Indian classical music meditative, cathartic: Nithya Rajendran

Saurabh Tankha

She uses Indian classical music to help working professionals and students explore its potential for enhancing creativity, focusing concentration, destressing, managing moods and emotions. She is a one-of-a-kind Indian artiste practicing this alternative method and is changing the mental wellness scenario of the country.

How can Indian classical music help professionals and students enhance creativity, concentrate better, destress and manage their moods and emotions?

Indian classical music is meditative and cathartic in nature. It allows emotional expression, collective cathartic experiences with others and even peaceful meditative states. These are immensely useful for any demographic needing to be creative, needing leadership skills and needing to manage the stresses of everyday professional and personal life. Even youth can benefit from achieving inner states of peace and emotional equilibrium to being forth their creative best. This would also help them deal with newer issues they face such as alienation and anxiety resulting from the impact of technology, social media and climate change.

How are you reaching out to people to ensure maximum benefits?

Music Vruksh is an umbrella under which I offer concerts, lecture demonstrations, teaching and workshops to help people appreciate the awesome beauty and depth of Indian classical music. My faculty are extremely qualified and capable people that I am very lucky to have. They have understood the sensitivity of the cause, which is, the need for Indian classical music to be accessible to one and all for its emotive, cathartic and spiritually healing potential. We use concert demonstrations in different platforms, as well as and online and offline forums, to reach people.

How successful have you been in trying to bring both the forms of music – Hindustani Classical and Carnatic Classical on the same stage through single artiste presentation? 

Carnatic and Hindustani classical music share the same roots and spiritual purpose. Through my solo performances, I bring both traditions together, creating a unified musical experience that connects audiences across the country.

I founded Music Vruksh to help more people discover classical music. Its greatest success is seeing even first-time listeners connect with a raga. With growing participation in my classes and increasing performance opportunities, my goal is to inspire many more people to embrace classical music as listeners and students.

Music has always been my first love. But I must admit that my ability to communicate and hone skills that are required to push Indian classical Music out there, have come from experiences in other professions. Communication, and making a case for a cause, is often as important as the cause itself. Through interviews like this one, and articles that I regularly write, I am trying to convince people to give Indian Classical Music a shot, to give it a chance to move and transform them. It could either be through urging them to come to my concerts and hear my case through the concert demonstrations that I do, or through urging them to start learning this musical form.

Can you tell us more about Music Vruksh? How successful has it been in achieving the goals you set when you established it?

I founded Music Vruksh to bring all my Indian classical music initiatives under one banner. Over time, my focus shifted from performing for personal fulfilment to using music to inspire, educate and transform others. It is deeply satisfying to see more people wanting to learn, understand and appreciate classical music and its spiritual depth. While these efforts are bearing fruit, I believe this is only the beginning. The potential of classical music to enrich humanity is limitless, and so is the journey.

Why, in your opinion, has there been this growing need for life coaches and mindfulness practitioners lately? It wasn’t the case till some years back?

Well, this is a question with a complicated answer. Also, there are so many dynamics at play here. Technology, climate change, social media and widening social challenges shape today’s reality. Further, instead of questioning why these problems exist, we should accept them and focus on finding solutions. We are dealing with shorter attention spans among youth, more stress-related illnesses, depression, anxiety and ideological wars. We are forced to accept this reality today. The way to deal with this is an inside-out approach. This means each of us has to heal emotionally and spiritually from within. Classical Music and meditative practices can help immensely with this. Hopefully as we become more centered and peaceful, the world will begin to mirror this state.