Varijashree Venugopal Looks Back at 25 Years in Music, Plots Fusion Album

The vocalist, composer and flautist has worked with New York-bred Snarky Puppy bandleader Michael League for her debut LP, featuring songs in Kannada and English

- ANURAG TAGAT

FOR CARNATIC AND FUSION artist Varijashree Venugopal, the idea of a thanksgiving concert to mark 25 years since her first classical performance as a solo artist came from her father, Carnatic artist H.S. Venugopal. "It marks where I come from, which is Carnatic music. That's the language that I have trained and have been training in. And that is how I approach any other music that I listened to or any other collaborations coming from any part of the world," she says.

We're seated in an open-air café in a suburban part of south Bengaluru, where Varijashree has spent all her life, in the midst of encouraging parents, gurus and Carnatic music patrons. A few of them were in the audience on May 17th, at the thanksgiving concert where the art t performed alongside go-to accompanying musicians such as percussionist and mridangam artist B.C. Manjunath, violinist Mattur Srinidhi, G. Guruprasanna on kanjira, percussionist Pramath Kiran and for the last part of her concert - harmonium player Praveen D. Rao and jazz pianist Vivek Santosh. "These are people who are close to me and it will be a small kind of journey," the artist said about the performance.

Very much a Nineties kid, Varijashree has gone on to perform with the best of both worlds in India and abroad as an artist from Hariharan to Ricky Kej to Gino Banks, plus jazz great Victor Wooten and erstwhile German jazz-fusion act Max Clouth Clan, among others. She says, "Although I come out of that traditional school of Carnatic music, my musical course has taken a totally different direction."