On That Note: Memories of a Life in Music

A CANDID MEMOIR AND A WIDE-RANGING LOOK AT MUSICAL PRACTICE BY A LIVING LEGEND OF CARNATIC MUSIC. ‘Thinking back, after receiving the Sangita Kalanidhi, I came to realise that I was entering a stage where I might eventually sing a film song. I had evolved from the person who said, “I absolutely will not do it.”’ Sanjay Subrahmanyan is the musician of musicians—for his mastery of the craft as well as for his intellectual and theoretical depth of understanding of the art. An embodiment of rigorous traditional practice and constant innovation, he has today ventured out of the world of Carnatic music to explore new worlds and new ways of doing things, but always with his life in classical music intact. As he stands at this crossroads, Subrahmanyan looks back at his life in music. Unusually candid and quite ready to look idealised notions about art and music in the eye, this is as intimate a view of the world of Carnatic music as one is likely to have. Tracing his own life trajectory from childhood and through the decades as a professional musician, Subrahmanyan takes a close look at the nuts and bolts of the industry. He yanks the veil off the rarefied image of the artist, showing us the person who also needs to run a house, wishes to earn well and houses ambitions as well as a range of passions beyond his music. Written in collaboration with the novelist and journalist Krupa Ge, this autobiography is a refreshing portrait of the artist as a man of flesh and blood as well as a rare insight into the musical practice of one of Indian music’s cult figures.

Sanjay Subrahmanyan is a singer based in Chennai. A Sangita Kalanidhi awardee, his latest album is Anbenum Peruveli, which spans genres like blues and rock. This is his first book. Krupa Ge is a writer based in Chennai. She is the author of a novel, What We Know About Her (Context, 2021), and a narrative non-fiction book, Rivers Remember (Context, 2019).