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His Highness Prince Sri Padmanabha Dasa Aswathi Thirunal Rama Varma, heir apparent to the throne of the Royal Family of Travancore, a zealous, stately, and dignified prince but his weapon of choice- the Veena.
Born on 13th August 1968
Born in the lineage of distinguished artists like Swathi Thirunal Rama Varma, Sethu Parvathi Bayi, and Raja Ravi Varma, Aswathi Rama Varma was bound to have inherited traits of creativity and aesthetic.
Aswathi Thirunal Rama Varma is known worldwide for his expertise in classical singing and vainik skills and has performed in several notable venues across the globe.
The purity of his notes and special emphasis on the precision of lyrics are noteworthy additions to his melodious and soulful singing. With this, he is also famous for narrating anecdotes, background stories, and explaining the lyrics of ragas and different compositions during his performances that keep his audiences enthralled.
Rama Varma recalls that it was in his primary school that he had been selected to participate in the Youth Music Festival as part of the singing group. They ended up winning it. Rama’s great-grandmother, Sethu Parvathi Bayi, a renowned musical artist and patron of Indian classical music herself, was quick to identify the young boy’s talent. Immediately after she got to know that Rama had won in a singing competition, she personally began on a quest to find him the best Guru.
After interviewing nearly every musician in Thiruvananthapuram, she asked Vechoor Hariharasubramania Iyer to take Rama as his pupil. While Varma began his formal training for vocal lessons under Prof. Iyer at the age of 13, he later went on to become one of the foremost disciples of Dr. M. Balamuralikrishna. He also learnt to play the Saraswati Veena from Trivandrum R.Venkataraman and Sangeetha Kalanidhi Prof K. S. Narayanaswamy.
He regards the learning of a musical instrument as extremely important for any vocalist; he says learning music without the knowledge of at least one instrument is analogous to learning an entire language without knowing how to write a single word.
While growing up, Rama would sit for hours at end and listen to the musicians and great maestros that visited the Kowdiar palace in Thiruvananthapuram, his residence, and at the Navratri Mandap during the annual festival of Navratri. The often borrowed updated collections of LP records from his father and sister, and the stimulating influence of Mozart, Beethoven, M.D. Ramanathan and Kishore Kumar are reflected in Varma’s eclectic mix of traditional teachings and western learnings.
His profound insights of the world around him are not only limited to his singing but can also be seen outside it. Rama Varma rectified the age-old practice of restricting women to perform and attend the nine-day festival at Navratri mandap. He invited veteran vocalist Parassala Ponnammal in 2006 as the first female to perform at the Navratri concert thus breaking a 300-year-old norm. It was with Rama’s efforts that musical vidwans came to be paid a dignified sum of money to match their professional capabilities.
To preserve his ancestral musical legacy, he also organises a Swathi Sangeethotsavam, a ten-day music festival annually in Thiruvananthapuram which attracts maestros of Carnatic and Hindustani music from the world over. The festival is an attempt to revive the compositions of Rama’s forefather- Maharaja Swathi Thirunal.
At present, Rama Varma takes online workshops and virtual lec dems through his YouTube channel - Musiquebox. Apart from great singing, one can also find the childlike Rama playing with his hamster in some of his videos.
He defines his relationship with music as one that gives him “a sense of purpose and direction.”
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