Dons of Percussion | Patri Satish Kumar, Amrit Nataraj, & Triplicane Sekhar | Music of India

#darbarfestival | Three superb exponents of Carnatic rhythm trade off and join forces - Patri Satish Kumar (mridangam), Tavil Triplicane Sekhar (thavil), and Amrit Nataraj (kanjira). Learn more about the music: Patri Satish Kumar is one of India’s leading mridangam players, known for fine dynamic control and architectural solo phrasings. First inducted into music by his violinist mother, who noticed his talent at tapping his school lunchbox in rhythm, he went on to study under three Andhra Pradesh gurus - S Ramachandramurthy, VA Swami and V Narasimham. He credits his teachers with broadening his mind, recounting that they never set him ambitious goals beyond immersing into the music as fully as he could. He says that “the mridangam chose me and not the other way around”. But it was on kanjira that he got his early break, reasoning that it would allow him to accompany top mridangam artists and perhaps fill in for them on occasion. It worked - he was soon accepted as a mridangam accompanist, an