Indian American musician Saraswathi “Sara” Ranganathan is an Indian Classical veena performer and cross-cultural musical ambassador. She was born in Mysore and grew up in a musical family. Ranganathan learned veena from her mother Shantha Ranganathan and from Karnataka Kalashree EP Alamelu in Bengaluru (Bangalore). She has been performing and teaching for over three decades.
Saraswathi Ranganathan won the ‘Best Asian Entertainer’ award at the 37th Chicago Music Awards in 2018.
She is passionate about presenting the veena to a diverse audience through concerts at world music festivals, collaborations with artists from different genres, creative workshops at schools, lecture-demonstrations at universities for world music courses, educational performances at museums and other distinguished places of public interest, demos at libraries.
Ranganathan was the first Carnatic veena artist designated to perform in an off-Broadway play, “Jungle Book,” directed by Mary Zimmerman and supported in part by Disney Theatrical Productions.
Saraswathi Ranganathan holds a master’s degree in Sanskrit and an MBA from Loyola University of Chicago. She directs her non-profit music school, Ensemble of Ragas, in Schaumburg, a Chicago suburb, teaching Carnatic classical vocal and veena.
Discography:
The Magic of Veena, Vol. 2 (Ensemble of Ragas, 2011)
Refreshing Raga Blues (2015)
Author: Angel Romero
Angel Romero y Ruiz has dedicated his life to musical exploration. His efforts included the creation of two online portals, worldmusiccentral.org and musicasdelmundo.com. In addition, Angel is the co-founder of the Transglobal World Music Chart, a panel of world music DJs and writers that celebrates global sounds. Furthermore, he delved into the record business, producing world music studio albums and compilations. His works have appeared on Alula Records, Ellipsis Arts, Indígena Records and Music of the World.
Its nice to come across your interesting musical journey.
I am Gopal Navale , a singer somgwriter and music catalyst from Bangalore India and along with my wife Geetha Navale we have been working on what we call the Esperanto Music project, since 1998, playing concerts, making albumns but in a rather low key way.
Would love to collaborate and learn from you .
We have just started running a neigbourhood culture cafe in malleswaram Bangalore, where we live and hope to show case musical collaboration experiments. Like a “Live” Coke studio.
Regards and Best wishes,
Hi gopal,
I don’t know if you remember me but I was in India approx 26 years ago and went out with your friend siddhartha, I was showing my daughter pictures of India the other day and came across pictures of you, Greta and your two children, I wonder are you still in contact with siddgartha if so would you gave contact details for him? I hope you are all keeping well kind regards Kerry