as I enjoyed income tax laws and business. It was during my college days that I realised music would be taking up a huge chunk of my time, and it did, rightfully so.
You credit your school for encouraging you to take to music. How important is it for arts to be included as part of the academics?
School does play an important role in promoting the arts. Performing at home, it is only your immediate family that will applaud you no matter what. In school, you are in front of hundreds of students and cater to different sections of the audience, almost similar to what you will face in the world later when you do not know what kind of audience you will face at each venue. When performing at school, they will not boo you, but will give you constructive feedback, which will help you become better. Performing in front of my peers, seniors, juniors and teacher, helped me get over my stage fright. Graduating to performing in public was easier for me due to the encouragement in school and college.
Could you tell us about your work with children to promote the arts?
I am actively involved in SPICMACAY, which promotes arts amongst children. I am also on the board of Rhapsody, which aims at imparting curriculum through music to school students. It is founded by my dear friend, Anil Srinivasan, a pianist.
Being a part of these I believe interest in classical music is gradually on the rise amidst children as they realise it is a serious art form, which needs to be given the same importance you would give when listening to film songs, or other forms of popular music.
Today, a school child is equally aware of BTS and Carnatic music. The standing that Carnatic music is getting from children today is far better than what it was a few years ago. The Global Carnatic Musicians Association, recently started the CAR (Create A Rasika) project, that puts Carnatic musicians such as myself into different schools across Tamil Nadu. Here we spend an hour with children with PowerPoint presentations, telling them what Carnatic music is all about, inviting them to live concerts as they cannot experience the magic of a live concert on YouTube or through recorded music.
Why do we not see the same level of excitement for a classical music performance as we see for a rock concert?
Carnatic music evolved centuries ago and you will not see a rapid change in this genre every few years as we do in film music, rock or rap. You need to stay close and true to the traditions of this art form. Yet, it is a form that is not steeped in iron-clad traditions.
What started out as Carnatic music in the 18th Century gradually evolved into something different in the 20th Century. Even today, this genre works very well with Hindustani or even with Western classical music. We see a lot of experiments happening and we also have an audience for every experiment. The change in Carnatic music is steady but slow.
Besides this, the exposure Carnatic music gets compared to other forms of music is way less. For instance, if I do a concert in Bengaluru, I may get two to three interviews, but on the other hand, if there is a rock or a film concert happening, they are featured in almost form of media.
This can either work out in favour or be detrimental, as the more media coverage you get, the more varied the opinions will be and that can affect the performance. Having said this, I also feel it is unfair to compare Carnatic music to film or rock music as this form has existed for ages in India and has a timelessness.
After Shakarabharanam, which celebrated Carnatic music, we hardly see movies attempting to promote Carnatic music. Yet we see Hindustani music being used in film compositions. Do you feel the film industry ignores Carnatic music?
I wouldn’t say the form is being deliberately ignored. I do hope that movies like Sarvam Thaala Mayam come out more often. The film was released in 2019 at a time when people were into talking about the virality of musical content in short reels.
Rajeev Menon created a movie solely based on Carnatic music. It celebrates the spirit of Indian percussion, the mridangam. The film had elements of Carnatic live concerts and spoke about the relationship between a mridangam student and a traditional guru. That film enjoyed a good viewership when released.
Now, five years later, we were in Japan for a concert and the kind of reception we saw for this movie was amazing. We had five concerts in Japan and before each concert the audience watched Sarvam Thaala Mayam. Most claimed it to be a repeat watch, which was humbling.
After watching the film, they would sit for two hours listening to our live concert. I think we need to do something like that in India to make people connect to music as they did in Japan. We have many theatres. If only we had more movies that would talk about Carnatic music as a way of life.
The kind of compositions we deal with, the improvisations we do on stage are all connected with our lifestyle and management skills. We do a lot of management on stage and a lot of human emotions and human dynamics are involved too. If there is a movie or a theatrical production made on these lines followed by a live concert, it would bring more people to the Carnatic classical genre.
Could you talk about Janal Oram?
It is a YouTube series in Tamil with English subtitles. The content is aimed at getting a diverse audience to appreciate the nuances of Carnatic music, be it through the framework of a film, day-to-day exercise music, mobile ringtones or anything that is a given in their daily life.
Many artists, post the pandemic, have deliberately created a space for themselves online, where they push content regularly explaining what they do on stage and why they do it.
You will be performing at NadaSwaram in Bengaluru. What do you think of classical music as one of the mediums to celebrate Indian festivals?
Classical music is the soul of Indian culture. We have many occasions where the classical genre is used to celebrate a festival, it can be Dasara, Navratri or Vinayaka Chaturthi. Not just celebrations through concerts, even at homes, people break into songs with a Kruti or a bhajan to celebrate.
Navratri is a busy season for musicians as multiple concerts happen across the country. Bengaluru is a city that is traditional as well as cosmopolitan. They enjoy a good mix of old and new.
Gurucharan will perform on October 5 at JSS Auditorium, 6pm. It is open to all.
