Pursuing adventure, that ‘flighty temptress’ when you are a Carnatic musician, is neither easy nor common. But Varija, as she is fondly known, has already donned the cloak.
Daughter of renowned flautist Vidwan H S Venugopal, the young Varijashree Venugopal is stepping out of purist boundaries in style while being firmly rooted in classical tradition. Her Carnatic-jazz renditions on her YouTube channel have garnered appreciation from all over the world, including from the likes of Shubha Mudgal, who praised her singing as ‘riveting’ in a recent article.
Effortless crooning
Riveting it certainly is. Varija does some flawless ‘scat singing’ in the famous jazz composition ‘Spain’. The surprise is in how she vocalises a flute solo: her voice smoothly surfs over the many waves and troughs, glides through tunnels and laughs over brooks. The Carnatic sargam merges seamlessly with the jazz notes and makes for a rendition that is refreshing and oh-so-much fun. Varija’s eyes, closed in concentration for the larger part of the video, takes away nothing from it; instead, gives it a touch of authenticity and warm innocence. A child prodigy, Varija could identify nearly 40 ragas even before she turned two! “Right from my birth, I was exposed to music and children’s brains are like sponges…they imbibe everything,” says Varija. Her father, initially sceptical, thought she is able to recognise ragas only of famous compositions. But soon, he realised that she could accurately name the ragas even when she had never heard the composition before.
She began to train formally under Vidushi H Geetha when she was four. Later, she learnt from several other gurus, including Vidwan Salem P Sunderasan. “He has played a great role in my perception of music,” says Varija. Sunderasan introduced her to several rare compositions, the essence of which stayed with Varija and sparked her interest in learning about all kinds of music.
Listen (and watch) her grooving to her popular fusion single ‘Devamanohari’, where she uses her Carnatic singing prowess to fully embrace another genre and make it her own. Even in the YouTube video, her joy in walking past the raga restrictions and improvising outside her comfort zone is evident. I ask whether her solid training helps or hinders her cross-cultural experiments. “Some people prefer digging deeper and deeper….they might not find water but might end up finding oil. I have nothing against them. I prefer to sample water from as many wells as I can,” she says.
Varija believes formal training is the most crucial cog in the wheel of experimentation. “Ultimately, every kind of music is made up of swaras…the difference is in the ethos, the texture and the arrangement. If you know your swaras well, you can delve, you can create and you can explore – it is an ocean out there,” she says.
Varija is also an accomplished flautist, though she didn’t set out to be one. “Actually, my father never forced me to learn the flute. He thought as I was interested in singing, I should continue to train in it. When I was around 13, I literally picked up the flute one day and began playing,” she laughs. She soon started playing for dance productions and gradually went solo.
The multi-talented artiste is also a part of the contemporary cross-genre quartet ‘Chakrafonics’ along with flautist and musician Praveen D Rao, Ajay Warrier and Pramath Kiran.
Cross-cultural experimentations
She has composed music for many theatre productions and has done quite a bit of playback singing for TV and films. But she is happiest scribbling down musical notations, a habit she has right from the time she learned to write, collaborating with musicians from all over the world and exploring how best to merge musical traditions. Most noteworthy are her collaborations with South African percussionist and poet Eugene Skeef and her team-up with new-age Korean music group ‘Noreum Machi’.
Varija has just returned from participating in a series of music workshops in Italy and is excited about her father’s school of music’s annual celebration ‘Kalaarnava’, which usually happens in the first week of June. For somebody who is still in her mid-20s, Varija has already traversed a long way in her journey of improvisation. As she says, it is her intense desire to learn from other music systems that propels her. Adventure does not beckon everybody. But when you are summoned, you can’t help but go. I am sure Varija would agree.
Published 01 July 2017, 16:48 IST