Young musicians keeping tradition alive: Vikku Vinayakram

For Grammy Award-winning Indian percussionist TH Vinayakram, fondly known as Vikku Vinayakram, the audience is his award and he performs keeping their taste in mind at every concert. “Before a concert, I don’t have any plans in my mind before getting on the stage. I go with the audience’s reaction,” said Vinayakram, 75, on the sidelines of the recently-concluded five-night Bengal Foundation’s Bengal Classical Music Festival. 

Along with son V Selvaganesh and grandson S Swaminathan, a unique instance of three generations performing together, the Padma Bhushan awardee took the third day of the event by storm, giving it a rock concert-like feel and producing heart-racing sounds that got every single person watching the recital on their feet and clapping hard.

Gleaming with satisfaction while mentioning the 3G connect in his family (three generations playing together), Vinayakram said the future of Indian percussion is fine as youngsters are coming back to traditional music. “The instrument which I play and the one my son plays (kanjeera) used to be called side-mans. Its presence didn’t quite matter. The main instrument is the Mridangam. If you see a concert, you won’t see it without a Mridangam but you can see one without the ghatam. Now it has all changed. People have started learning this instrument now and it is getting popular. Youngsters are very Western in the way they live but when it comes to playing instruments, they are still traditional. It’s like a cycle. Maybe in the middle, the focus was more on Western instruments, but it’s coming back to Indian instruments now. The youngsters are taking it very seriously. They want to keep the culture and tradition alive,” he explained.

It was Vinayakram who popularised the ghatam, so much so that tabla legend Zakir Hussain would always take him along on concerts to play the instrument. Sitting beside him, Vinayakram’s son Selvaganesh, a former member of the original Shakti, a quintet which combined elements of traditional Indian music with elements of jazz, said he is fortunate to not play the ghatam as it allowed him to be part of the band and rub shoulders with Zakir Hussain.