HYDERABAD: Awarm smile and chirpy yet calm demeanour welcomes you when you meet, Prince Rama Varma. In town for a Carnatic concert held at Saptaparni recently along with his troupe, Rama Varma has an unmissable sense of humour that will keep anyone hooked onto every word of his. With kids and adults alike making it for the concert, Rama Varma prides on being able to make those in the audience also sing along with him, which is unheard of in traditional kacheris. “Music is an experience. And it’s never like ‘I’m singing, you’re listening.’ I want all those present to be included in the musical experience,” he says.
Humble beginnings
Hailing from Trivandrum as he likes to call it, he belongs to a matrilinear family. Despite the royal lineage, he “happily gave up” the simple life of landing a job and finding a bride to serve his first love music. The 47-year-old says, “I am happy to be single. If situations hadn’t favoured then maybe I would be another one of those who ‘settles down. But I’m glad that things turned out the way they did.” He slowly climbed up the ladder and found his space in the musical arena through radio shows and concerts.
The digital connect
“One of my friends who likes to call himself ‘Musique Box’ introduced me to YouTube. I had my own channel in which I posted videos of musical giants like Bala Muralikrishna and obviously got more hits than him. He told me to be patient. And much to my surprise, the channel now has over 74 lakh views in total,” the artiste shares excitedly. “I realised the magnitude then and also that there are that many people who want to watch me sing. I then started to get a lot of messages asking me teach their children. For them I have a template message that says ‘I’m still learning. I can’t teach your children forgive me,” chuckles the musician.
Music for generations
He prides in not performing the usual, Nagumomu, Vathapi Ganapathim. He selects songs that are rare with which lot of people might not be familiar. He questions, “If someone doesn’t revive them and bring them to light who will?” He promplty begins narrating an anecdote saying, “Once when I was chatting with Balamuralikrishna garu, he randomly broke into a song. I ask him which song is this, and he quickly picks up a book skims through the pages and says, ‘This one. I sang it in 40s I guess.’ So I asked him to teach me. And now I will teach that long forgotten song to other kids.” Despite also being an painter and writer – no wonder considering his lineage – he admits to learning and teaching music to be his favourite. “If a few people in the world learnt from me even a fraction of what I learnt from my gurus, it is a successful life,” he signs off.