Varijashree
Credit: Special Arrangement
When she was just a year and a half, she started recognising ragas. At 33, she has bagged a Grammy nomination.
Varijashree Venugopal, Bengaluru-based Karnatik vocalist, is featured, along with sitarist Anoushka Shankar, on the prodigious Jacob Collier’s song ‘A rock somewhere’. Her Grammy nomination is in the ‘Best Global Music Performance’ category.
“By the time I was four, my parents had already started training me in Karnatik music. I started performing when I was four.” She was also enrolled for training with great gurus such as Vidushi Geeta and Vidwan Salem Sundaresan. “I have had a good 20-25 years of training,” she adds.
For 15 years, Varijashree has been exploring Indian classical music in interdisciplinary formats, and her discography has more than enough to show in the world of Indian-Western fusion music. Along with the song that she worked on with Jacob Collier, she has other musical milestones to her credit, the most recent one being her first full-length album titled ‘Vari’.
Comprising 12 songs, it is produced by five-time Grammy winner Michael League of the American jazz fusion band Snarky Puppy. It is co-produced by Bengaluru-based percussionist Pramath Kiran.
‘Vari’ features about 40 artistes from different parts of India, spanning classical and folk styles, as well as a few global musicians such as Victor Wooten and Bela Fleck, longtime idols of Varijashree. “The intention is to celebrate the sounds of India in a global format. It has thavil and nadaswaram and shehnai, and at the same time it has a badass synth. It’s a melding of two different worlds for me.”
Before ‘Vari’, Varijashree has worked on projects with Victor Wooten, Bela Fleck, Hamilton De Holanda and Ricky Kej. She was the first Indian to perform at ‘Jazz Al Parque’, a prestigious jazz festival in Bogota, and is one of the featured soloists in a contemporary classical opera by Italian composer Riccardo Nova. She has also been featured in several tracks on the Italian group Trio Bobo’s album ‘Sensurround’.
She is currently working on a live edition of ‘Vari’ and is preparing for the European and US leg of her album tour. She is keen on expanding her horizons and continuing her work of popularising Indian classical music in a global format.