Rajna Swaminathan - Part 3

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 167: Rajna Swaminathan - Part 3

In this week’s episode, we talk to Rajna Swaminathan about her musical training and path to becoming a multi-tradition musician and composer. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Rajna Swaminathan, check her out here: https://www.rajnaswaminathan.com/. This episode was originally recorded in January 2024.

This podcast is made possible in part by a grant from the California Arts Council and generous donors, like you. Want to support For Good Measure and E4TT? Make a tax-deductible donation or sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the podcast!

Intro music: “Trifolium” by Gabriela Ortiz, performed by E4TT (Ilana Blumberg, violin; Abigail Monroe, cello; Margaret Halbig, piano),  as part of “Below the Surface: Music by Women Composers,” January 29, 2022
Outro music: “Lake Turkana” by Marcus Norris, performed by E4TT (Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Alchemy,” October 15, 2021

Transcription courtesy of Otter.ai.
Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1903729/episodes/17616989

Producer, Host, and E4TT co-founder: Nanette McGuinness
Co-producer and Audio Engineer: Stephanie M. Neumann
Podcast Cover Art: Brennan Stokes

Chapters

• 0:22 In this week's episode, we continue our conversation with Rajna Swaminathan, who we spoke to in January 2024.
• 0:30 You talk about studying with your father and also Umayalpuram K. Sivaraman, both of those must have been intense experiences in different ways. Can you talk about your musical training and your path to becoming a multi tradition musician and composer?

Transcript

Nanette McGuinness  00:00

[INTRO MUSIC] Welcome to For Good Measure, an interview series celebrating diverse composers and other creative artists, sponsored by a grant from the California Arts Council. I'm Nanette McGuinness, Artistic Executive Director of Ensemble for These Times. In this week's episode, we continue our conversation with Rajna Swaminathan, who we spoke to in January 2024. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS]

Nanette McGuinness  00:30

You talk about studying with your father and also Umayalpuram K. Sivaraman, both of those must have been intense experiences in different ways. Can you talk about your musical training and your path to becoming a multi tradition musician and composer.

Rajna Swaminathan  00:45

I grew up, I pretty much started learning mrudangam and taking classical piano lessons at the same time and... and sort of vocal lessons for a short time, although I think I was more self taught with with with the voice. And, you know, over time, I didn't really classical piano lessons didn't really resonate with me, because I was always just doing my own thing and wanted to improvise. And it's hard to grow up with like, such an improvisational music and then not want to transfer that to an instrument like the piano.

Nanette McGuinness  01:19

mmhmm

Rajna Swaminathan  01:19

I was quite [laughs] I wasn't the most obedient, like classical piano student, but, you know, and my teacher figured that out. They were, you know, they were like, yeah... for jazz or something like, I feel like really doing the classical thing. So it's, it's funny to me, I guess, now that I've come back to classical music, in a way, because it's something that really has only been the case for me over the past few years. I think it started maybe right before the pandemic that I started. You know, I had a fellowship with Gabriela Lena Frank, through GLFCAM, and started exploring writing for string quartet and just getting back into this, like, heavily notated form of music. And a similar thing, I think, with piano and voice, like, for a long time, they were just, to me, like ways of composing, and that my primary instrument was the mrudangam still and again over the last few years, that's become, I've just become more comfortable incorporating that into my performances as well. I did begin with my father, because he already played and I was, he's very passionate about the mrudangam and, I mean, I don't remember what you know, drew me to the instrument, or if it was more something that was orchestrated by my family, because...

Nanette McGuinness  02:47

[laughs]

Rajna Swaminathan  02:47

My mom was like, okay... my mom was an only child, and, you know, felt like she could connect with her father, who was a singer, and then it sort of didn't allow her to connect as much with her mother. So, because I have a younger sibling, my mom was just like, all right, I'm gonna engage with Anjna, and we'll, we'll work on the violin thing, and you Rajna, you work with your dad on this mrudangam thing. And so that way we're paired off, and we have ways of bonding as a family. I don't know what the exact story is, but, you know, I was clearly drawn to the instrument and enough to kind of keep going. It is frustrating to learn with a parent at that age, because...

Nanette McGuinness  03:30

[laughs]

Rajna Swaminathan  03:30

...I do remember fighting a lot with my dad. It's just like my hands were small. I was I never had, like a, you know, these days I think people have mini instruments when they're that they have, like a baby mrudangam that they can start learning on, but I was learning on the full size. So I was so frustrated because my hands were too small. But my dad was patient, I think, and we, we ended up having a rapport with it, and he actually ended up being quite important to my training. Later, as I was learning to kind of accompany performances. He would listen to music with me, and we would talk about various styles of accompaniment. And so he was a mentor for me, like throughout and still is, you know, someone who, who I interface with a lot around how to even, even in how to feature the mrudangam in, in these other contexts, I think he has a lot of thoughts about it, and he'll always be the one like, I can't hear the drum enough. Like, you know, you need to make it, bring it out. You need to do more of more solos, or whatever it is. So, yeah, I mean, he was, he was sort of there throughout, as a teacher, and we both studied with Umayalpuram Sivaraman, who came and stayed with us in Maryland, and my parents were organizing performances for him in the US. And so I grew up around him. He was sort of like a grandfather figure around so he would come for a couple months every year or every other year. And I also went to India to study with him...

Nanette McGuinness  05:08

Wow

Rajna Swaminathan  05:09

...and, you know, he's, he's a task master, for sure, he's as a, as a teacher, and has sort of very high expectations. So it was, I think it was mostly like the intensity of navigating these cultures, like being in the US and just trying to have, like, a, I guess, a normal American childhood, but having this kind of very cool thing that was going on, which I was studying with this teacher. And I think for some time when I was a kid, I didn't really fully grasp the enormity of it. I think I was just like, All right, well, this Alright, well, this is this grandfather type person, and maybe that's better. I think...

Nanette McGuinness  05:47

Yeah

Rajna Swaminathan  05:48

Sometimes I feel like that's better if you don't know the whole weight of things, you actually tend to absorb things a little better. Because I used to tell him, oh, you know, I have homework, I don't have time for class, you know... [laughs]

Nanette McGuinness  05:49

[laughs]

Rajna Swaminathan  05:49

...very like informative sometimes. But over time, I think I, you know, I started going to India more to perform, and kind of understood the context that I had been sort of trained in, and in this whole culture that exists there around this music. And so I think at least until I was about 18, I was quite serious about performing this instrument in that context. And so the intensities of that are just what they are, because there's just an expectation that you'll go to a certain depth with it, and also just the fact that there weren't any other female mrudangam players that I really knew of, not too many at least. I had one cousin of mine, who's a female mrudangam player, and then just a handful of others, really. So it was mostly a male dominated field. Still is. I think there are a few more women playing it now than there used to be. So it was just an interesting experience to go to India and then have people perceive you in a particular way and not know exactly how to react or say things like, Oh, well, you played well for a girl, I guess, you know, or things like that, which is not very encouraging, but you know it's, it's, I think, become coded as such a masculine art form that, you know it's, it's hard to know what to do with, with a woman playing it. So, yeah, I guess that was my upbringing with with mrudangam and with singing. I think, you know, I always loved singing, as I was... when I was a child. And I never totally took formal lessons in it, although, obviously I was absorbing a lot of music, both Carnatic and like, you know, we used to listen to a lot of different kinds of old Bollywood music at home I really loved, like the and maybe this is answering one of your other questions. But, you know, I think that the way that I sing now integrates a lot of different kinds of vocal technique that I just sort of absorbed and found my own way into but I did take some formal lessons as an adult with T. M. Krishna, who's a Carnatic vocalist and activist. So that was a sort of avenue that I went down for a little bit to just take some formal lessons that way. But yeah, I think... hopefully I answered [laughing] your question.

Nanette McGuinness  08:42

[laughs] Yes, and then some, gave me some more questions to think of, actually.

Nanette McGuinness  08:46

[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure and a special thank you to our guest, Rajna Swaminathan, for joining us today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast by clicking on the subscribe button and support us by sharing it with your friends, posting about it on social media, and leaving us a rating and a review. To learn more about E4TT, our concert season online and in the Bay Area, or to make a tax-deductible donation, please visit us at www.e4tt.org. This podcast is made possible in part by a grant from the California Arts Council and generous donors like you. For Good Measure is produced by Nanette McGuinness and Ensemble for These Times, and design by Brennan Stokes, with special thanks to co-producer and audio engineer Stephanie M. Neumann. Remember to keep supporting equity in the arts and tune in next week "for good measure." [OUTRO MUSIC ENDS]