Ghat ghat main panchi bolta hain, aap hi dandi, aap taraju... When classical vocalist Ranjani Sivakumar sang this Kabir doha set in Raag Bhatiyar at the fifth edition of her annual concert, Birdsong by Birdsong, the audience couldn’t help but sing along. From the haunting Beatles melody in Blackbird that traversed continents and musical traditions to Tyagaraja’s Omkara Panjara Heerapura and Kumar Gandharva’s poignant Udjaayegaa hans akela, the artist drew attention to how poets, seekers, and mystics have frequently used birds as a metaphor to identify the self.
The annual concert, Birdsong by Birdsong, started in 2021. Coming off the pandemic, Ranjani presented a concert inspired by the sounds and melodies of birds at the Hyderabad Literary Festival: a first of its kind. The enthusiastic response resulted in the concert becoming a yearly affair. Inspired by the classic Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott and her own love for birding, the selection of songs only grew over the years. She says, “The significance of our classical music is so deep that the composers sought to explain it simply through a metaphor before actually laying it bare. And birds were that chosen form of expression, as they are universal and omnipresent.
Throughout the series, Ranjani is constantly teaching the audience novel songs about birds and, in turn, learning new things from them. She recalls, “It really feels fulfilling to watch the audience respond. In the last concert, a kid rushed in with an origami bird, and a 90-year-old lady in a wheelchair waited until the end of the show to share a Japanese song about a crow. The theme seems to evoke a song from many in the audience, and I keep tailoring my set list to make sure I learn and add new pieces each time from this feedback.”
Like the birds she celebrates in song, Ranjani’s music soars beyond boundaries, creating a free world where diverse musical traditions nest together in perfect harmony. She began her formal training with her guru, Seetha Narayanan, at age six, a relationship that continues to this day even as her teacher has reached 83 years of age. The 43-year-old Ranjani is currently based out of Hyderabad (though she grew up in Chennai and teaches at Shibumi, a Jiddu Krishnamurti philosophybased school in Bengaluru) and is influenced across genres and forms—from MS Subbulakshmi and Kumar Gandharva to Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin, the Beatles, and Alanis Morissette. “Each artist puts their heart and soul into music, and I find that I enjoy the music of many people from different genres,” Ranjani says. So would the birds, if they could hear her.