{"id":1476,"date":"2024-05-04T16:53:39","date_gmt":"2024-05-04T16:53:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yoganandafortheworld.com\/story\/?p=1476"},"modified":"2024-05-04T16:55:50","modified_gmt":"2024-05-04T16:55:50","slug":"conversations-with-ananda-saiganesh-sairaman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yoganandafortheworld.com\/story\/conversations-with-ananda-saiganesh-sairaman\/","title":{"rendered":"Conversations With Ananda — Ch. 67, Saiganesh Sairaman"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Saiganesh<\/a>A world citizen, Saiganesh grew up in a traditional Hindu family in India.<\/strong> Trained as an Indian Classical musician, he is a frequent soloist at Ananda. He was interviewed by Nayaswami Asha for a series of conversations with younger Ananda members. (Photo: 2000s)<\/em><\/p>\n

Asha:<\/strong> I\u2019m aware that you began singing when you were growing up in Chennai, in India, and that you started training in the Indian classical tradition at a very young age. How did you become interested in music, and how did you study when you were a young boy?<\/p>\n

Saiganesh:<\/strong> I was fortunate to be born into a family where my mother and grandmother were interested in music, so there was always a lot of music around as I grew up, and when I think about it, I imagine there was also a carryover from past lives, because I was born with that interest as well.<\/p>\n

Even as a small child I was thrilled and absorbed and fascinated with Indian music. I started taking lessons when I was five or six years old, which is considered normal and ideal in Indian music, because it\u2019s a time when your voice can be easily molded into the right patterns.<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s where my journey with Indian music began, and until I came to the US at twenty-four my exposure to music was strictly limited to Indian classical music in all its forms, and I never studied or listened to much of any other kind of music.<\/p>\n

Asha:<\/strong> Your Indian peers here in the US and in India are probably a lot more aware of American pop culture than you are, because you lived completely outside of those influences.<\/p>\n

Saiganesh:<\/strong> Yes. The music training in India is not very different from attunement to a guru or a spiritual path, and it\u2019s considered very important to be careful what music you listen to, because you can subconsciously start imbibing the traits of the other forms, including the way you would use your voice and the way you would place the notes. It\u2019s emphasized to an extreme degree that you shouldn\u2019t even listen to music from a different teacher, because you\u2019re trying to tune into the particular aesthetic from a particular lineage, and it\u2019s a guru-disciple relationship.<\/p>\n

So I wasn\u2019t unique in tuning everything else out, and it was natural for me because I wasn\u2019t all that drawn or interested in it. But it\u2019s also a fact of how the classical traditions train you.<\/p>\n

Asha:<\/strong> Did you stay with the same teacher the whole time?<\/p>\n

Saiganesh:<\/strong> No, actually. I was a very picky child. [Laughs] But no, I learned vocal music from multiple teachers. I don\u2019t have strong memories of the relationship, or the aesthetic, or the essence of the music until I was about twelve or thirteen. As much as I was learning before then, I wasn\u2019t absorbing it with the same depth as I was later. Or maybe I was, but I\u2019m not able to recollect it in detail.<\/p>\n

At that point I actually switched to violin for four or five years, although I never tell that people about it, because if you haven\u2019t played violin for five years it\u2019s like you\u2019re starting over. So it\u2019s now just a part of my distant past.<\/p>\n

After the diversion into violin I sought traditions and musicians that were in tune with the styles I wanted to express, which were more delicate and inward, and where there was less of fireworks. [Laughs] Because Indian classical music tends to have a lot of that, too, but I was more interested in the gentler, subtler, finer aesthetics.<\/p>\n

In college I continued to learn from two or three teachers, and I was making very conscious choices about what traditions I wanted to be part of.<\/p>\n

Asha:<\/strong> Give us an idea of what the vocal training was like when you were five. What did you do then and in the years after? How did you train your voice?<\/p>\n

Saiganesh:<\/strong> It\u2019s really not very different from Western music, in the sense that you do take lessons. I don\u2019t know what they\u2019re called in the Western classical training, but you go through lots of exercises that aren\u2019t compositions or music that you would perform, because they\u2019re intended to mold your voice and teach you different ways of singing.<\/p>\n

The biggest difference between Indian and Western music is that you have to imbibe Indian music from a guru. It\u2019s not written down on paper, so whatever I\u2019m singing, there will be a skeleton on paper for me to refer to and to know what\u2019s coming next, but how it\u2019s exactly going to sound only my teacher can tell me. And it becomes all the more true when you start studying raga music, because the ragas have moods. The ragas have such subtle shades of emotion and human expression that you have to understand it by listening to somebody express it, and by tuning into what they\u2019re feeling.<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s how you are primarily training as a child, and it\u2019s what I did for many, many years. Certainly the biggest aspect of it, which is different not just from Western music, but I think from how the arts are seen all over the world today, is that when you train as a child, you aren\u2019t training toward the annual concert in your school that\u2019s going to take place in March.<\/p>\n

In India these things are shifting, because India is now a fairly westernized country and there are lots of cultural influences from the West. So there are annual concerts in schools that young people are training for, but when I was learning that wasn\u2019t the case, which I feel very grateful for.<\/p>\n

The training is not performance-oriented. It\u2019s for you to discover something within yourself, to express yourself in ways that you\u2019re not used to, to feel things that you are not accustomed to feeling, and then have that naturally grow and blossom into something beautiful. It is not necessarily about, you know, on March 18 I\u2019m going to perform in this hall with this group, so I need to be training for that performance.<\/p>\n

Asha:<\/strong> Can you give examples of some things you wouldn\u2019t normally feel, that you might be asked to feel and express?<\/p>\n

Saiganesh:<\/strong> Music is such a powerful medium for the expression of feeling, and it\u2019s not that we can\u2019t feel a certain emotion when we sing, or at anytime, but our awareness of what we\u2019re feeling and what we\u2019re expressing may be limited \u2013 for example if we\u2019re preoccupied.<\/p>\n

In Indian music the meaning of the word raga<\/em> is \u201cessence\u201d or \u201cfeeling.\u201d It\u2019s the shades of how you express yourself. So every note, every tune, every melody has an emotion and a human feeling that it is expressing, and when you channel it through yourself, and when you channel it through your voice, you start to become aware of sorrow and happiness and joy and peace and calmness, and all of these shades of various emotions and feelings that are part of you. But the mental preoccupations that we are caught up in most of the time keep our senses pointed outward. Singing is a tool for self-awareness, in a sense, but it\u2019s also a tool for self-discovery, because you\u2019re working with your feeling nature in a very powerful and deep way.<\/p>\n

Let me share something with you. I\u2019m going to sing a melody that expresses the feeling of joy or contentment and happiness. [sings]<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if that came across.<\/p>\n

Asha:<\/strong> It does come across. When you came to Ananda, you began singing Swami Kriyananda\u2019s songs. How did the experience of singing his music compare?<\/p>\n

Saiganesh:<\/strong> I think it might be a unique trait of mine, because I wouldn\u2019t say that all classical musicians are this way, or that Indians are this way, but I was so accustomed to tuning out other music. As I explained, I\u2019m generally not looking to take it in, for example if I\u2019m in a setting that I\u2019m not familiar with. So I entered Ananda that way, and in my first few days and weeks I had no idea that Swami Kriyananda even composed music.<\/p>\n

But in time the words and poetry and feeling of the singers invited me to start tuning into the music, and that was my first impression. But I think that anybody who\u2019s heard Swami Kriyananda\u2019s music will perhaps agree with me that the power of the music, and more importantly, the simplicity of it, the simplicity of the melody, the simplicity of its expression, the simplicity of how we perform and bring it together, is rather stark.<\/p>\n

To me, it\u2019s rather unusual for music to have so much power and be so simple. And yet when I began to realize what was there, and I started singing the music, I was able to open myself to it immediately. And because I was unaccustomed to music other than Indian classical music, the poetry was stunning to me, and that in itself was honestly such a warm invitation to tune into the music, because it was so deep and so meaningful to me.<\/p>\n

One of the first songs I heard was \u201cLife Is A Dream,\u201d and I was deeply moved in a way that no Indian music perhaps had ever moved me.<\/p>\n

Asha:<\/strong> Can you give us a verse of that song.<\/p>\n

Saiganesh:<\/strong> [sings] \u201cLife is a dream, time like a stream carries our burdens away. Never despair, joy\u2019s everywhere. Love can befriend you today.\u201d<\/p>\n

The simplicity of it I think is the complete essence of Swami Kriyananda\u2019s music, because Indian music, as powerful as it is, and I\u2019m saying this as an Indian musician who enjoys Indian music intensely all the time, but Indian classical music is very, very stylized. It\u2019s very complex.<\/p>\n

Asha:<\/strong> Stylized \u2013 what does that mean? That it has to be sung a certain way?<\/p>\n

Saiganesh:<\/strong> Yes, there\u2019s a long tradition and a style and a learning process. There\u2019s an aesthetic. There is a form of expression, and there\u2019s so much grammar. And maybe for the audience it feels like I\u2019m just oscillating my voice, or I\u2019m just going up and down with a lot of freedom, but as a musician I know that there\u2019s so much grammar behind what I\u2019m doing, and it is freeing once you\u2019ve learned the structure and you\u2019ve trained yourself, but I do function within the confines of that style.<\/p>\n

Asha:<\/strong> And when you came to Swami\u2019s music, how did it compare?<\/p>\n

Saiganesh:<\/strong> There is a certain style to all music, and I think Swami\u2019s music also has a style, but it\u2019s not at all intricate or complex. There\u2019s a simplicity to it that, to me, is actually outside of any particular culture.<\/p>\n

I have to share this with you because I sing a lot of Swami Kriyananda\u2019s songs that have a tamboura accompaniment. People would sometimes tell me, \u201cYou\u2019ll sing that song really well because you\u2019re an Indian musician.\u201d And I would tell them, \u201cYes, I am an Indian musician, but I have to say this particular song has its own reality.\u201d Like, for example, \u201cI\u2019ve Passed My Life As A Stranger, Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asha:<\/strong> Now you have to sing it.<\/p>\n

Saiganesh:<\/strong> [sings] \u201cI\u2019ve passed my life as a stranger, Lord, roamed far in foreign lands.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s sung with a tamboura accompaniment, and the voice and the instrument blend as if they were made for each other. But it\u2019s not Indian music. It is original music. You cannot fit Swami Kriyananda\u2019s music into a single style, because every song stands by itself.<\/p>\n

There are certainly a lot of elements that are common in this music. There are phrases or notes or ways in which he composes that you can see as patterns in most of the songs, but everything is original.<\/p>\n

Asha:<\/strong> Earlier you said that you came into an all-sing \u2013 please finish that thought, because we lost it.<\/p>\n

Saiganesh:<\/strong> I was remembering how I was being moved more deeply than any piece of Indian music had moved me.<\/p>\n

Asha:<\/strong> Why did that happen?<\/p>\n

Saiganesh:<\/strong> I think it was partly how deeply everybody was feeling the meaning of the words as they were singing them together.<\/p>\n

Asha:<\/strong> So part of it was the experience of community?<\/p>\n

Saiganesh:<\/strong> Part of it was the experience of community, but also the depth that the artists brought to it. By artists, I mean the hundreds of people who were gathered, all bringing a depth to it because it was personal and meaningful for them individually. It wasn\u2019t just the beauty of the melody and the notes that they were entranced by, but the depth of the feeling that came from inside.<\/p>\n

And more important, the simplicity of it, and how accessible that vibration was, in that simple melody. Which might have been more difficult to access if you\u2019re not an Indian person, if you\u2019re from Japan or Korea.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the same as if I sing an Indian song to you, and it\u2019s exotic for you, but there\u2019s so much going on in your mind that it\u2019s standing between you and the essence of that feeling that I\u2019m trying to express. Whereas if you\u2019ve grown up with me, or you\u2019ve grown up with this tradition, that structure or style will not be a barrier but a conduit for carrying that feeling to you.<\/p>\n

And I think that\u2019s where Swami Kriyananda\u2019s music is extremely powerful, and where it belongs uniquely to this age, because I think it stands outside those barriers. It stands outside of those styles and forms that we are used to because we come from a certain culture.<\/p>\n

Asha:<\/strong> Swami Kriyananda was classically trained and deeply aware of Indian music, and he sang beautifully, but he deliberately wanted to write music that would be, first of all, accessible to everyone. He wanted the music to be part of the community, and to unite the community. So he wanted everybody to be able to access it. And in this regard the cross-cultural aspect is interesting.<\/p>\n

When Swami moved to India in 2004, he was curious to know if the Indians would like the music. I remember the first time a group of us sang for a small group of Indians in 2003, shortly before the work started there, and how much they liked the music. And Swamiji was relieved, because he realized that if the music would speak to the Indians, the vibration behind it would come with it, and it would unite us. So it\u2019s fascinating to hear that you\u2019re saying exactly the same thing, having crossed the cultures. Have you developed favorites of Swami\u2019s songs?<\/p>\n

Saiganesh:<\/strong> I sure have. I think all of us have. I always ask people about their favorite song of Swami\u2019s, and I don\u2019t think anybody has named the songs that are my favorites. [Laughs] I like the songs that are deep and have a little bit of a grave note to them. It\u2019s hard to name a single absolute favorite, but some of them are \u201cLife Flows On Like A River\u201d and \u201cTo Death I\u2019m A Stranger.\u201d And I really enjoy the song that we sing for Good Friday, \u201cLet This Cup Pass From Me.\u201d<\/p>\n

So the depth of it, because I\u2019m very accustomed to bringing a lot of feeling to music, and songs that have that intensity to them appeal to me. I was thrilled when I heard \u201cLife Flows On Like A River\u201d for the first time, because it felt so anciently familiar. There was no part of me that was thinking I was hearing it for the first time.<\/p>\n

Asha:<\/strong> Can you sing a few lines so people will get the feeling.<\/p>\n

Saiganesh:<\/strong> [sings]<\/p>\n

Life flows on like a river
\nThat homes to the sea.
\nOne hour bounding through mountain vales,
\nOne hour winding through a lea.<\/p>\n

None may linger on the way.
\nNone may coax time to stay.
\nFleeting scenes move by us like a dream.
\nCling not, none will be your own.<\/p>\n

Never grieve to be alone.
\nGo within you, there\u2019s your home.<\/p>\n

Asha:<\/strong> Oh my. Swamiji said that the music that came through him \u2013 because he never called it his own \u2013 was a new vibration of consciousness expressed as music. What do you think about that way of describing it?<\/p>\n

Saiganesh:<\/strong> It is a little beyond me to know exactly the gravitas of what he\u2019s describing, but it makes perfect sense, because I\u2019ve always felt there is nothing like it.<\/p>\n

To think of the tremendous quantity of music that has been composed for untold millennia, and to think of the tradition in which I was trained, where some of the music may be hundreds of years old, and to realize that there has been nothing like this music before, is mind-boggling. And I think there\u2019s a lot of truth in that.<\/p>\n

Asha:<\/strong> Everything that Swamiji did was to serve Master\u2019s work of ushering in an expression of eternal truth for an age of energy-awareness. And while this music may not have taken over the planet, it\u2019s there for people to be uplifted by it. And what do you think the effect of it will be?<\/p>\n

Saiganesh:<\/strong> This is how I describe it to people and to myself, so that I can make sense of it. It\u2019s actually a quote from Nayaswami Devi, from one of her talks. \u201cSwami took the deepest aspiration of our hearts, the highest and the deepest aspiration, and gave it tangible expression as music.\u201d<\/p>\n

When we tune into his music, we are tuning into an aspiration that already exists within us. When I said earlier that music is powerful, it was in the context of your asking me about my training in Indian classical music. And I bring it up now because I think the same way about Swami\u2019s music.<\/p>\n

When I said it was powerful, I meant singing it. I meant vocalizing it. And while I do think there\u2019s a lot of power in listening to it and living in the vibration of his music all the time, I believe there\u2019s even more power when we are able to vocalize it. Because then you realize that it\u2019s vibrating with the aspiration that\u2019s inside you, and it brings you back to your center and aligns you with that aspiration in a moment.<\/p>\n

I sing Swami\u2019s songs a lot when I\u2019m driving by myself. David Eby tells how he was singing one of Swami\u2019s songs while he was driving, and how he was thinking how simple it was, but then he realized that his consciousness had shifted so dramatically that he had to pull over and think about what had just happened.<\/p>\n

I started singing his songs organically while driving, and I would always notice after thirty or forty seconds, \u201cI\u2019m different. I\u2019m thinking about things differently. I\u2019m feeling differently. I\u2019m not thinking about the things I was thinking two minutes ago.\u201d And I believe Swami\u2019s music is a doorway for us to connect with our own higher aspirations.<\/p>\n

Asha:<\/strong> That\u2019s a wonderful thought, because it is a vibration, and we are vibration. In his book A Tale of Songs<\/em> he urges us to sing or play this music. Do you still sing Indian classical music?<\/p>\n

Saiganesh:<\/strong> I sing Indian classical a lot. Indian classical music is also very powerful; it\u2019s just different, and just as we all have interests, Indian classical music has always been mine. A unique feature of Indian classical music, at least in the kind of training I had and how we present it, and in Indian art in general, is that the arts are seen as a very natural way of expressing human emotions, and then we\u2019re always using it as a tool to direct our consciousness toward the Divine.<\/p>\n

There are Indian songs that express poetically how you\u2019re angry with God, or you\u2019re sad, or you\u2019re yearning, or longing, or you\u2019re joyful. So it\u2019s dealing with all of the human emotions, and I think that\u2019s a serious missing link in popular culture today. Because all of those human emotions are seen in the West as only relevant in human relationships, and the music doesn\u2019t elevate or lift that feeling toward God. Whereas Indian music expresses all of those human feelings with such intensity, but every song is a conversation with God, and everything is lifted to a higher plane.<\/p>\n

So Indian music I find to be very devotional, and because of my meditation practice, and my time on the spiritual path, and my experience with Swami\u2019s music, when I sing Indian music now, it has a very different kind of depth and feeling than it did eight years ago. I might have sung the same songs, I might have had the same level of control over my throat or been able to sing the same phrases, or perhaps even sing better \u2013 it doesn\u2019t matter. I don\u2019t get to practice or perform the same way these days as I did eight or nine years ago, but I\u2019m sure my Indian music has also transformed because I\u2019m feeling it differently, and I\u2019m just so much more aware of its purpose and goal.<\/p>\n

Asha:<\/strong> Thank you very much for sharing your story. I\u2019m grateful that you\u2019ve been so forthcoming with your very interesting journey.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A world citizen, Saiganesh grew up in a traditional Hindu family in India. Trained as an Indian Classical musician, he is a frequent soloist at Ananda. He was interviewed by Nayaswami Asha for a series of conversations with younger Ananda members. (Photo: 2000s) Asha: I\u2019m aware that you began singing when you were growing up … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nConversations With Ananda — Ch. 67, Saiganesh Sairaman - Swami Kriyananda: Lightbearer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda describes his training as an Indian classical singer and the joys of singing Swami Kriyananda's songs.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.yoganandafortheworld.com\/story\/conversations-with-ananda-saiganesh-sairaman\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" 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