I don't want to point to a particular piece at the cost of incurring the wrath of that ragamalika piece lovers but many such 'concert ragamalikas' exist and many have their own set of steadfast fans. 'Did you know that piece has 23 ragams in it. The performer is assured of a thundering applause once the piece is completed. The line could be as silly as 'kaalai eyundhavudan soodana kapi' (Guess which ragam this line would be sung in.) As soon as the name of the ragam is heard (even if the ragam has not registered itself), you will see lot of blissful faces around you.

Most of the audience waits expectantly for such a line to appear. The idea is to ensure the name of the ragam appears in the line and to change the ragam for every line. And they are composed with this requirement in mind. Their only aim is to add 'pep' to the proceedings. One category of ragamalikas are what I term as 'concert ragamalikas'. Then there is 'Sree Chankraraja Simhasaneshwari' which was made extremely popular by Maharajapuram Santhanam. 'kandu kandu' was a creation which MS relished singing. Kadayanallur Venkatraman tuned some verses of Poonthanam Namboothri's 'Gnana Paana' for MS to sing.

Here the ragas used are of more 'classical' carnatic variety. The same Jayadeva's composition is set to a different ragamalika by Semmangudi. This has ragas which are Hindustani oriented. For 'pralaya payodhijale' we have the rendition by MS, which probably was set to tune by Kadayanallur Venkatraman. As we can imagine, since these are not 'standard' tunes, multiple tunes exist for the same poem. Similarly, Jayadeva's poem, 'pralaya payodhijale', which talks about Vishnu's Dasavataram is set to ragamalika. Semmangudi and his team changed this into a ragamalika and now, thanks to that rendition of MS, everyone knows and enjoys 'Bhavayami Raghuramam'. If the whole 'Bhavayami' is in Saveri, the audience may not worry whether Rama finally rescued Sita or not!!! They would have lost interest by then. One problem with such an approach is when the concerned krithi is very long audience tend to lose interest after some time if the raga doesn't change. It is well known that the Ramayana krithi, 'Bhavayami Raghuramam' had all its stanzas set to Saveri ragam. Each of the stanza can be tuned in a different ragam ensuring you hold the attention of the audience for a long time. Vani graduated from Cal State University, Fullerton in May 2011, with a bachelor’s degree in Kinesiology.One area where ragamalika comes to the rescue is when composing music for long poems / slokas etc. She is participating in the ‘Spirit of Youth’ festival by the Madras Music Academy in August 2013. She has also performed in various other cities within India, such as, Hyderabad, Trichur, and Coimbatore. During the December Season in Chennai, Vani has performed at highly prestigious sabhas such as Mylapore Fine Arts, Sri Krishna Gana Sabha, Brahma Gana Sabha, and Thyaga Brahma Gana Sabha (Vani Mahal). She has been performing in the US and in India for many years.

Vani shifted from the US to Chennai in 2011 for the sake of pursuing music. With annual trips to Chennai from 2002 onward, she continues on with advanced training under Smt. Vairamangalam Lakshminarayanan, while in Chennai during summers. She also had the opportunity to learn from Late Sri. Padma Kutty (Edapally), based in Irvine, California.

She started her initial vocal training at the age of five, under the guidance of Smt. Vani Ramamurthi, a Carnatic Vocalist, is a disciple of Ranjani-Gayatri. Nithya will be graduating from Lawrence Magnet Middle School with honors and is enrolled in the Van Nuys Magnet High School for Fall 2014. She participates and performs regularly at the Thyagaraja day and Dikshitar day events organized by South Indian Music Academy (SIMA) and at Swathi Thirunal events organized by OHM.She has also participated in the junior level Krithi vocal competition organized by Cleveland Aradhana and has won awards for two consecutive years. In September 2012, at the age of 11, Nithya performed her first solo concert in Los Angeles. Nithya is not only blessed to have such dedicated teachers, but also to have a sister, Sandhiya Ravichandran and a cousin Ramya Ramadas, who have rendered great support for her music learning and career. From age of seven (7), she has been receiving advance level training from Performing Musician Guru K.N Shashikiran. Sankari Senthilkumar from the age of five (5) and continues to take classes from her. Nithya has been learning from her guru Smt. Nithya Ravichandran who just turned into a teen, is very passionate about learning Carnatic Music.

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