Sumesh Narayanan | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
“It’s not hard to move to a rhythmic groove,” says percussionist Sumesh Narayanan. After all, he has been exploring the art of drumming for over a decade.
It was exactly 10 years ago that he joined popular playback singer Haricharan Seshadri, along with fellow artistes Ravi G, Aalaap Raju, Raghavasimhan Sankaranarayanan and Vikram Rozario at Kamaraj Arangam to present Haricharan’s ‘GrooviDa’.
Sumesh engages with the mridangam beyond classical concerts. , Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Perhaps, that’s what inspired him — many kutcheri and even a movie later — to engage with rhythm in his own distinct way. Recently, he debuted his solo act, ‘To groove is divine’, at Chennai’s Medai – the Stage.
Beyond the Routine
This was not the first time Sumesh has tried to look beyond the routine rhythm. Fans of his know him as the rugged percussionist from IndoSoul, he would make heads bob and hands sway with his beats that often stem from complex solusreflecting his 24-year-long training in mridangam.
But this was the first time he took the stage alone, a departure from a cookery set up, exploring a host of audio-visual elements of performance while entertaining the audience with his own juxtaposition: mridangam against cajon.
Sumesh, once part of the IndoSoul band, feels it’s beautiful to express your emotions through rhythm | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
“As a mridangist, I have been trained to produce sounds with both my hands. Intrigued by the cajon, I started playing it with my left hand and the mridangam with my right and was overjoyed with how well the two fused. The cajon provided me with a rounded rich bass sound, while the characteristic mridangam sound was kept intact. After discovering this unique combination, I wanted to make it mine,” says Sumesh.
Collaborating with a team of technicians, some for the first time and one, an old friend, Sumesh says TGID is a product of all his previous collaborations and the vocabulary he has amassed along the way, things that have helped him evolve into programming, arranging and composing art.
He’s excited to “find beauty in imperfection,” he says, for, that unique quality is what lends itself to a story on stage. Ask him more, and he says even he doesn’t know — the thing just unfolds on stage.
“You know how when you get on stage, there are moments of deep contentment that you experience after a well-executed idea? Well, that moment is completely unplanned. As passionate as I am as an artiste, I have an unending love to create. I can never satisfy my need to experiment. I just want to sit down and play all the sound that comes to head. Because, really, that is my story,” says Sumesh.
