Effortlessly extraordinary – Saketharaman

He works a full-time corporate job (as Senior Vice President at Goldman Sachs) five days a week, travels and performs during weekends and manages to be absolutely extraordinary at both. So extraordinary, in fact, that it seems like he straddles his two careers effortlessly. With his distinct nasal twang, the stamp of the Lalgudi bani and his intelligent music, his musical style is truly inimitable. Meet Saketharaman Santhanam, vocalist par excellence and disciple of maestro Lalgudi Shri Jayaraman.

Grooming without gurukulavasam

Gurukulavasam is acknowledged in the Carnatic music world as a very efficient system of knowledge transfer. From Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer to Dr S. Sowmya, it has produced some of the most brilliant Carnatic minds. But gurukulavasam is hardly in practice any more, what with gurus touring the world and shishyas doing a multitude of things besides music. Yet, the shishyas of today are turning out no less worthy, you will agree. In this article, I write about how, in spite of their busy lives, today’s gurus are producing shishyas of high calibre — with inputs from young vocalists Anahita Ravindran (disciple of Shri Chitravina Ravikiran) and Krithika Natarajan (disciple of Shri Lalgudi Jayaraman and Smts Ranjani-Gayathri).