PITCH-PERFECT PROGRAMME MAKES SCHOOL FUN

The children of a top Bollywood playback singer are taking the power of song to South Indian schools of all economic brackets, writes Priti Salian

It’s about 10am on a breezy Tuesday, and pupils in a government-run school in Bangalore are rushing back to their classrooms after the school assembly. Looking bright in navy blue tunics or trousers, teamed with a light blue shirt, the 13-year-olds of eighth grade are excited about their music class. In their hustle to take their seats first, a few knock into each other. But they are soon settled, and impatiently wait to receive a copy of the music book being distributed by a student. A few begin to rehearse what they learnt from last week’s class in pairs. A moment later, their music teacher, Gayathri Prakash, enters the room and switches on soft, instrumental background music. Prakash is a Carnatic singer by profession, and a music educator trained by the Subramaniam Academy of Performing Arts (SaPa), the institution that runs weekly music classes here, at Geddalahalli Government School.

SaPa, which was launched in 2007 as an academy to train children in Indian and Western classical music, is helmed by sibling musicians – Ambi and Bindu Subramaniam. Four years ago, to reach out to more than just the handful of children attending the academy, SaPa expanded its music education programme to private and government-run, as well as those for underprivileged kids. Geddalahalli Government School in Bangalore is one of the institutions catering to underserved children in the city, where preschoolers to ninth graders receive musical education, called SaPa in Schools, with no cost to the school or kids.

At the school, Prakash begins her music class with a vocal warm-up. The room lights up with 30 confident voices singing in pitch. Prakash then moves to their first activity of the day. “How many pulses per beat are in tha kit tha?” she asks. “Three, ma’am,” the class of 30 replies in unison. “And how many in tha ka di

mi?” “Four,” they scream. “Then how many times should the two beats be sung to land up together,” Gayathri asks. The kids quickly do the mental calculations. “Tha kit tha should be sung four times and

tha ka di mi, thrice, to end up at the same time,” the kids say.

She divides the class into two and assigns them a beat each. Both groups sing their beat together and loudly, three and four times respectively, to prove their point.

Without her students’ knowledge, Prakash introduced the mathematical concept of deriving patterns. “In the music class, they are challenged, not forced, to do these calculations, so they do it without their usual fear of math,” she explains.

Math is not a subject that’s taught creatively in schools, notes Bindu Subramaniam. “We are taught to be right all the time, so we forget to look at better ways to solve a problem,” she says. “If we can get the concept in, and get the kids to be creative about it, that’s enough of a foundation to be built for both music and math.” Finding parallels between music and other subjects is just one of the unique parts of SaPa in Schools. The programme emerged from Subramaniam’s dream to provide a comprehensive education, which could not only creatively teach music and communicate a deep passion for it, but also give an extra dimension to the world of the children due to the with the conversations it initiates.

“The most important thing for us is that kids should have fun,” she says. “As long as they only know that they learnt a cool song and don’t worry about the nine languages or three pulses per beat they also learnt, our purpose is served.”

A vocalist, pianist and songwriter, Subramaniam has grown up in the lap of the country’s best artists - her father, L Subramaniam, is an accomplished violinist and her mother, Kavita Krishnamurthy, a top Bollywood playback singer, whose songs are mimed by actors. Being a doctoral student of music, she is aware of studies that support how music helps build social skills, promotes teamwork, communication and reduces aggression among kids. She always wanted to take these benefits to every child, irrespective of their capacity to pay for it.

Before launching SaPa in Schools in 2014, Subramaniam started to give wings to her dream by working with 15 orphanage children, where she conducted music lessons. “When we started, we found that everyone was so involved in taking care of the kids’ needs that nobody looked at them as talented and worthy individuals,” she recalls. Introducing a creative component in their lives shot up the children’s self-worth. Each time she visited, the kids told Subramaniam, “Akka [elder sister], look, I can sing this song really well” or “Akka, l can dance on this number.”

That was when Subramaniam decided she should scale up by connecting with schools. Today, SaPa in Schools reaches 20,000 children in 40 schools in southern India, with 8,000 of the pupils from underprivileged backgrounds.

During her reconnaissance of educational institutions, Subramaniam found that Indian schools don’t have a music curriculum at all. They just have guidelines. “Most of the time, schools try and find a teacher who teaches what she knows.” A methodology is completely non-existent. Wherever music