How musician Aditya Prakash turned immigration politics into music

As for age-old composition in raag Bhairavi, it always tugged at his heart. The result is the juxtaposition of the agony of separation with the speech that has him blending political commentary with Carnatic classical music. He, at the time, was also researching Asian immigrants and learned about Angel Island, an immigration centre for Asians till 1940, which was more of a detention centre, where they were treated inhumanely. “It was a stark contrast with Ellis Island for white immigrants from Europe. Similar things were happening in the US with ICE agents. This music became my response to that,” says Aditya, whose album also features a song titled Insirgents, a play on the word insurgents often used to frame immigrants as a threat to national security. Then there was the complex world of Indian politics, one he read and heard about. “There was a general sense of xenophobia, of othering in a country that has such a diverse, multi-ethnic, multi-religious background. To see one monolithic identity pushed from both countries — I found a similarity,” says Aditya.

He, along with his sister and dancer Mythali Prakash, drew from the album to create ‘ROOM-i-Nation’, a gig theatre project, wherein he draws on Carnatic music alongside the history of Asian immigration while exploring identity and belonging. The project premiered in Mumbai at the NCPA and was part of Mahindra Kabira Festival in December.

Growing up in a home full of music and dance (his mother Viji Prakash is a Bharatanatyam dancer and teacher), Aditya was always awed by his mother’s fearless ability and desire to connect with different cultures. “I grew up around that. So it naturally influenced me,” says Aditya, who began learning Carnatic classical music at an early age from Debur Srivathsa, who composed and sang for his mother’s performances. He would regularly visit Chennai and also learned under the tutelage of Palai Ramachandran and Rose Muralikrishnan, among others.

Outside the home in LA, at school, he was the brown kid from the minority community. “I was teased for being Indian. So there was always the sense of wanting to fit in culturally on both sides,” says Aditya. But with that there was also the complexity of holding that marginalised side with the privileged one of being from the upper class and learning Carnatic music, something that also occurred to him while reading Carnatic vocalist TM Krishna’s books “ I felt very complicit in my apathy for not engaging with these topics earlier, spending my whole life practicing this music but not really knowing where it came from or the messy side to this music.

This upper caste privilege, which directly ties into this music that I’ve been able to learn and perform and have access to education that not everyone has — it is taken for granted. And then, on the other hand, being marginalised in the US…” says Aditya. That tension led him to find his expression through sound. He wondered about ideas of refinement and purity that are a part of this ‘Carnatic aesthetic’, considered thousands of years old. “And I started feeling aged by these ideas and wanted to just break free,” says Aditya, who wondered what he wanted his music to say. And that freed something in him.

For the last few years, he has been learning from Krishna and Carnatic violinist RK Shriramkumar. Learning from them, believes Aditya, got him deeper into Carnatic music and the integrity of its sound. “I was feeling a little bit directionless. I was influenced by so many styles. But they moved me back to this original sound I grew up with,” says Aditya, who also produced Singapore-based Carnatic vocalist Sushma Soma’s album Home (2022), which dealt with environment, climate change and sustainability.