Carnatic tunes find a new beat

Mention Carnatic music and Margazhi, and your mind automatically conjures up the image of the typical rasika in a sabha. But here in Chennai is another fan who wants to take Carnatic music to shores abroad through hip hop. This season, Deejay Phani has been working on his personal project, ‘Margazhi Beatz’, which aims to fuse two completely different genres, and present it to a wider audience.
“Usually during Margazhi, I used to mix Carnatic and hip hop beats randomly and post it online.Many people - especially the hip-hop dance community - liked it,” says Phani. “This season, I took some Carnatic vocal and instrumental music, fused them with hip hop beats, and posted them online.” Phani follows a process called sampling, which is the foundation of hip hop music. “Sampling is a technique where you take a part of a song – vocals, bass line or drums -- manipulate it, and create a new, different beat,” says Phani, adding that it emerged when producers in the 1980s began sampling funk and soul records, particularly drum breaks. It has influenced many genres of music, particularly electronic and pop.
For ‘Margazhi Beatz’, Phani has sampled vocals and instruments from Carnatic music performances. “For instance, for the first one, ‘Raaga’, I have sampled the vocals of Aruna Sairam, and also a bit of the violin from her performances. I wanted to keep the original voice of the artist without changing the vocals, played on an existing beat, and arranged it to suit the vocals,” says Phani. Usually, he takes an existing hip hop beat and plays Carnatic vocals on it, or creates a new beat and samples it accordingly.
“During sampling, I sometimes keep the original as it is and just make changes to fit the beat. Everything depends on the mood of the beat that I want to create,” says Phani. For ‘Saramaina’, he has taken the vocals of TM Krishna and created his own original beat. For ‘Flute Point’, he has used a bit of the flute and remixed it with a beat by an artist called Point Point.
“Carnatic music has an amazing vocabulary. It usually has a particular kind of audience, but when you fuse it with hip hop music, it reaches a different audience. Many of my friends from other countries ask me what it is all about,” says Phani, who wants to collaborate with a Carnatic musician next year. “Carnatic musicians in the past have performed live with bass guitarists and released fusion albums. I foresee a lot of sampling and collaborations happening in the coming years.”
The videos have been well received by classical dance and hip-hop dance communities, says Phani. “I am not sure how the purists and artists feel about it. But then, I love doing it,” he says.
Carnatic vocalist Sudha Ragunathan says, “It is an interesting and novel way to introduce Carnatic music or ragas to the younger generation, and those who think the system is too complex. Kudos to Phani Kumar for striking on this ‘Bridging genres technique’. I look forward to more ragas in different avatars.”