A Conversation with L Subramaniam

It is no exaggeration to say that Dr L Subramaniam is one of Indian music’s most important figures worldwide. At a young age, he began playing Indian classical music, primarily from the Carnatic tradition, and with his brothers, became a violin icon in India. As Subramaniam established himself as an instrumentalist of note, he performed at prestigious concert halls around the world, playing alongside the likes of Ravi Shankar, George Harrison and Herbie Hancock. Simultaneously, he never shied from working beyond Indian classical, recording an influential album, Garland (1982), with Danish musician Svend Asmussen and defining his vision to unite different musical cultures on 1999’s Global Fusion.

In India, he founded the Lakshminarayana Global Music Festival, which brought international artists to his home country, as well as the Lakshminarayana Global Centre of Excellence to train the next generation of musicians. This year, Subramaniam published Raga Harmony, a book which collected his research and innovations that allowed him to bring the Indian violin into major orchestral works based on the Western classical system.

Still busy performing – he recently performed at London’s Darbar Festival – we speak to the man they call the ‘Paganini of Indian Classical Music’.

When did you start playing the violin? Is it right that you played your first concert when you were only six years old?

I started learning music when I was very young. My elder sisters remember me repeating phrases that my father would sing to teach them. I was always very keen to learn the violin, since that was the instrument my father played; he was my hero. My father wanted me to be a singer. When I was two years of age, I contracted diphtheria, which meant that I might lose my voice. At that point, my parents decided that I could learn to play an instrument instead, and I tried a few before finally settling on the violin. My first concert was when I was six years old – it was at a large open-air event at a temple in Sri Lanka. My sisters were performing, and my father wanted me to play my first solo then, but the concert organisers did not agree. He put me on stage anyway, and when the audience was very appreciative, the concert organiser said it had been his plan all along to have me play.

What music did you grow up with?

Growing up, I was surrounded by Carnatic music. My father was a Carnatic musician, and that is what I was initially trained in. However, my father was a very open-minded man. At a time when listening to a style other than Carnatic was considered damaging, he sent me to learn Western classical music too. I think his open-mindedness really created a foundation upon which I was able to build, learn about different styles of music and create my own.

What was the relationship like with your father and brothers?

My father was my hero. I wanted to be like him. Music was central to all of our lives. We also had many struggles early on – we weren’t financially well off, and we even had to flee Sri Lanka as refugees in 1958 (after my father had moved the family from India to Sri Lanka because he got a job there). Music is what kept us all going. I used to love how my elder brother Vaidyanathan would play. We started playing duets, and then my father created the Violin Trio, which had me and both my brothers playing the violin. That was a very novel idea at the time because the violin was an accompanying instrument in our tradition, and these were three violin soloists.

Did you perform often as a violin trio in India?

The Violin Trio was formed in 1958 by my father when we returned to India. He wanted to start the solo violin tradition with his three sons. Our first recording was in 1962. That was an old 78rpm recording. After that, we did an EP, which was 45rpm, and then we did two LPs. We used to tour a lot in India and Palghat Mani Iyer played the mridangam for most of our concerts. We would do 20-25 concerts every December and January during the ‘music season.’ We even toured the US with [Palghat] and my father, and our concert in New York was organised by John McLaughlin. I have fond memories of John sitting on the stage with us and playing the shruti box.

It’s 50 years since Ravi Shankar’s Music Festival from India toured Europe and North America. What are your memories of those tours?

The tour with George Harrison was one of the most memorable touring experiences I’ve had. It was early in my career and a milestone experience – not only because of the legendary Indian artists that were there, like Ravi Shankar-ji and Ustad Alla Rakha, but also because of the Western ones: Emil Richards, Tom Scott, Billy Preston and of course, George Harrison himself. I had an opportunity to perform in some of the greatest concert halls in the world and study the audience’s response to Carnatic music. Through that tour and afterwards, I worked hard to make Carnatic music accessible to all audiences globally. In my personal life also, that was the tour I met my wife Viji, who played tambura for some of the concerts. We married in 1976, and she passed away in 1995.

In 1978, you recorded with Svend Asmussen [the album was released in 1982] and have recorded with musicians from all over the world since. Was it always natural for you to collaborate with artists from different musical worlds?

The collaboration with Svend Asmussen happened organically when I was in Norway – there was a TV show that both Mr Asmussen and I appeared on, and he was fascinated by what I was doing. We decided to record an album together. Subsequently, getting into fusion was the idea of my friend, Richard Boch. I wasn’t planning to do any fusion, but he thought I should. He came up with the first album project, Fantasy Without Limits. Subsequently, he also asked me to sign for four more albums: Indian Express, Spanish Wave, Conversation and Mani & Co. I didn’t want to form a band, and so through these albums I was able to collaborate with so many different artists – great, legendary artists like Stéphane Grappelli, Herbie Hancock, Stanley Clarke, George Duke and Hubert Laws.

You have always been faithful to Carnatic music while creating fusions. Was there ever any resistance from your family or people in India to the fusion music that you were making?

My father was always very supportive of my experiments and attempts to broaden the scope of music. I was, however, concerned when I made my first fusion albums that people in India would think that I wasn’t a classical musician anymore. So, I originally didn’t release them in India, but I needn’t have worried because when I finally did release them in India, they received great critical acclaim and were very popular with audiences. I think it’s important to remember that classical music is a living tradition and ever-evolving. Sometimes, the purists forget that.

What are your memories of playing with Ali Akbar Khan in New York in 1979?

Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and I were invited to share a concert at the Lincoln Centre in New York in 1979. When I spoke with him, he suggested that we play together, which was, of course, a huge honour for me because he was a senior musician and already a legend. He wanted us to play a concert in the Bay Area immediately before, and that was recorded and released as a live album [India’s Master Musicians, released in 1981, and later reissued as Duet], which was the first North-South jugalbandi [duet between two instrumentalists]. Ustad Ali Akbar Khan was a very kind and soft-spoken person, a gem of a human being and a very great artist.

You recorded the album Peacock with Roby Lakatos in 2020, a Top of the World album in Songlines. What are your memories of this album? Did you enjoy playing Hungarian music?

I first met Roby Lakatos when I was asked to compose a tribute to [Yehudi] Menuhin called ‘Violins for Peace’. Roby was one of the violin soloists, and I really appreciated his fast pizzicato technique. We decided to work together, and I invited him to the Lakshminarayana Global Music Festival. We also made Peacock together, which was a very fun exploration of our different styles of music.

You have often been referred to as the ‘Paganini of Indian Classical music’. Who are some of your violin idols? Who did you look up to when you were learning to play?

My father, who created his own technique and was largely self-taught on the violin, was my biggest idol and inspiration. I was also a great admirer of Jascha Heifetz and David Oistrakh. Having an opportunity to play with the legends I looked up to – Lord Yehudi Menuhin and Stéphane Grappelli – was also a highlight for me.

What are your plans with the Lakshminarayana Global Music Festival?

This year at the Lakshminarayana Global Music Festival we had an 80-member symphony orchestra and choir from Kazakhstan present concerts across India, and the next edition of the festival will be held in a couple of months. This year, we are presenting two sets of concerts – one is a series of Indian classical instrumental concerts, and the second is [a series of] fusion concerts celebrating 40 years of the album Conversations, which I made with Stéphane Grappelli.

Over the last three decades, the festival has been a way for me to bring together great artists from around the world and create concert experiences that are open to all. My father loved music in all its forms, so the best way I can think of to honour his memory is by having a festival that makes music accessible to everyone.

Equally, what can you tell us about your Foundation at present? Do you still have students at the centre of excellence?

Through the Subramaniam Foundation, we conduct a number of activities at the intersection of music and philanthropy – we have the Lakshminarayana Global Music Festival, the Lakshminarayana Global Centre for Excellence and give scholarships and pensions to artists in need. The Lakshminarayana Global Centre for Excellence works in higher education and we offer BA, MA and PhD degrees in addition to certificate courses. Through SaPa, the Subramaniam Academy of Performing Arts, which is run by my daughter Bindu and my son Ambi, we teach the next generation of musicians and work with 40,000 children in schools.

Your new book, Raga Harmony, explores your system to integrate Indian ragas into Western classical music. What was the impulse behind your research?

I studied Western classical composition at CalArts in the late 1970s, and I devised the system of ‘raga harmony,’ which brings together Western classical concepts of orchestral writing using raga-based harmony. All my orchestral compositions use raga harmony and it was also the topic of my PhD. I wanted to share this with the world, so I released it as a book recently.

What do you hope will be the impact of the book? There are already artists like Zakir Hussain who are working with concertos. Is this something that you hope will become even more common?

I was commissioned by maestro Jack Elliott in Los Angeles to write my first composition for a major orchestra in 1983. After that, maestro Zubin Mehta asked me to write for the New York Philharmonic. Since then, I’ve written over 25 full symphonic works that have been performed around the world hundreds of times. All my scores are published with Schott Music and available for orchestras to play. I think working with orchestras has been an important experience for me, and anything I can do to help others build that skill, I will do.

I’m delighted that Zakir-ji is working with concertos, and I think it would be great if more artists did too.

When I work with musicians from different disciplines, I sometimes work with them on improvisation techniques, or melodic or rhythmic structures. For composers, understanding raga harmony can open up a new world of possibilities. By sharing what I’ve learned and developed, I hope that more composers and musicians will have an opportunity to push the boundaries of what composition is today.

Finally, at the time of writing, you are preparing to perform in London with your son Ambi at the Darbar Festival [on October 26]. What is it like to perform this music with your son? Do you think that your son’s generation are bringing a different approach to Carnatic music?

I’m really looking forward to performing at the Barbican again for the fantastic Darbar Festival organised by Sandeep Virdee-ji. Performing with Ambi is something I always enjoy, and I see how he interprets classical music and how he wants to take it forward as a very positive thing. My daughter Bindu is a singer, and my granddaughter Mahati also sings and plays the violin and piano. Having the next generation in music is exciting because it keeps music innovative.

+ L Subramaniam performed at London’s Darbar Festival in October; Raga Harmony is out now