Palghat raghu biography sample paper

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I’m very careful about whom I teach. I do not compromise even a bit on my practice, be it the duration or the effort. Given that there were neither as many musicians nor as much media coverage as today, I was lucky to have had good visibility in the field then.

However, the time that I was establishing myself — in the late 90s and early 2000s — was when the unabashed use of marketing, PR and such strategies in the field came out in the open.

Raghu inherited much of his music from his mother Ananthalakshmi and his aunt, both very good singers. He has a strong propensity for ‘praacheena’ music and a principled, no-nonsense outlook — in fact, they are the cornerstones of his musical value system. His mother was his initial source of inspiration. Hence, there is no new nonsense, only the ones that they consciously signed up for!

And what are these expectations?

Learning from me is rigorous, it’s not like learning any other extracurricular activity as I look at music very differently.

How does a vocalist pass that test? He has worked for Fortune 10 companies and has a slew of internationally published research papers to his credit. Astronomy and Projectile Geometry were not really his favourite subjects but he did get through somehow. I practise much longer and much harder than I ask my students to do, which is only fair.

In those instances, it’s a question of truth versus my image as a dad with my daughters (laughs)!

Sometimes, when my students play the tambura while I practise, I see their restlessness after an hour or so since I’d be singing just one or two notes because I would not have gotten them right. His contention was that such complexities should be predominantly used as practice methods to enhance one’s vidwat, and presented on a concert platform only when it has been practised enough to be delivered with such ease that the audience is not even aware of the complexity, and is able to enjoy it as comfortably as any other simple niraval!

I ensure that I incorporate niraval singing as one of the components of my everyday practice routine, in addition to voice culture (akaram) and learning keertanais.

Why not the violin (like your father) or the mridangam (like your grandfather)?

I practise both at home, though I know neither properly.

All this made me choose a different direction, so I went to the US in 2004 for my PhD in economics and later my post-doctorate at Harvard, followed by an academic and corporate career in the US until I came back to India a few years ago. And by the early to mid-90s, since I was fortunate to have been accompanied by stalwarts, I started performing quite frequently (by the standards of those days).

His standpoint was that the pallavi in an RTP was nothing but niraval, and if an artist was unable to sing niraval in a simple verse without repetition in ideas or creativity, then what was the point in presenting a difficult pallavi, when it can only mean that the pallavi was rehearsed and not truly manodharma!

Fortunately, neither me nor my wife have been particular about money.

Music was not an obvious career choice for a few reasons.

Yes, my debut concert was in 1988 at YACM (where, incidentally, I later served as the secretary and president) with Shri S. Varadharajan on the violin and one Shri Raja (who does not seem to be in the circuit now) on the mridangam.

Thus began a long association that went on to make Raghu his foremost disciple. While kids are told stories from the epics and puranas, my father told me stories of Thatha’s early years and his concert experiences in a way that a child would understand, yet ensuring that the message from each of those incidents was conveyed. Which means I will not spare even a minute to go over something during the classes that should have been sorted out by the student during practice.

Some of this may not sound realistic or practical, but I let prospective students know all of this in advance so they are aware of what they are in for, rather than feel sorry afterwards!

How do your principles manifest in your classes and your own singing?

Some of my classes do not go beyond a sangathi, some stop with sa pa sa — if I realise that the student has not practised enough.

Specializing in contemporary 20th century percussion music. Since I was blessed to have shared the stage with doyens such as T.K. Murthy mama, Palghat Raghu mama, TVG mama, UKS mama, Trichy Shankaran mama and Ramabadran mama when I was in my early teens (in the early 90s), Appa used to take me to visit these doyens even for finetuning my concert presentation skills.

To me principles matter more than anything else.