Sid hits the high note

id Sriram has been singing the Tiruppugazh, taught to him by his mother, since the age of nine. But little did he know that one day, he would sing it on a completely di…erent platform, for a largely western audience. His singing of the Tiruppugazh ‘Sivanar manam kulira’ at the Coachella festival in California was much talked about, with his Instagram video clip going viral.

“The verse is written by Arunagirinathar, and is dedicated to Murugan. I usually perform it at all my shows, and decided to include it at the Coachella gig too.

SI’m sure it’s the ‰rst time a Tamil verse has been sung at this popular international festival,” says the U.S.-based singer.

Sid began his performance with the Ganesha invocatory song ‘Vakratunda mahakaya’. “Though the rest of the set mainly consisted of numbers from my recent English album Sidharth,I felt it was important to tell the world about my roots. The silence and awe after both the prayer songs were unbelievable.”

At Coachella, Sid also got a great response for the songs ‘Do the dance’ and ‘Dear sahana’ from the album. I also performed my next single ‘One day god’. It’s more of an ambient soul song, done my way.”

Sid was born in Chennai in 1990, and his parents moved to Fremont, California, when he was a year old. He started learning Carnatic music from his mother when he was three.

The western music exposure came when he was seven, initially when listening to jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter on the radio. Finding a similarity between Carnatic vocal