Bengaluru’s Latha Ramachar and her 'kanjira' world

The kanjira is a small frame drum, about 7-8 inches in diameter and 2-4 inches deep. According to Ruairi Glasheen, an award-winning percussionist and filmmaker, “In the right set of hands, this tiny instrument can produce an incredible range of sounds.” Bengaluru’s Latha Ramachar is one such talent. She is arguably the only female kanjira player to have reached the upper echelons of Karnatik music.

Latha is an A-grade artiste with All India Radio. The 61-year-old has accompanied leading musicians such as M S Subbulakshmi, M Balamuralikrishna, and L Subramaniam, in whose ensemble she performs regularly. She has received several awards, including the ‘Yuva Kala Bharathi’ from Bharat Kalachar, Chennai.

Latha started her journey in percussion at the age of 12 under her father, the late H P Ramachar, a renowned kanjira player. She began with the mridangam before moving to the kanjira. She has imbibed her father’s playing style, marked by a strong emphasis on tonal quality and a refined finger-tapping technique. Her other gurus, including the legendary Umayalpuram K Sivaraman and Anoor Anantha Krishna Sharma, further honed her skills in complementing the mridangam in concerts.

She has since forged her own path by exploring diverse musical styles. Most notably, she is part of Stree Shakti, a percussion-led ensemble blending Karnatik, Hindustani, and folk traditions.

Standing out as a kanjira player is not easy. The kanjira is an ‘upa pakkavadhya’, or secondary percussion instrument. Its introduction into Karnatik music is credited to Manpoondiya Pillai.

Trained in the thavil, a barrel-shaped instrument played with both hands, Pillai wanted to create something that could be played with one hand. The result was the kanjira, a tambourine-like instrument. The word means ‘miniature vessel’ in Tamil. Pillai introduced it to the classical stage in the 1880s. In concerts, the kanjira remains secondary to the mridangam, like the ghatam and morsing, and does not feature in every performance. At the ongoing Ramanavami music season in Bengaluru, only about 15 of nearly 60 concerts across two venues include the kanjira. And none feature women. The trend was similar during the 2025 Margazhi season: of 21 concerts that included the kanjira, not one featured a woman artiste.

To Latha’s knowledge, there is only one other female kanjira player, Krishna Priya, based in Chennai. She attributes this gap to the perception that playing the kanjira has traditionally been seen as a male domain. “I have many students from India and abroad,
but none of them are girls,” Latha says.

(The author is the founder of a tech company and writes about music and everyday life.)