The animated video has a sweet pig-tailed girl looking with wonder at the world. Once you hear Shreya Devnath’s mellifluous vocals in her debut single Kaatre, it’s your turn to look in wonderment. “Though I started off by learning Carnatic vocal at the age of eight, a few years after that and I developed problems with my vocal chords and I lost my voice. That’s when mom decided to get me trained with the legendary Sri Lalgudi Jayaraman — and I was introduced to the Carnatic violin,” says Shreya, sharing her journey in finding her voice again, one might say.
As a professional Carnatic violinist, Shreya curates, performs and tours with A Carnatic Quartet, an instrumental ensemble featuring the violin, nagaswaram, mridangam and thavil, and also duets with percussionist Praveen Sparsh, who also happens to be the co-creator of her new single video. “This single is about connecting lots of dots. My partner (Praveen) has been pushing me to produce independent music.”
“When I sang the melody— in my mind it was about a little girl discovering nature. From there the context was built — as the lyricist (Prem Chand) gave it more visual cues. Next, thanks to her sense of music, Susha brought in the illustrations and design that brought forth the visualisation.” We were fascinated when Shreya shared that Mylai Karthikeyan has used a special kind of nagaswaram called the ‘Timiri Nagaswaram’, to enable a higher pitch apparently, while mixing was done by B Prasanna.
“The best part about a project like this is the team work— we have to work very closely with every professional and there are many brainstorming sessions that adds so much value!”
Ask her about inspiration and she answers that there are no boundaries.
“It doesn’t have to be another musician or music or musical instrument.” What next? “I have a couple of other singles in the works. And yes, the album is almost ready — it is going to be more of free music. Not very constrained but expect the influence of Indian and classical music thanks
to my childhood.”
Kaatre is currently streaming on Spotify and YouTube.