Carnatic vocalist Vinod Krishnan on the first-ever IndianRaga music and dance festival in London

Ever since the Carnatic mix of Ed Sheeran’s Shape Of You went viral last year, people have started recognising Vinod Krishnan, the musician who features in it. The Creative Director of IndianRaga, the global community of performing artistes, is a vocalist, pianist, composer, arranger and music educator. He believes that any genre of music has the flexibility to blend with another, as they are made of the same seven notes. With new franchises in San Jose, London, Singapore, etc., its fellows are performing at festivals including GaanaFest 2018, 2018 Government Summit, TEDx, etc. Vinod speaks to us about his projects.

What’s been the response to the classical version of Shape Of You? 

It got us more attention and opportunities to perform and collaborate. It’s become a credential — people recognise me from the video. I’ve collaborated with artistes like Maalavika Sundar, Bhavya Pandit and Aditya Rao. More heartwarming is random grandparents, parents and their (grand)kids’ renewed interest in Indian classical music. It’s a great place to start.

Can you shed some light on IndianRaga’s first concert in London on January 19?

I will perform some of our hit productions, along with Mahesh Raghvan, the other creative director. We also have our star dancer Sophia Salingaros performing. We’re conducting workshops and there are many music as well as dance competitions for UK applicants. We are establishing our brand for live performances.

Tell us how your recent Hindi song Saajan happened.

I had an opportunity to work with singer and composer Vijay Prakash (Swadesh, Kaal, Lakshya, etc) on another project,  which will be announced later this year. When I asked him if he’d like to collaborate, he said yes immediately and gave me a one-liner on what kind of song he had in mind. I wrote the lyrics that resemble bandish compositions in Hindustani music, tuned it in a Carnatic raag and produced music that you’d call pop. Also, the entire song has just two lines and the rest is improvisation, which most audiences don’t know how to interpret and enjoy in classical music. I wanted to show how it can be packaged to appeal to a larger audience.

Does Indian classical music lend itself to other genres? 

Yes! I’ve done many experiments to demonstrate this. Inherently, any form has some degree of flexibility to fuse with others. They all share the same seven notes; only the treatment differs at the basic level. It’s the musician’s ability that matters in bringing two genres together; my collaborations Carnatic A Capella, EDM Thillana, and Karpooram Naarumo, for instance.