Ganavya, a vocalist and composer, joined KGNU’s Indra Raj to discuss her journey in music and how she blends South Indian Carnatic tradition, jazz, and experimental sounds. She shares how music has enriched her life, influenced by her family’s musical background and highlights songs that have deeply impacted her. (Interview date: 3/26/2025)
Indra Raj: You are listening to KGNU. My name is Indra Raj, and today we have the pleasure of welcoming a truly unique and inspiring artist. Ganavya is a vocalist, composer, and interdisciplinary artist whose music effortlessly bridges the worlds of South Indian carnatic tradition, jazz, and contemporary experimental sounds. She’ll be performing at the Boulder Theater on April 4th, and we’re thrilled to have her on the show today. Welcome to KGNU.
Ganavya: Thank you.
Indra Raj: We are going to be actually doing a little guest DJ set today where we listened to a few songs that you picked and. Hear about why you picked them, inspiration behind them and more. But before we do that, I’m wondering if you could give our listeners a little bit of information about who you are as a musician and what your journey has been as a musician and how it’s gotten you to where you are now.
Ganavya: Oh wow.
Indra Raj: It’s a big question. I know.
Ganavya: Where I am right now technically speaking is the second floor of a lovely home in Leverkusen in Germany. we’re downstairs. My partner’s son and his mom are playing a board game together. That’s where I am. But I think the real answer is, I wonder sometimes if people who are in the arts, but not even just in the arts, but all of us are compelled to have some kind of story, about how we got here, why we’re special, how is it that what we do? Yeah, it came to us and I guess the rest of us have a story about it. But I think that the real simplest answer is that it makes my life better. And so I do it and hopefully people who come in my path and are walking with me are moved by it too. It just so happens that my family was always close to music and that’s what a lot of people in my family have been doing for a long time, so it was a thing that was a little easier for me to pick up. It’s like a book that maybe saved someone’s life and then they just hand it to you and then you start reading it and before you know it, you haven’t put it down and it’s been 20 years of touring, but that’s the real quickest way I can answer.
Indra Raj: That is a beautiful answer. Thank you so much for that. And I have more questions, but I think. It would be great if maybe we could explore some of those through some of the music that you chose today. So we’re gonna listen together to a few pieces of music that you chose. The first piece is, actually Esperanza Spalding, who’s a hero of mine for sure. and maybe I have the wrong song pulled up. I have Formwela 2, but should it be Formwela 4?
Ganavya: Yes, it’s Formwela 4. It’s true that I did sing on the album. I am in Formwela 2. But it is also true that I didn’t select the song with me on it. I selected one called Fromwela 4. If you’re listening, it may not be that obvious, but formwela is pronounced differently because it’s spelled differently. It’s not spelled with a U, but spelled with a we, as in literally W E. So Formwela 4 is a song that I just happened to be there nearby when it was being recorded, and it’s a song that changed my life and a song that continues to change my life. It’s basically a prayer, a song that is meant for someone who’s struggling to express what they want to express to someone that they really love. It could be your brother, it could be someone you are in love with, your parents. And that song has carried me through a lot of difficult times. I remember once when I was in an acutely difficult and not great place. Physically I was with a few people that I wasn’t even sure that … I am careful to use the words I’m about to use because I feel like the weight of language is really present today in our lives, in our paths. But on this particular day, I didn’t feel safe. I was surrounded by people who were fighting a lot and I didn’t know what to do. And the song that I just happened to be there on the porch when it was being recorded, when the video was recorded. This same song that has meant so much to me quietly and personally. It just started blaring from the supermarket speakers and I just took a deep breath in and then walked up to the people I was with and I was like, “Hey, I think we should talk.” And it’s not that it solved anything, but the situation did go from, am I actually safe to, okay, we’re all just humans and we’re gonna work through this. But it’s a song that I love truly and deeply. I struggle a bit to talk about the people who have changed my life publicly because it feels like it remains to be more precious when we manage to hold onto it. But I can say that Esperanza Spalding, as you said, saved my life. And I don’t mean it just in music, which is definitely a thing. But I mean that in terms of, sometimes you find that your life force is dipping and you’re struggling to want to belong to this network of life. And you have, you weren’t even paying attention to it. You just slowly started committing this and committing this to the world. And then once in a while you have friends, teachers, sisters, brothers, whoever it is, beings, humans. And not in some instances, but in this case, a human being walks by and reminds you that it is possible to live with both integrity and doubt at the same time. That’s what happened. I lived in Oregon for a while near her and those years put strength back in my spine. That’s the story behind this song.
Indra Raj: So up next we have, I Asked the Mirror by Mikael Tariverdiev. I may be saying that incorrectly, but this is definitely not someone or a piece of music I’ve ever heard of, so please tell us why you chose this one.
Ganavya: On the list of people that I hesitate to speak of, because I want to hold on to its preciousness in my own life, but it’s still true, is of course Nils Frahm. Nils mixed the last album. Nils mixed and produced the upcoming album of mine, but the last album also called Daughter of a Temple, was about a week’s worth of music that Esperanza and I had managed to bring down to about an hour and 10, not just Esperanza and I, but Esperanza and I, Rajina, Ryan. We all managed to bring it down to about an hour 10. And Nils in the last phases of that album being born came in and made it into whatever form it is today. And it was, quite frankly, an honor to see him work the way he did for the days that he did sit with the material and just keep going at it. And even though at that time I had just met him, I already had this kind of concern that was developing inside me of how a human could keep doing this at the pace. and right around when he needed to recalibrate the equipment that he was using, to mix the album. He would play this exact song to test the clarity of the system. but it didn’t feel like it was just testing the clarity of the system. It also felt like it was a reprieve from the pace that otherwise life and the mixing and everything was happening. So now from time to time, when I listen to it, that’s what I think of. An incredibly, I don’t know what the word is, an incredibly, I want a word that’s not productive. I wanna say a focused generative. I don’t actually have the language to describe what I’ve seen in his heart. If I can say that his work and his heart, but. This song to me just represents that kind of quietness and the beauty of quietness that also has to happen even while we’re in the thick of a sound force finding our way through. So yeah, every time I hear this song, I didn’t know what the song was for so long, and it’s not one of those songs that you could shazam and find very easily. So I’m impressed that you found it, but I eventually started learning the words a bit and then found it in a strange way of reconstructing. But yeah, it’s, I believe the song has translated as I Asked the Mirror.
Indra Raj: What a nice and simple piece of music to test the system with. I was expecting something maybe more full to test something with, but I appreciate how soft and unassuming it is.
Ganavya: Yeah. Yeah, it is. It’s very clear. And I can’t understand the language, but I think during one of the rabbit holes of me going down, that phrase that she keeps repeating, I believe what the translation said is she just, she’s just repeating the phrase, I bless you. I bless you. I bless you. And there’s something, yeah, there’s just something sweet about that.
Indra Raj: Yeah, absolutely. Such a nice sentiment if nothing else. That’s wonderful. Thank you for sharing that. And we have one more piece of music today and I really think I’m gonna butcher this, but I think it’s called [inaudible]
Ganavya: Yeah, that’s true. 100% correct.
Indra Raj: All right tell us a little bit about this one.
Ganavya: I think by now it’s public knowledge that every single time, I have been asked to recommend songs, this has been on that list. So at this point I think I’m just risking creeping them out because there’s a random Indian women who can’t seem to not talk about them. So if you’re listening, I apologize. But I’m a fan. Their music is beautiful, is music that I also imagine is playing, at a part of a house that’s just the porch, it’s right outside. And we just came off of a two and a half week, I think two weeks or two and a half week run in Australia. And I think there’s many things I took away from it. And I’m still, you can see that I’m still groggy because the jet lag is quite present, but there’s many things I took away from it. Good things and things that I’m asking myself to hold tenderly. And one of them is that it is hard to be a musician who wants to be precise because with precision. I actually asked Nils very recently from a place of pain, does all precision require force? Because if you’re coming in, especially when you’re someone like Nils and you know you’ve sold out the Sydney Opera House twice, you’ve sold out Hammer Hall, which is or used to be, if not still remains to be the largest hall in the continent. You probably feel responsible for 2000 to 2,500 people who are coming and everything seriously, if seriously is the word from how much sound the curtains can absorb and, but the thing is with more precision. The definition of precision is that some things have to be left behind, or your opinion is clear and it may not have the capacity to include other people’s opinions. That’s what precision is. Which means that sometimes, and I’m this, I’m not talking about, of course, Nils’ tour, I just mean in general if you’re a musician or an artist who has a very specific idea of how you want something to be born, I do think it’s strange that the word execution can also mean birth, while it literally also translates to death. There’s something there about the executing force and I just, I don’t know. I just, I recently asked Nils, do you think that all precision requires force? And I think his answer was stunningly beautiful, which is, not all precision requires force, but force requires precision. And I am still going in circles about this and most of the people that I know who made it to the end, like my grandmother or Peter Sellers, people I know who are, who in my grandmother’s case, who made it to the end, or in Peter’s case, who are elders who are deeply productive and still deeply connected to this horse, know how to birth their art really well and precisely, but they don’t take it so seriously that, they’ve lost the enthusiasm in what they’re doing, they’re just deeply curious, and they seem to have found the mathematics on knowing what parts of life to take seriously. But equally importantly, what parts of life not to take too seriously. And their hearts are still soft. They’re still smiling and generous and joyful. And I think that’s my only kind of prayer for being a musician or whatever it is that I’m meant to do for the rest of my life, one day at a time is can I just find the beauty in life? And part of that, I think is just remembering that at the end of the day, I don’t need fancy equipment. I don’t need good microphones. These are all cherries on top. But at the end of the day, I sing to myself when I’m walking. I sing with the trees, and that’s enough. That is enough. And it’s always meant to be enough and not to take the wrong set of things too seriously. And I think that when we listen, playing any song, but in this particular instance, that’s what I remember. I remember all the music that I made before technology found me, and it still remains to be the life saving force. But yeah that’s my continued spiel. I hope they are not deeply creeped out by me by now.
Indra Raj: Thank you so much Ganavya, for joining me. It’s been such a pleasure to have you and to listen to this music that you’ve chosen today.
Ganavya: Thank you.
