CHENNAI: As you travel down G N Chetty Road on a Thursday, you are bound to be irked by the sheer number of cars parked under the Flyover. The reason? The rush is to listen to M J Sriram singing karaoke tracks of Ilayaraja and SP Balasubramaniam (SPB) at the hotel’s Black and White Bar. September 17 marked six years of Sriram performing at the Residency.
Like his idol SPB, who initially was self-taught, Sriram did not have any formal training. “I, like everyone else, started as a bathroom singer, and then I start singing in the drawing room. Later, I asked some friends if I could sing at their wedding, and from then on the word spread.” Now, Sriram proudly says his passport has visa of many exotic countries. In all those countries he has mostly sung the Ilayaraja-SPB combination.
“I don’t want to stray too far from that combination. I feel I have grown by own identity through these two artists,” says Sriram. When asked how it is to fill in such big shoes and at the same time create his own identity, he says, “I don’t think I have ever come close to stalwarts like SPB and Jesudas. I try to engage the audience when the music is playing in the background. But I don’t indulge too much, I start singing the next song immediately after one song ends. The audience must feel like that they are listening to songs on a CD.” But how does he sing continuously for four hours? “I sing about 45 songs a night. I don’t follow any diet. I take soft-drinks with ice too. The support I get from the crowd drives me,” says Sriram.