Suvarna

Suvarna has been playing music since the age of seven, starting with classical piano and violin, choral singing and folk singing. At 18 she enjoyed a stint as fiddler in a ceilidh band playing English, Scottish and Irish folk tunes for dances. During her twenties, Suvarna spent most of her time in Pune, India, at the commune of the Indian mystic Osho. Here, musicians from all over the world visited, bringing their particular style of music to share. As well as singing and playing with people of many different nationalities, in many different styles, Suvarna learnt Indian raga singing. She became fascinated with the rich and varied intricasies of the raga system. At this time Suvarna started to play a 5-string electric, synthesizor violin. This instrument lends itself well to improvised play with any style of music, and the synthesized sound created opportunity to experiment with different ways to play the violin. She began to incorporate the Indian ragas (or scales) into her playing and singing, giving her improvisations an interesting East/West style. With this new instrument she played music for active meditations and experimented in creating music that would bring the participants into particular spaces – soft, heart-based music, or high-energy dance music, or chaotic, wild music. In 1993, Suvarna moved to Boulder, Colorado, where she started to work on creating a new, multi-layered sound of her own. The melodies are composed or improvised using the notes of one of the hundreds of Indian ragas, and the rhythm is a combination of electronic beats and ethnic drums such as Indian tabla or frame drum. The middle layer is a rich keyboard sound with chord progressions that are in tune with the raga. The combination of all these elements creates music that is familiar to Western ears, but at the same time brings the depth and atmosphere of Indian music to the listener. It also expresses an unusual and refreshing approach to music that Suvarna has, born from many years of meditating and playing for meditators – music not as performance but as a interchange between listener and artist. Suvarna has released three albums: Fire of the Oracle (Etherean Music), Energia (Etherean Music) and This Dewdrop World (White Swan Music in USA and Aquarius Music in Europe). Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.