BENGALURU: Music runs in her blood, but ace veena player Jayanthi Kumaresh believes she will continue only as long as she is worthy of it. In an intimate setting at the boutique, basavakris, Basavanagudi, the sixth-generation music maestro spent an evening with a group of music lovers. “I’ve never had audience sitting so close to me,” she remarked with a laugh.
Hailing from a prominent family of violinists (she is the niece of legend Lalgudi Jayaraman), Jayanthi started learning music at the age of 3 under the guidance of her mother, Lalgudi Rajalakshmi, who was also present at the show, before moving in with her aunt (mother’s elder sister – Padmavathy Ananthagopalan) when she was in Class 7.
“Only my aunt played the veena. Many people would want to know why I wasn’t learning the violin from my mama. They thought I was making the wrong choice,” she said.
While her first performance was a voice and veena concert, her guru veena virtuoso Dr S Balachander told her there are several people learning to sing. Promise me you will only play the veena, he said, a promise she has kept.
By the time she was 15-16, she was performing 20-25 concerts a month, in addition to academics. “People asked me if the veena is difficult. Since I had to make the instrument – with three-and-a-half octaves – seem easy, I said it’s like the flute. This is what is called peer pressure,” she said.
To Jayanthi, music is a ‘soul doctor’, an art that is a friend, philosopher and guide. “It’s a gift I have got, and I am trying to be worthy of it. The state of mind when you sit at home to practise is different. At concerts you do what makes people smile.
We have to remember we have to keep the name of our guru and lineage,” she said, adding that the kind of audience and set-up – school, concert hall, foreign performances – affect the mental state. “For an evening like this, broad or long notes work well,” she said breaking into one.
The veena has undergone an evolution, with the original wooden instrument now competing with electronic veenas. Traditional ones were made from wood of jackfruit trees – that grew in Madurai and Kanchipuram temples – which had bells tied to the trunk.
Every time the bell was rung, the resonance improved the wood, giving the veena a distinct sound. “Earlier, there were distinct vaanis – Thanjavur, Kerala and Andhra. But over time people picked the sweetness of one, the split fingering of another and made a combination of sounds,” she said.
Sixth-generation musician Jayanthi Kumaresh who performed the veena for an intimate gathering, tells CE how she’s always had to go the extra mile to prove herself, having been one of the few to take up the veena in a family of violinists