Sukanya Ramgopal Breaking Gender Stereotypes

Sukanya Ramgopal Breaking Gender Stereotypes

- Srilatha Krishna

Sukanya Ramgopal has carved a singular place for herself in the world of Carnatic music as the only top-ranked woman ghatam player. A prime disciple of ghatam maestro T.H. ‘Vikku’ Vinayakram, her passion for the percussion instrument has taken her around the world.

The walls of her living room are lined with shelves of ghatams. A granddaughter of the celebrated Tamil scholar U.Ve Swaminatha Iyer, Sukanya grew up in Chennai in an atmosphere of Carnatic music. Predictably, she and her sister were made to learn vocal lessons first. Soon after, she was sent to learn violin from Vinayakram’s younger brother Gurumurthy.

She recalls: “Although I sat in the violin class, my attention was invariably on the mridangam classes going on in another room at Sri Jaya Ganesha Tala Vadya Vidyalaya. One day, when I was barely ten, I casually walked into the mridangam class where T.K. Harihara Sharma (Vinayakram’s father) was teaching, and told him that I wanted to learn from him. After the merest pause, he asked me to sit down and started my lessons right away. There was not even a formal request from my parents or the customary offering of fruits and flowers!”

“The training was intense. I spent every waking hour thinking about my lessons or practising. Even studies became secondary to the mridangam. Within a short span of three years, I had gained sufficient mastery over the instrument to perform on stage. My guru started sending me to accompany musicians on stage whenever opportunities arose.”