The summer before she started high school, Pragathi Guruprasad found herself entangled in the unusual; taking the stage by storm on the third season of the reality singing competition, Airtel Super Singer Junior .
Only 14, she left as a runner-up, tailed by a sizeable fan base that has grown to tens of thousands, and a thriving start to a career. Her journey as a classical and playback singer since the reality show has seen many roads explored, and culminated in her biggest step yet: the launch of her personally curated world tour.
Raised in California and shuttling between Fremont and Chennai, Guruprasad’s immersion into Carnatic and other forms of music started early. “We’ve been singing Carnatic music for generations in my family,” she says, “I used to come down to Chennai to train under my guru, in both Carnatic and Hindustani music.”
The Indian-dense populace of her American neighbourhood meant that most of her peers were also training and later performing at concerts, a comforting world of tradition that she eventually realised she wanted to move beyond. “It was always the same people, same concert, same audiences,” she says, “Taking part in Super Singer Junior changed all of that.”
The Indian experience
Moving to Chennai for a year to participate in the competition, she quickly found her perceptions changing. “Being on a reality show grounded me and helped me grow,” she says and adds, “I met people from so many different backgrounds, had to find my footing and adapt to another way of living. I transformed within a year.” She credits the show as her launching platform into the music industry, giving her the recognition, audience and the confidence to initiate production of her world tour.
The idea for the tour came after travelling and performing extensively at concerts. “I started to understand how a concert should work, how important it is to cater to different audiences. Being able to interact with people from different cultures made me realise that you can’t use the same prototype everywhere.”
She says the tour has been on her mind for a few years, but didn’t come to fruition until a concert in South Africa. “At that point, I’d travelled to nearly every continent in the world performing, but hadn’t really been able to call any of those concerts my own. Seven thousand people showed up for my show — Pragathi Live, in South Africa — and it opened my eyes to the potential that existed.”
The Pragathi Live World Tour will cover four continents, kicking off with Asia. Each component has been fashioned by Guruprasad. “I want to keep it to 300 people a city, so I can interact with my audience, as they have been following me for years. It’s funny, because I’m usually more excited to meet them than they are to meet me. I want them to hear about my journey and where these last five years have taken me.”
She says every location is symbolic; Malaysia, for example, is her biggest fan base. Chennai is home ground, and where the tour comes to an end. “It’ll mean a lot to come home with a world tour to my name. I really want to hear what people have to say; feedback from my audiences and from people behind the scenes,” she says.
The tour has been in the making for months. “It’s exciting to be a part of the creative process, because I never realised how much goes into event planning; choosing the venue, designing tickets, deciding what I’m going to wear, how to launch the tour, and publicity,” she says.
This is the biggest leap yet in the singer’s career. “I’ve worked so hard in the last few years, and I really want to show people that you don’t have to sing just film music to make it in this industry. Curating this tour has been a humbling experience. I look at this as my time to be in control, and to truly make this reflective of me and my experience,” signs off Guruprasad.
(The Pragathi Live World Tour will start on August 26 in Malaysia.)
