Eight thousand miles can make familiar things look strangely new. For Venkatesh Padmanabhan and Jayashree, who left Tamil Nadu decades ago for Chicago, the festivals they grew up with slowly took on another meaning over time. They continued celebrating the Indian festivals they had grown up with, sharing them not only with their daughters and music students, but with American friends, neighbours and colleagues from different parts of the world. Over time, the celebrations became less about preserving a ritual and more about understanding what sat underneath it. That journey has now become Festivo, the new album from their family band Monsoon Showers, built around five festivals. The album, along with its companion film Making of Festivo Album on Festivals of India, is under consideration for the 69th Annual Grammy Awards.
Interestingly, the family did not begin by writing lyrics. They began with the festivals, the emotions attached to them and the ragas that could carry those feelings. Pongal eventually found its way into Malayamarutham, a bright morning raga whose energy felt closer to the abundance and farming roots of the harvest festival. They had first tried Kalyani, but Venkatesh says Malayamarutham felt more right.
Deepavali moves through Raga Jog, while Onam sits in Gambheera Nattai. The classical framework then meets the musical instincts of daughters Sneha and Sanjana, who were trained in both Indian and Western classical music. They brought in Gen Z pop influences, alternative writing and memories of growing up with these celebrations. The result is what the family calls raga-infused pop.
Venkatesh describes the process as using “short, staccato phrases, catchy patterns” and brighter progressions to find the pop avatar of each raga without losing its core. The songs are designed to be immediate, but there is more going on beneath the hooks.
There was plenty of exchange between generations along the way. Jayashree remembers Sneha adding a pause after the “Hello” in Holi Ray, something her classical training would not naturally have led her towards. “Our classical training pushes us toward continuous rendition,” she says, but that pause felt fresh.
The songs also carry ideas that sit beyond celebration. Inba Inba Pongal turns gratitude towards farmers, animals, the earth and sustainability. “Gratitude must become responsibility,” says Jayashree. Sneha sees gratitude as something that has to be reflected in how we treat the planet and the life around us. Holi Ray takes the festival’s colours and pushes them towards a broader idea of diversity, asking listeners to drop grudges and build bridges.
For Sanjana, working on Onam Sandosham changed the festival’s meaning too. She had always associated Onam with her Keralite friends, thorans and ada pradhaman. She continues, “But when we broke down the emotions behind it for the song, we understood its deeper message of community living, inclusion, and acceptance without expectations.”
The family is not trying to explain Indian culture to listeners as though it were a textbook. Sneha says the colourful, peppy music is meant to draw people in first, while the lyrics and documentary carry the deeper sentiments. The family is also conscious of the danger of making culture look exotic to an audience encountering it for the first time. The music gets people in first; the deeper values come through the lyrics and documentary.
The album has been approved for consideration across multiple Grammy categories, with Diya Diya Diwali also approved for the new Best Asian Pop Performance category. But the family’s larger ambition seems to sit beyond the ballot. After all, they did not travel 8,000 miles to make India seem distant. They seem to have travelled that distance and found the opposite: that the emotions behind these festivals can belong to people who have never celebrated them.
For a family that left India decades ago, distance seems to have made that recognition sharper. Jayashree says they began to feel like ambassadors of their culture, particularly because the festivals revealed something they considered universal: celebration as an act of community, extending beyond people to animals, nature, food and the world around us.
Still, the family seems less interested in the glamour of the submission than in where the music might travel next. Their larger hope is simple enough: that someone who has never celebrated Pongal, Onam or Diwali might hear these songs and come away understanding something about the people behind them. Not necessarily the food or the clothes or the rituals, but the instinct to celebrate difference rather than fear it.
India, Venkatesh says, has taught them to value diversity and celebrate one another despite differences in language, colour, origin or religion. The music is simply their way of opening the door.
Festivo is on all major streaming platforms.
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