Introducing... ganavya

According to Google, Harikatha is a traditional form of Hindu storytelling which uses dance, song, poetry and music to tell a story from an Indian epic. However, for ganavya, a multi-instrumentalist and scholar who has embodied this practice when creating her latest project, Daughter of a Temple, it is a philosophy.

She grew up along the pilgrimage trail in South India, and realised when she was young that she didn’t want to pursue a career as a South Indian classical musician like her father. Instead, she wanted to engage with a more communal view of music. “I’m not saying that all systems which orientate towards perfection are cruel,” she muses over Zoom, explaining her diversion away from classical training, “but I often think we can forget a simpler way to live, which is to sing together.”

When talk comes to her musical journey, she skirts around questions concerning the process of attaining her four degrees and how she came to perform with the UK’s celebrated SAULT collective. “Things have always been this way for me,” she states, explaining why she finds it hard to discuss her career’s chronology. “Things come in front, you get to know them, and then you don’t ask why because then things start to fall apart. It explains why I speak in such circuitous ways,” she laughs.

Her ideals, the value of community and trust in serendipity, seem to, almost ironically, perfectly lead us into discussing her third album, Daughter of a Temple. Largely improvised and created over a week with 69 other musicians, including Shabaka Hutchings, esperanza spalding and Immanuel Wilkins, it’s a stunning sonic exploration featuring grounding basslines, soaring vocals and, if you listen carefully, a baby cooing.

While using the communal and multi-disciplinary approach of Harikatha, ganayva diverted from tradition and, instead of centring the storytelling around epics or religious tales, focused the process on the music and manifesto of Alice Coltrane. “It would always make me pouty,” she says, of her experience with Harikatha as a child. “It seemed to me to say miracles and love only existed back then, everything’s shit now.”

To kickstart her modern take on “weaving a song through as many things as possible by free association,” ganavya presented the musicians with prayer beads she had made, and she washed their feet with turmeric, water and honey. “And that’s all it took,” she says, “Most people started crying. So often, we perform, and we don’t have moments for that kind of tenderness. And what is life and music if we don’t have that?”

ganavya’s predilection for free association could be applied to our conversation, which veers through a myriad tales, from reflections on her family’s involvement to the miraculous way this project, which is being released on Nils Frahm’s label LEITER (which also released Anoushka Shankar’s recent mini-albums), came together. “My friends tell me my life is charmed,” she says. “And I want to ask, aren’t all of ours? Maybe I’ve just been trained in an art form that asks that we remember that and say it loud.”

This article originally appeared in the December 2024 issue of Songlines. Never miss an issue – subscribe today