Tamil Jazz Collective brings Carnatic fusion to global jazz stages

The Hindu

02-07-2025

When Maria sang, 'how do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?' in the Sound of Music, she was probably talking about Harini Iyer. Her hair is slicked back with a pastel bandana and a flowy shirt. Her look, as easy as Sunday morning, with a vermillion bindi firmly on her forehead.
This bindi or pottu, a part of the Tamil Jazz Collective logo, is a nod to her Tamil roots even as jazz has given her wings. Singing as her musical alter ego, Ella Subramaniam, the journey to synthesise this unique Carnatic-jazz sound has been a decade in the making.
Harini, a software engineer with a Masters in Engineering Management from the US, , credits her female gurus with her musical metamorphosis. Her mother initially 'pushed her to formally study Carnatic' and guru Akhila Siva is the soul behind her love for her Carnatic sound.
Back in 2014 while in the US, Harini collaborated with Krithi Rao, creating the duo Harmonic Flaneurs. The artiste's journey began with performances of Adele's 'Rolling in the Deep' at countless open mics. She learnt audio production and spent time furthering her craft at Berklee College of Music in 2018, where her mentor Lisa Thornson observed Harini had a natural predilection for Flamenco music that somehow synced with her Carnatic roots. This journey to Tamil jazz has clearly been long and eventful.
Harini explored this unique Tamil-jazz confluence with Ella Fitzgerald's track 'Misty'. She says that it is an exercise in vocal production, where you take any piece of music, and add your mother tongue to it to produces certain tonalities. 'To me singing jazz in English sounded plain, I'm not Ella Fitzgerald. You can only explore that music with empathy, it is not instinctive. I felt a lot more confident and grounded singing in Tamil,' she says. Harini taught at the Nepal Jazz Conservatory, but somehow 'she's a Carnatic singer,' did not quite fit, and neither did she feel a full embrace with only her jazz persona. One had to meet in the middle.
Creating a Collective
The Tamil Jazz Collective was born during the last few months of 2024, with Sahib Singh and Shylu Ravindran , creative forces behind the fusion band, Jatayu.
Sahib Singh says new sounds usually find a mixed reception in India. 'Earlier, when I had performed across South-East Asia, they were far more accepting of our experiments, than the Indian audiences. Off late, we find more crowds who come with an open mind, and enjoy the music even if they don't understand the language.'
With an original Tamil version of 'Take Five' by the Dave Brubeck Quartet, with the original lyrics penned by Brubeck's wife Lola and performed by Carmen McRae in 1961, the collective has received mixed reviews online. Purists are calling out their fusion music, while others cannot wait to attend a concert, collaborate or even host them in Louisiana, the birthplace of jazz, soul and the blues.
Performing in Kerala, Chennai, Bengaluru, Coimbatore and Goa, Harini, Sahib and Shylu, plan to expand the collective with an eclectic group of musicians, possibly adding a 'string section, double bass, horn section, saxophone, and ultimately a full orchestra, when the budgets accommodate multiple collaborators,' adds Sahib optimistically.
Currently Harini translates English lyrics of jazz songs into Tamil. However, 'just translation doesn't work sometimes because the metaphors and cultural context are different,' explains Harini. The collective has unique musical arrangements that even allow impromptu collaborations at various venues and cities.
Harini's musicology encompasses classics like 'Summertime' , 'All of Me' and 'It Could Happen to You' besides original compositions. As the collective moves forward, it has ambitions to, make Chennai a hub for cross-cultural collaboration, says Sahib, while Harini is in Berlin at the moment to study filming musical compositions, while also performing with multiple ensembles at various music venues across the city (Community Chai, Music Pool Berlin and Sofar Sounds Berlin). The trio is currently booked for performances across India through 2025, and is keen on releasing their music on streaming platforms this year.