Percussionist T.A.S. Mani, wife R.A. Ramanani and son Karthik Mani are the people behind the Karnataka College of Percussion (K.C.P.), celebrating its Golden Jubilee year. KPC has brought nearly 25 global musicians for its World Music Festival, which will be held between October 7 and 9 at Seva Sadan, Malleshwaram.
“This fest has the cream of musicians from India, Germany, Switzerland Japan, Indonesia and Australia. They will bring up world music styles and influences from across jazz, pop, world rhythm, rock, Indian Carnatic and Hindustani,” says Karthik, a drummer, who will also perform at the fest.
The fest is a result of the efforts of mridanga artist, Mani, winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to classical music.
His broadened vision to appreciate and participate in world music platforms has made him a household name in Western ensembles, and a name to reckon with in contemporary fusion and world music.
The percussionist was applauded by M.S. Subbulakshmi and D.K. Pattammal for his unique style of accompaniment and even had a special mention for his intermingling sarvalaghu patterns that blended with the musical lyrics. “Percussionists have to choose their approach. It varies with each presentation -- as an accompanist, during solo tani-avarthanas, at tala-vadhya presentations and jazz and rock fests and so on,” explains Mani.
“At KPC, which was started in 1964, we propagate the desi genre. We have six branches of study and offer lessons in all kinds of instrument thumps that the Carnatic genre is famous for,” he adds. Today he is a source of energy to most contemporary and jazz musicians around the world.
In one of the International Jazz Festivals, a German musicologist once asked Mani: “Why Indian musicians use only the four basic talas, while our theory spoke of a staggering 35?” This inspired Mani to propagate all the talas through his CDs Vishesha Laya Vinyasa and his book Sogasuga Mridanga Talamu . KPC has been involved with varied experiments when it came to percussion. It has included Indo-jazz band with Louis Banks (piano), Ranjit Barot (drums) and Karl Peters (bass) with Mani’s percussion and Ramamani’s vocals to name a few. The London Philharmonic Orchestra’s RENGA ensemble regularly performs with KCP for an ensemble of classical Indian, Jazz and Western classical. Mani and his wife have worked with American saxophone artist Charlie Mariano and brought out eight albums under the jazz and World Music label.
“We hope to mould students worldwide to widen the reach of Indian music,” says Karthik. “We are trying for a meaningful amalgam of harmonies, melodies, bridges, swaras, ragas and talas to bring them under structured and improvised music in our renderings. This World Music Fest will be an example of all this,” he beams.
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The artist's line up
Pianist composer and arranger, Sarah Buechi
Ramesh Shotham on drums
Mike Herting, on piano
Prakash Sontakke on slide guitar
Ralf Siedhoff on electric guitar
Mark Inti on vocals and bass
Ron Reeves with Indonesian percussion
Christoph Haberer on drums
Adrian Sheriff on Indonesian flutes
Christian Schmidhofer on world percussion
Rafiq Khan on sitar
Trilochan and Adarsh Shenoy on tabla
Gururaj on keyboard
QUOTES:
I come from the birthplace of Beethoven and I would love to showcase our music and culture for a blend. Just as African and European styles came together for jazz, coming together of all cultures would help world melodies have a different intermingle – Mike Herting
It is an honour for us to be part of the Mani world ensemble. I look forward to playing here among world musicians – Ralf Siedhoff
It’s always a great thing to mix music and get the best, glad to be part of this world fest – Marc Inti
To build a music school, nurture it for 50 years and have world musicians playing in fests is something that only Mani can be doing – Ron Reeves
