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All in the family Kannan with his wife and children.

“I grew up surrounded by music,” he reminisces. So much in love with Carnatic music was he, that when he was transferred from Chennai to Kolkata, he was reluctant to leave the capital of Carnatic music. However, he fell in love with Kolkata, and has been there for more than 40 years now. But he hasn’t given up his first love – Carnatic music. He runs an organisation called Rasikapriya to promote Carnatic music, and has organised concerts in Kolkata for the past 15 years. Is there a significant South Indian population there to attend these concerts? “Why even Bengalis come to our concerts. We have a very knowledgeable audience,” counters Kannan.

His wife Vasantha Kannan, vocalist and violinist, began her music training at age five in Guruguha Gana Vidyalaya in Kolkata. Son Mohan, an MBA from Xavier’s Institute of Management, resigned his job in an international bank to take up music full time. He began to learn the mridangam at the age of six, and steadfastly resisted his mother’s attempts to get him to learn vocal. “At age six, it seemed to me that mridangam was the only exclusive male preserve. After all women sang too, but only men played the mridangam. Sorry to say, I was motivated completely by chauvinistic ideas. You know how boys that age are,” he says apologetically.

Only two years ago, he began to learn vocal from his mother. He has his own band Agnee, in which he is the lead vocalist, and also plays percussion instruments. Agnee did the theme song for MTV’s Roadies show. The band also tuned the songs for Prakash Jha’s film “Dil Dosti Etc.”

“One of the songs is a thumri,” he says.

But “Dil Dosti Etc” wasn’t mainstream Bollywood. What about mainstream cinema? “Agnee’s working on three mainstream Bollywood films. One is a musical with 10 songs. Another is a love story with six songs. And the third is a Wodehousian comedy that again has six songs.”

Mohan and his sister Srividya have won awards from Krishna Gana Sabha and the Indian Fine Arts Society. Srividya, a vocalist and a violinist, is a software engineer with a software company.

Srividya did a programme on the influence of other systems of music on Rabindra Sangeet. She sang Meenakshimemudham, Lavanyarama, and Neethucharanamule, the tunes of which, she explains, Tagore reproduced in his music.

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