Jayanthi Kumaresh Redefines Carnatic Tradition by Pushing Veena’s Boundaries

As the early October morning mist lifted over Delhi's Sundar Nursery, passers-by on their breakfast walks stopped to listen to an unfamiliar sound coming from the stage set up at the Sunken garden inside the nursery: the resonant, meditative tones of the veena, played by Jayanthi Kumaresh, one of Carnatic music's most innovative voices.

For over four decades, Kumaresh has worked to expand what this centuries-old instrument can express, from overdubbing herself on seven veenas to performing 45 ragas non-stop for 78 minutes. Yet as we sat to chat with her after her astonishing performance at the KNMA Music Festival and asked her about her approach to diversity in music, she reached for a simple metaphor: "Instrumental music is like water. It takes the shape of the container." In an art form often bound by rigid conventions, this philosophy has made all the difference.

A Legacy of Feminine Energy Channelled Through Instruments

Kumaresh belongs to a distinguished lineage of female classical musicians, daughter of violinist Lalgudi Rajalakshmi and niece of the legendary Lalgudi Jayaraman. Yet her family's musical legacy also tells a broader story about changing opportunities for female instrumentalists. Her mother and aunts—including her guru, Srimati Padmavati Ananthagopalan—faced considerable resistance when they began performing. "The society was not very receptive and warm and even family, more than the society, was not as encouraging as it was for my generation," Kumaresh recalls. These pioneering women had to "check every box as a homemaker and then go out and perform."

Her sister, eleven years her senior and "a fantastic violinist", did not receive sufficient encouragement to flourish as a performing artist. By contrast, Kumaresh's generation found more supportive ground. "My parents were very encouraging. My guru was, all my gurus were very encouraging. My, the family I got married into was very, has been very encouraging." Whilst she acknowledges persistent challenges, she remains optimistic that each successive generation will face fewer obstacles—a measured perspective that focuses less on gender politics and more on the intergenerational arc of progress.

Seven Veenas, Multiple Selves and Pushing Boundaries of Veena

Two projects fundamentally altered Kumaresh's relationship with her instrument as per her. The first, 45 Ragas, documented a live performance where she rendered 45 different ragas continuously for 78 minutes without accompaniment a concept inspired by her guru, Dr S Balachander. The format demanded relentless focus: "you can't just take your hand off the veena. You have to just continuously play." Until then, the notion of sitting alone onstage, making it appealing "without anything else, just alone," represented "a paradigm shift" in her artistic thinking.

Yet it was Mysterious Duality, released in 2010, that truly revolutionised her approach. The album features Kumaresh overdubbing herself using seven different veenas, playing lead, rhythm, drone and percussive parts to create symphonic textures. Where traditional albums involve assembling co-artists and arrangers, this project required her to "dub myself over and over again" exploring dialogue amongst her instrument's multiple voices.

The conceptual framework drew from the multiplicity of roles a single person inhabits and this pushed boundaries for what the instrument meant as a sonic experience. "The different persona, the human persona of how one person is a mother, one person is a wife, the same person is an aunt, the same person is a shishya, the same person is a guru, the same person is a friend," she explains. "The different voices that are within us, the diversity of voices that are there within us, all that, when it comes together as one culmination as a whole, it's completely a mysterious duality."

These solo experiments contrast with her collaborative ventures, including the Indian National Orchestra (21 musicians presenting Carnatic-Hindustani fusion), the widely successful Cup O' Carnatic web series (over 2.5 million views), and Triveni—formed in 2022 with Hindustani violinist Kala Ramnath and tabla maestro Ustad Zakir Hussain. Whilst she describes Triveni as "the crowning glory" developed under Zakir Hussain's guidance, she credits the solo veena projects as what "actually changed my playing."

Her philosophy remains rooted in that opening metaphor: instrumental music as water, taking the shape of whatever container it encounters. "As an instrumentalist, there is no question of being conscious about our diversity because instrumentalists and instrumental music are generally deregional and dereligious," she observes. For Kumaresh, the veena's voice is fundamentally fluid, capable of honouring centuries-old tradition whilst speaking in thoroughly contemporary accents.