Bhairavi Raman holds an AMusA (Associate in Music, Australia) diploma in violin, awarded by the Australian Music Examinations Board AMEB. Over a 15-year career, she has performed extensively across Australia and internationally, including notable appearances at South India’s esteemed venues such as the Madras Music Academy. Bhairavi has also co-founded Gamaka, a non-profit initiative focused on nurturing Carnatic music appreciation among young South Asian Australians.
As a first generation Australian born to Indian migrant parents, tell us how you developed your expertise and love for the violin.
My first memories are seeing and hearing my mother play her violin. My parents’ conviction
and recognition of my efforts, through those early years of scratchy, off-tune playing, saw me receive a strong foundation in both Western and Carnatic techniques. To this day, they are usually the first two people I look for in the audience when the curtain opens. Frances Gall, my western violin teacher, helped me understand the violin as an instrument and built western technique. Sri Gopinath Iyer, my Carnatic vocal music guru, taught me a structured approach to learning kritis and deconstructing ragas. Sri Murali Kumar, my Carnatic violin guru, taught me how to embrace creativity, freedom of expression and unlock manodharmam (improvisation). Sri S Varadarajan, my current guru, pushes me to seek nuances and complexity in every single sound I produce through the violin. This is just a small window into a journey of 25+ years of learning and discovery.
Violin virtuoso L. Subramaniam once told me that learning by the Suzuki method makes switching to Carnatic easier. Did it help your technique?
The Suzuki method mainly taught me to “play by ear” – being able to interpret a
musical phrase so that I can reproduce the music in my playing, in real time, instantly.
This is one of the most challenging roles of an accompanying violinist in a Carnatic concert. It has helped me develop as a responsive accompanist and also be creative.
Today you’re a director in a management consulting firm, Masters student, and
a violinist. How do you balance it all?
By setting realistic goals of what I can feasibly fit into my schedule, and resisting the urge to say yes to everything; physically blocking time in my calendar including time to reflect on, practice, or compose music; preparing and planning ahead for ‘crunch times’, especially when I know I will be travelling.
Time management is essential; and realising that one can’t have it all. With competing opportunities, half the work is the internal self-talk, to tell myself that I must prioritise dialling down at times. The challenge remains not to over commit and under deliver.
How can Australia better support aspiring artists like you?
The experience of Carnatic music in each country is informed by a very different cultural context. We have a vibrant and multi-generational local artist community, and a growing recognition of Carnatic music in mainstream educational and performance spaces (e.g. school music programs, tertiary electives, arts leadership conferences, music venues). We have normalised offering our music for free, which means we unintentionally devalue our art. Perhaps we could more intentionally support Carnatic musicians to professionalise their talent.
Tell us your experiences of performing in Chennai and in Australia.
I’ve performed at the Spirit of Youth Music Festival in 2016 with Kartik Suresh and the HCL Concert Series in 2018 (with SK Mahathi) in Chennai. Performing in the Chennai landscape has been immensely stimulating.
In Australia, some memorable concerts have been performing at the Melbourne Recital Centre twice, ACMI Melbourne; being part of the sound scape for a play called Nayika at Belvoir Theatre, Sydney; collaborative work with dancers, such as Queensland Kathakali dancer Bindu Rajendran, and participating in many festivals. I have completed arts leadership and mentorship programs with Footscray Community Arts Centre and the Australian Art Orchestra. (Bhairavi Raman)
All these opportunities have given me access to a community and expertise that I continue to draw on to inform my creative practice.
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Any exciting collaborations coming up?
I’m working on an album with my husband Nanthesh. I’ve released a couple of recorded singles on Band Camp and Spotify. For a very long time I treated Western and Carnatic playing styles like playing separate instruments. I am working now on reconciling identities, get some integration and merging of those two forms of music and find my own voice. Perhaps this is my ‘Ode to the Violin’, to play with textures and so on in an effort to bridge my two ‘sound worlds’ of Western Classical and Carnatic music. (Bhairavi Raman)
Incidentally, is Bhairavi your favourite ragam?
My favourite ragam is actually Kambodhi, but Bhairavi was my parents’ favourite ragam.
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