vani jayaram

Vani Jayaram is a gifted person. Her flair for music is nurtured by great musicians of yester years. Her pencil sketches, oil and water color paintings speaks volumes on her aesthetic senses. She has won 17 prizes at the school final for extra curricular activities which continues in the college e days as well. Meet the multi faceted vani jayaram.

Whatever I have achieved in the field of music is because of my husband jayaram’s support-feels vani. Anative of vellore vani belongs to a family of musicians. Her mother is the disciple of Ranga Ramunaja Iyengar-a great veena artiste. Kadaloor Sreenivasa Iyengar, who taught vani’s sister music, was fascinated by her observation and grasping power. He taught her a few Deekshidar kritis when she was hardly five.

When the family shifted to Chennai Vani continued her music lessons in music under the tutelage of T R Balasubramanium, disciple of G N B and Trivandrum R S Mani (disciple of Semmangudi).

“AT THE AGE OF TEN I STARTED GIVING THREE HOUR CONCERT” SAYS VANI A GRADUAUTE IN Economics. MY MARRIAGE WITH JAYARAM IS A TURNING POINT IN MY LIFE. HE WAS THE EXCECUTIVE SECERTARY TO INDO-BELGIUM CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, MUMBAI. A talented sitar palyer he was trained by Sambu das a disciple of PT. Ravi Sankar. He took me to Abdul Rehman of Patiala gharana to learn Hindusthani music. The classes begin at 10 am and continued till 6 pm. So, resigned my job. He taught me the intricate techniques of thumri bhajans, and gahzals. Vasanth Desai happened to be there once. Impressed by my voice he gave an opportunity to sing for a Marathi play. I sang with KUMAR Gandharva. (marathi theatre insisted professional music recordings). Mean while Hrikesh Mukherjee asked Desai to compose music for his film Guddi. He made sing Bholorae papi hara….which turned out to be a super hit. It fetched me many awards” remembers Vani.

It is a nice coincidence that the all awards that received were for the classical based songs only. (apoorva raagangal, sankarabharanam and swati kiranam) Vani has sung in 14 languages with consummate ease. “It is god’s gift” she feels. Now she has devoted her time to Ghazals, geeths bhajans, folk songs. She also writes poems in Tamil and Hindi. She is running an audio recording unit in Chennai. She has worked with Pt. Birju maharaj, the legendary kathak maestro for two cassettes of thumri bhajans. Guru Kelu charan mohopatra played Pakhawaj for her rendition of Git Govind.

She is fortunate that she could sing for all popular music directors and had the privilege to sing with al stalwarts of India play back singing. She sang for the Hindi film Meera. The songs were composed by Ravi Sankar.

Vani organizes workshops and seminars for school children to prevent the onslaught of cultural imperialism. She would like to spend time with terminally ill patients and renders songs for them-an effort to ease their pain and wipe away the tears. (I E DATED 18 12 04).