Ranjana Ghatak on North Indian vocal technique, her dedication to the tradition and spreading knowledge and connection

As we immerse ourselves in this year’s Festival of Voice at St George’s, join us as we explore and celebrate the human voice in all its forms.

From performing with world-leading to musicians to organising workshops and immersions as an acclaimed teacher, Ranjana Ghatak is dedicated to sharing the beauty and powerful spirituality of North Indian singing. Having performed at Yale University’s Chamber Music Festival last year and leading with the opening song at the Commonwealth Games, Ranjana’s career is leaping from strength to strength. Ahead of her performance this weekend at St George’s, we caught up with her to find out more about the North Indian vocal technique, her dedication to the tradition and teaching and what audiences can expect from her upcoming concert and workshop.

In a sentence, what can our audiences expect?

An exploration of compositions and sound that are focused on remembering who we are.

Back to your roots, what first drew you to North Indian singing and was there a moment that sparked your interest in pursuing it further?

It’s thanks to my mum that I started it—she introduced me to the form. My parents are both passionate music lovers and they met through music. So when my mum detected that I had a tuneful voice, she put me in for lessons quite young, aged four. At that point there weren’t many performers of the tradition living in the UK but we were fortunate to have community musicians so I started learning with a friend of the family who had studied classical music growing up in India. And I really enjoyed it from the moment I started! Then, when I was around nine, I remember being able to do more things—I had moved to a different teacher who was a professional classical vocalist and he had taught me how to sing fast notation movements but also how to compose them. I found that really exciting—I loved the adrenaline of singing something fast—and it was then that I realised I had a real interest in the subject.

Growing up in London, how did the community around you inspire you and assist in your development as an artist?

Without realising, we always had a lot of music in the house and we would have parties at the weekend. My dad would also sing and my mum would play the guitar and having that musical environment really makes a difference and you soak in a lot, even if you’re not aware. Then when I was around fourteen, I had a really good music teacher at school and that was a real turning point. I was at a place where I’d started to feel disconnected to my own music. My primary school was very diverse but my secondary school was less so and it was a very different environment. I found myself going to school and then at the weekends going to do my Indian Singing classes and so I started to lose interest. I was going through that teenage phase of trying to find out who I was and who I was identifying with and then it was actually my music teacher who was new who took an interest in my

involvement in Indian Classical music and allowed me to incorporate it into my GCSE music. So that was a big moment for me because I was able to bring what I was doing outside of school into my music studies and that opened up my interest in music on a general level. I was suddenly involved in music on every level as much as possible. I just wanted to learn and absorb as much as possible.

Alongside your career as a performing artist, you are an experienced teacher and workshop leader having taught for the last 18 years and run workshops around the UK. How important is this to you and why?

It has become very important to me and it’s not something I ever thought I would do. I do feel passionate about sharing and giving insights for people to appreciate and understand this form of music because it’s not a type of music that is heard or performed all the time, even though we hear a lot more of it now than we did before. But I think like any classical music tradition, it’s often hard to understand what’s happening unless you have the vocabulary or you’ve had some training in it. In a pure classical performance, one piece can be an hour long and move through a lot of different tempos and styles. The words have a lot of importance, the emotions have a lot of importance so if you don’t know what’s happening, it can sometimes be difficult to connect to.

Even at school, whenever we had to give a talk about something we were interested in, I would share recordings and share a bit about the music. My love for teaching developed partly from teaching myself and my own journey in finding out what the music was actually about. But the music itself can bring so much joy, so much peace and so much healing and that’s something I want to spread. Also, in this kind of music we use a lot of sustained notes and that’s not something we hear all the time and I now realise how powerful that can be. My teacher—who I call my Guru—talks about this a lot. And it’s those qualities I see people experience within a tutorial or workshop—there’s some kind of shift that happens for them internally in how they feel and in connecting with the music. That always makes me feel really excited.

What do you hope to bring to the workshop at St George’s and what can people expect?

The workshop will be an introduction to the North Indian vocal form. I’ll be sharing the names of the notes, I’ll be teaching composition, a little bit about time cycles and ways to move the voice to create ornamentation. I’ll also be teaching participants to experience and hold sustained notes as well. I think for anyone who wants to connect with their voice, or already enjoys singing and wants to find out more about this form, they’ll definitely get an inside view.

You upcoming concert will be presented as part of our Festival of Voice – a celebration of singing and human voices from around the world. Can you tell us a little about the North Indian style of singing and the way in which the sound is produced?

One of the main qualities of North Indian singing is that it’s an extension of our speaking voice so we use a lot of our chest voice—our natural voice. We sometimes hear that in film music, but for folk, classical and devotional music, we’re using more of the chest and speaking voice. We also hear very particular sounds—there’s a lot of movement in the voice but there’s also a lot of stillness. The stillness we experience through practicing and hearing long notes. So if we’re listening to a Raga–which I’ve been taught to think of as musical beings or musical personalities—we need to develop these long notes and also ornaments in our voice so we can create more intricate movement. We also find out our own tonic so according to our own voice we will discover what our tonic is and we want to be able to sing two octaves in total—an octave above then four or five notes above that, then four or five notes below the tonic. So I think there’s no much to experience from learning this style. There’s a lot of technique that can be involved

in the study of this form, there’s a lot of emotion and beauty and connecting to something bigger than ourselves—there’s a real spiritual root to the music while expressing the human experience, too.

How does this affect the performer as they sing?

It really depends on the space I’m singing in and what you’re feeling from your interaction with the audience. It also depends on what I’m singing—whether that’s classical, devotional or even prayers in Sanskrit. In that sense, there’s something about that language that hits one differently than the others because it was always sung and can be really powerful. There can be moments of stillness and moments where you’re really in something with the other musicians and are exploring something together. The ideal experience is to be enjoying yourself and feeling happy, connected and open and if I can get to that place then I feel like I’m on the right path. There’s always so much to learn and grow from that I think if I’m at peace and happy with the sound, then you can open up more.

It does also make a difference who you’re playing with so that’s also why I’m so excited about this performance at St George’s. I’ve only ever performed once with the musicians I’ll be performing with at St George’s but they’re just incredible musicians. It’s my first time playing with Celine. We’ve gone through the pieces together and they’re just really wonderful musicians and really great people and that makes a massive difference as well.

For the evening performance, you will be joined by internationally-acclaimed musicians and collaborators on harp, esraj and tabla. How do these collaborations influence the sound you create and the way in which you perform?

It feels like with this project, I’m actually connecting more to myself more than I ever have before. It’s strange because as a musician you go on different journeys and you explore different sounds and I’ve really enjoyed exploring different soundworlds. Singing with esraj is something I’ve always wanted to do. I discovered that my Grand-Uncle used to play the esraj and I never got to meet him. It’s a beautiful instrument and there aren’t many musicians who play it. Especially with Kirpal Singh Panesar—who I’ve played with before—it really feels like he’s singing through the instrument it’s so natural and I felt really at ease in a way that I hadn’t before. I collaborated with the harp for the first time two years ago and I discovered recently that the harp was played in India two thousand years ago. Celine—who I’ll be playing with on Sunday—is a Western Classical harpist who also plays contemporary music. So we’ll be bringing two worlds together but also in some ways we’ll be playing something how it would have originally been played. So having and performing with these musicians makes me feel like it’s bringing me back to myself.

From singing the opening song for the Commonwealth Games to being a part of Yale University’s Chamber Music Festival last year, your career is going from strength to strength. As we look ahead to the rest of the year, what are you most excited about and what is on the horizon for you as an artist?

I’m looking forward to developing this project more actually and performing this more. I was also in Europe last week working and am looking forward to some exciting performances and collaborations next month. I also teach and I have a membership programme with my groups and students that I’ve recently launched. That’s been really, really fun because they just a group of really enthusiastic learners who are already musicians as well. So I’m looking forward to introducing subjects like vocal health and how to practice, in addition to bringing guest which feels really exciting and interesting to explore more. In October, I’ll also be running an in-person immersion course. I ran them for the first time last year but for this one I have a guest coming from India who is a really incredible vocalist and a senior student of my Guru.

Words by Louise Goodger