BANGALORE: It is hard to encapsulate the velvet texture of her voice. Not cloyingly sweet but with depth, character and texture. A voice that unmistakably belongs to Bombay Jayashri. The singer and composer was in town to perform at the Bengaluru Ganesha Utsava and chatted with City Express minutes before her recital.
The first thing to ask her is of course just how she has managed to inhabit the diverse worlds of Karnatak music and Hindustani classicism -- Ajay Pohankar and Lalgudi Jayaraman, jugalbandis with flautist Ronu Majumdar, vocalist Shubha Mudgal and even danseuse Leela Samson, Coke Studio sessions with Ustad Rashid Khan and collaborations with Egyptian and Senegalese singers (Hisham Abbas and Thione Seck). From Mirza Ghalib to film music, how does she reconcile it all?
She says, “I was raised in a family that sensitised me to diversity in music from a very young age. Lalgudi Jayaraman, my guru, was a traditionalist but with an encompassing vision appreciative of different genres and fusion. So I learnt to be respectful towards every form of music, be it folk, classical, film or fusion. I also imbibed the lesson that regardless of what you sing, the values of diligence and sadhana are common to all disciplines. This learning has enriched my life beyond measure. And with God’s grace, I have been able to embrace it all.”
She adds, “You can’t plan this kind of a journey. It happens on its own.” The leaves of the book of her life, she says, reveal the hand of a higher force. “I was somehow put in the presence of great musicians, and all I could do was to surrender to the grace that answered my soul’s craving for learning,” says she.
The “openness” she inherited from her gifted parents Seetha and N N Subramaniam helped her connect with the perspectives of all the artists she has worked and collaborated with.
She says, “It is fascinating to see how other artists and visionaries look at the world and I go where the synergy takes me, whether I am interacting with Richa Sharma or Rashid Khan Saheb or Leela Samson.”
And, as always, when there is an abundance of joy, it overflows. And so Jayashri now wants to give music back to those who need it the most but have no access to it.
She says, “I was raised in a family where music was taught just for the joy of sharing it. It was not to gain material benefits. I was also a Girl Guide at school. There has been such an abundance of grace in my life and so I work with autistic children and the underprivileged and marginalised, trying to bring music back into their lives.” Apart from the many unexpected twists in her story, one of the most dramatic was perhaps getting an Oscar nomination in the Best Original Song category for Ang Lee’s Life of Pi in 2013.
Her smile is almost audible over the phone as she says, “Like I said, someone up there is writing my story.”
