JOIN USBeginning her music training at the tender age of six, Carnatic classical vocalist K Seshulatha Viswanath came under the guidance of Chodavarapu Subba Rao, and later Desapathi Raju, and gave her first full-fledged performance at the age of 10.
A well-known performer and respected teacher, Seshulatha was born and brought up in Machilipatnam in erstwhile Andhra Pradesh, and has given hundreds of performances in India and abroad besides conducting scores of workshops, releasing albums and conducting TV shows.
“It was my mother who noticed that I loved to sing songs and poems as a child. So, she decided to enroll me in Carnatic music classes.” Now based in Hyderabad, Seshulatha who is commended for her gentle, sonorous voice, always cites her mother’s efforts as an example of why parents are important in grooming good musicians or for that matter, achievers in any field. “Parents are the ones who identify a child’s talent, find a good teacher and then ensure that the child attends classes. With my parents’ encouragement, I imbibed the musical knowledge,” she recalls with a smile.
Early days
Seshulatha later trained under Sistu Prabhakara Krishnamurthy Sastry. She was also fortunate to come under the tutelage of two legendary performers and teachers Voleti Venkateswarulu, often called a rishi of Carnatic music; and Sangeeta Kalanidhi Sri Nedunuri Krishnamurthy.
Seshulatha began with a Sangeet Vidwan course at Tamil Nadu Government Music College, Chennai, where the faculty included stalwarts like K V Narayanswamy and Rajam Ayyar. Apart from this, she also acquired Sangeeta Alankar from Gandharva Mahavidyalaya, Maharashtra, and underwent special training in Annamacharya’s keerthanas under a scholarship at Kalapeetham, Tirupati. She went on to earn master’s degrees — in Carnatic music from Padmavathi Mahila University, Tirupati, and Telugu Literature from Osmania University, Hyderabad.
Seshulatha has 15 music albums to her credit and is a graded artiste of AIR and Doordarshan. She has been a judge on many TV music competitions and also conceptualised and presented music programmes on TV. She has taught music at Telugu University, Hyderabad and Singapore Indian Fine Arts Society.
Having conducted several successful workshops on Annamacharya compositions, Seshulatha’s most popular renditions are the ones on the famous 17th-century Carnatic music composer Bhadrachala Ramadas, most of whose works are in praise of Lord Rama. In fact, even Thyagaraja, arguably the greatest composer in Carnatic music, praised Bhadrachala Ramadas in his own songs.
However, since Bhadrachala Ramadas’s compositions were not getting their due, many stalwarts including Nedunuri Krishnamurthy tried to popularise them by singing them and also teaching them to students. In well-attended workshops in India and abroad, Seshulatha has taught Ramadas’s compositions to hundreds of students and music teachers. She has also composed music for Kuchipudi ballets of renowned dancer Sobha Naidu, written articles on music, and presented papers in seminars.
As an accomplished artiste, Seshulatha values the many lessons her teachers passed on to her. “Sistu Prabhakara Sastry advised me that from the beginning a vocalist should train his or her voice to be strong and immune to all kinds of problems,” she says. Voleti Venkateswarulu taught her how to write perfect notation with thaalam. “He would teach me a song and go away. From memory, I would then write down sangati after sangati and its notation. However, I would struggle with the marking of the thaalam. He would return, check my notes and train me in making correct notation with thaalam.” She says Nedunuri Krishnamurthy told her that aesthetic sense is the bedrock of music, and taught her how to achieve the right voice modulation to bring out the perfect bhaavam.
On a personal note, she adds that sometimes performers may feel dejected if they don’t get enough opportunities. “Once you start thinking, ‘what can I do for music’, things change for the better!”
To Seshulatha, the importance of respecting one’s guru is paramount. “After my parents, I owe whatever little success I have earned to my teachers’ blessings,” she says, adding, “The more you look up to your teacher, with respect and gratitude, the more knowledge you will gain, the sooner your flaws will be corrected and the higher you will rise in your career.”