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Playing saxophone, no Kadri clone
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Prasant decided he didn't want to be a Kadri clone. "Those who copy others never make it," he says.
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Prasant Radhakrishnan
Several years ago when saxophone player Kadri Gopalnath invited Prasant Radhakrishnan to India to learn Carnatic music, the young teen from Phoenix, Arizona, had never heard of Mangalore. "I kept saying Bangalore instead," he recalls.
Today, the 22-year-old with an American accent has accompanied Kadri in over 200 concerts, cut his own CD, studied Jazz and is halfway through a fellowship awarded by the American Institute of Indian Studies that pays for his stay in India to let music grow on him.
Dhanya Parthasarathy tuned in.
I FOUGHT off mosquitoes that were bigger than me," recalls Prasant Radhakrishnan who has been coming to India from the U.S., for two months every summer, since he was 13.
"It was like a gurukulam experience — learning under Kadri. I stayed with him, practised music in his house, travelled in trains ... "
That done for several years, Prasant decided he didn't want to be a Kadri clone. "Those who copy others never make it," he says.
Defining his own brand of music, Prasant says he's out to prove saxophone can be played slowly. "I am focusing on intensity rather than speed. I am avoiding blasting music, gimmicks and a whole lot of brigas," he says.
And like a leisurely bhairavi raga in a concert, he warms up to explain why saxophone is still in its infancy in India. "Take the violin experience in Carnatic music. So many generations have played the violin, a western instrument. That's why the music that Lalgudi Jayaraman plays is at its pinnacle. But the sax — it's just finishing its first generation. It should be given a chance to develop," he says.
That's where Prasant is hoping to come in.
,"The sax is a keyed instrument — and it's quite difficult to produce gamakas or oscillations and blend notes," he says. Backed by his bachelor's degree in Jazz, he hopes to graft western techniques of blowing and fingering onto Carnatic music.
"But when I say Jazz in India I find that it's grouped along with pop, rock and Bollywood music. But Jazz is really comparable to Carnatic music," he says.
"A musical instrument is a good tool to bring Carnatic music to different audiences. Musicians from India think that a western audience wants to hear Carnatic pieces that sound western. That's not true. They want to hear ghana ragas and complex talams," he says. Since Prasant has been brought up in the U.S. and trained in India, he says he can bridge that gap.
"But I don't want to get into the politics of music in Chennai — doing plenty of concerts, getting popular, touring everywhere ... So I won't be playing in a rigorous fashion to make a living," he says. "Music is a luxury and I always want to play because it is a joy."
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Life
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Madurai
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