At two years old, Rahul Vellal wasn’t humming absent-mindedly—he was identifying devotional and film songs. Up to 50 of them.

Every year, as the December Carnatic music season picks up momentum, a frequent topic of discussion is the place of sahitya in Carnatic music. Is sahitya central or secondary? Instrumentalists of high ...

Growing up in Chennai, I remember the game we used to play with our cousins and friends from other cities. It involved guessing the names of places by describing the characteristics they would have ...

In September 2017, I heard the Carnatic vocalist TM Krishna sing to a packed auditorium in Mumbai’s cosmopolitan locality of Bandra. The 800-odd-seat St Andrews auditorium usually features English ...

The place of bhakti in Carnatic music is a topic of recurring debate. The fact that the Trinity and earlier composers like Annamayya, Ramadas and Jayadeva had all been intense devotees and composed ...

What could be common between Carnatic music, Hindustani classical music and contemporary jazz? If you were in London over the weekend, you would know the answer. ‘The Back to the Blues’ concert saw ...