Biography

Manickam Yogeswaran is a Sri Lanka-born Tamil musician whose music has proven to cross all boundaries. His concerts have been appreciated by Indian and Western audiences alike. For that matter, this distinction is increasingly becoming meaningless in a context wherein the beauty of melody and rhythm manifests itself in a quintessential manner. This is what "Yoga", as he is best known among fellow musicians, choreographers and educators, has demonstrated in the course of artistic cooperations of every conceivable kind.

Now based in England, but long a feature on the international music circuit, Yogeswaran specialises in South India's classical tradition known as Carnatic music (also known as Karnatic or Karnatak music). This musical heritage flows in his blood. Such is its importance culturally that no lesson learned or loaned could weaken this music's cultural vigour. It is no coincidence that Yogeswaran has been a visiting lecturer at the Goldsmith University of London since 1996. As well as living this music traditionally, Yogeswaran employs his cultural bounty to explore appropriate, new possibilities for South India's ancient traditions.

For many years he has performed in a variety of contexts, whether musical, visual or dance. He was the first Tamil vocalist to sing in a major Hollywood film when he sang for Jocelyn Pook's soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick's 1999 film Eyes Wide Shut and since then he has sung for Spike Lee's 25th Hour. In his effort to promote and support the peace process in Sri Lanka, he made Peace For Paradise (2005). In short, he makes music built for travelling far and wide, for transcending boundaries and promoting peace. He visited the Indian subcontinent for concerts just after the horror of the tsunami that hit in December 2004 and recorded a song Life Goes On for raise funds for the people whose lives it affected.

Carnatic music is as equally at home in the tranquillity of the temple as it is on concert stage, the world of the recording studio or the hurly-burly of the marketplace. Its very adaptability is the key to its venerability and its multi-millennial soul. This is the soul into which Yogeswaran taps when he sings, composes, records or teaches.

He has recorded extensively worldwide including projects such as Tamil Classics (1997) and singing with the Tamil Classics Band. In 2001 he recorded Thirukkural in 133 Raagams, a religio-philosophical contemplation based on the aphoristic compositions of Saint Thiruvalluvar that generated enormous interest and respect in the Tamil-speaking world.

Aside from singing Hindu devotional and classical music, Yogaswaran has also spread the Carnatic word through his collaborations with such highly toasted, multi-cultural messengers as Dissidenten and Shivanova. With Dissidenten, he appeared at major music festivals of the calibre of the Montreaux Jazz, Jazzopen Stuttgart and, twice, at Glastonbury, Europe's largest music festival. His singing can be heard on Dissidenten's Instinctive Traveller (1997), Live in Europe (1998) and A New World Odyssey (2004). He is also the featured voice with the predominantly Western classical ÔBig Voice Band', The Shout under the direction of Orlando Gough and Richard Chew, with whom he appeared at the Vienna Festival and the Arts and Ideas Festival in the USA as well as on The Shout's Tall Stories (2000) and Deep Blue (2004).

As a composer he has also created and sung with a number of select dance companies including the acclaimed Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company. He has accompanied traditional South Indian dance debuts (Bharatha Natya Arangetram) across Europe. It is not hyperbole to say that no Tamil vocalist is doing more spread the word of Tamil music across the world.