In pursuit of art & aesthetics: Dr Jayanthi Kumaresh

The sixth-generation musician in her family Dr Jayanthi Kumaresh has grown up with music around her. She is the niece to the famous Lalgudi Jayaraman. Her mother Lalgudi Rajya Lakshmi was her first Guru, when she began playing veena at the tender age of three. She then went on to stay with and gain expertise under the guidance of her aunt Padmavathy Ananthagopalan, who probably was the first woman Vyanika in the country. She also trained with the legend Sundaram Balachander, and, performed with him as well. Today, Jayanthi holds her fort with standalone concerts, fusion performances, lec-dems, collaborations at prestigious venues across the world and is considered India's torchbearer of Saraswati Veena. "How many people know it is the national instrument of India? Not many. I want to make Saraswati Veena popular globally so that every Indian is proud of their heritage. I want people to enjoy instrumental music as much as they do vocal."

She adds, "Saraswati Veena is adaptable to any kind of music. For instance, Hindustani music is about gamak and meend, and Veena is very ideal for the music."

Jayanthi Kumaresh, who was in Hyderabad for a concert organised by Kalasagaram Cultural Association says, "Get them young is our motto! To play an instrument one has to use both the hands and mind, and this will improve the overall academics of children." Her videos explaining music concepts that she releases regularly on YouTube are very popular.

#AreYouMargazhiReady

Dr. Jayanthi Kumaresh's Cup O' Carnatic, a web series published on Facebook and YouTube introducing concepts related to music and veena, was a huge success garnering more than 2.5 million views for the series. Following its success, she presented a new web series, 'Season of Carnatic', which aims to promote the Chennai Margazhi Season by getting the fans Margazhi Ready. The series aims at exploring new ragams daily to get audiences ready to identify ragams and compositions when they attend the Margazhi Season in December. The episodes posted through the month of November, on her Facebook page and YouTube channel have had rave reviews from the rasikas.

She goes on explain the importance of margazhi for a musician, "A regular festival is usually held for two to three days with one concert per day. During Margazhi, in Chennai around 30-35 organisation have about 3600 concerts in a month. People from all over the world come; Austria, Singapore, Australia, Canada. Sometimes programmes start as early as 6am and go on till 9.30 to 10pm. You won't see this anywhere else in the world. Through the year, we perform at different places and again we meet the people we met all over the world, at Chennai. It feels special and everyone wants to do their best. We have several concerts in the same area, so we try and not repeat our pieces." Jayanthi has several concerts lined up for the season. She plays with R Kumaresh, Anil Srinivasan, some solo concerts, a few Jugalbandis; she is also giving a unique concert at Satyma Cinema on December 25th morning, that she is looking forwards to. "It is being organised in this huge cinema hall like a morning show at 9am. It will be different and for a cause."

Recently, she was conferred Sangeet Shikar Samman by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Delhi in recognition of her distinguished services to Indian classical music and Saraswati Veena. A valid honour to the young legend, who has already devoted 30years of her life in pursuit of music, and believes performances go hand in hand with research, and study, which she says happen along the way as one may observe such things as a sympathetic note during a performance that one begins to dwells upon much later.

One of the challenges of instrumental musicians is to make a good instrument with not many artisans available now-a-days. "For a veena, the older the instrument the better it is. People would call me and say that they have heirloom veenas which have been lying unused and they gave them to me. I have around 34 veenas. I tell my students to look and see if any of their great aunts has a veena which they can use. The art of making perfect veena is not there anymore. Now-a-days it's all about quantity; like in a factory. However, veena is handmade, every chip needs to be carved separately. My Guru would say that a veena-maker should travel with you on your concerts, understand your technique, style of music, know what parts of veena do you use the most, and then make a veena accordingly. Who has so much time today?"

That said, she goes on to explain a beautiful tradition followed before a veena was made in the yore. "A bell was tied to a jack fruit tree and for 20 years it is left that way, so that the tree imbibes the resonance from the ringing bell and then it is cut to make a veena. Such is our tradition"

However, change is the truth in life. She states, "Today we have digital veena and the journey goes on."