Gang of five to play music for a cause

Rajhesh Vaidhya recollects how he has been surrounded by music since his birth (he is the son of KM Vaidyananthan, a music stalwart who played both mridangam and ghatam) and at the age of two all he wanted to do was play the mridangam. But thanks to his mother’s love for veena, he ended up learning to play the instrument since the age of seven and hasn’t looked back since. “I would say veena chose me rather than I chose to play the instrument,” he says. 

Apart from his blistering speed, performance is being distinguished by his use of electric and amplified strings. The ace veena player joined hands with four musicians — Manjunath NS (drums), Sai Hari Ram (ghatam), Chandrajith (tabla) and Vivek Santhosh (piano) — to form his band V5 the Gang in October 2016 and now they are ready with first public performance as a band in Chennai. 

“My musician friends and I had been mulling over the idea of starting a band for a while and last year on October 2 when we performed together Indian badminton player PV Sindhu at Krishnapatnam Port, we just thought it is about time. Since then we have been practising as a band almost three days a week for 15 to 16 hours and are ready with our first public performance as a band,” says Rajhesh. Talking further about the band he says that they intend to steer clear of commercialising music. 

“As a band we intend to play ‘pure’ music and not dilute it by mixing genres just so that it clicks with the audience,” he points out. The performance is part of The Art of Living Foundation’s Ananta series of musical concerts that strive to bring the best talent in the country to a discerning audience with the collective object of creating positive transformation in the society. 

“The benefits from musical concert will be channelled towards the noble cause of educating the underprivileged children through the globally acclaimed social program, Gift a Smile, a project Inspired by Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s vision for a value – based education system. The fact that our first band performance will have a social cause at its heart is hugely motivating and immensely humbling,” he says.