Aruna Sairam - Article in Deccan Chronicle for Music Festival 2010

Present perfect, agrees Aruna
December 26th, 2010
Shubashree Desikan

Aruna Sairam’s unique, powerful singing draws people by the thousands today. When and how did this growth happen? She says, ‘this was a very slow process. First I had very small audiences, used to perform in smaller concert halls. In fact, I collected my audience one by one. I always tried to go back and assess my performance. Did I feel good? Did the audience walk away with a sense of ecstacy and joy, forget themselves at least for a moment?
Sometimes this did not happen. Then, I would ask why and also think, next time this twenty should become thirty. Still, even I never dreamt of such a number. It grew from twenty to two thousand! If I had foreseen this, I would not have advanced even a step. Even now, when I feel something did not go right, or if it went wonderfully, I would not be able to sleep’.
She speaks about the balance that music restores in her: ‘when practicing, you work through technicalities, discipline, the grammar, repertoire, but somewhere, sometime, for a fleeting second you forget yourself and merge with something. That moment does not come often. This makes it worthwhile. We feel, if I have been gifted with a body and a form and a voice, it must be for this’.
My voice is by nature a bass voice, unusual in comparison with most women’s voices. It took me a lot of time to learn how to use it as a plus. I did work on it and practice yoga and breathing techniques, akaara saadhagam, special excercises. It’s all in breath control, the breath is the source of the voice’..
‘My teacher Brinda amma had a special voice, like a gopuram, widening at the bottom and tapering and rising, seemingly endlessly, at the top.It was not a thin high-pitched perfectly kuil-like voice, but it would do amazing things. This is what I modelled myself on. She had that rustic wisdom and would say, when you are on stage, imagine you are the queen; when you step down, be yourself. That confidence level is very important for a performance. On stage, if you sit and wonder what do I know, you will be lost!’