Sumana Chandrashekar is a Bengaluru-based ghatam player whose work moves beyond the instrument’s familiar role as a supporting voice in Carnatic concert ensembles. Drawing on more than 25 years of Carnatic vocal study, she brings the clay pot into solo performances, experimental collaborations, storytelling and theatre—and challenges expectations about who gets to play percussion and how a woman performer should look onstage.
From Carnatic vocal music to the ghatam
Chandrashekar studied Carnatic vocal music for more than 25 years before beginning ghatam training with Vidushi Sukanya Ramgopal, according to her official biography. That path gives context to a practice that combines instrumental performance with research, writing and narration. She is also the author of Song of the Clay Pot: My Journey with the Ghatam, a memoir of her personal and artistic journey.
Taking the ghatam beyond accompaniment
The ghatam is a clay percussion instrument used in Carnatic music. In the concert setting described by Malini Nair in her September 20, 2025 Scroll.in feature, it commonly supports the ensemble alongside the more prominent mridangam. Chandrashekar works in that tradition, but does not limit the instrument to it. Her practice includes solo lecture performances that weave playing with poetry and narration, as well as experimental and interdisciplinary collaborations.
“Accompaniment is one space, but I am not tied to it,” Chandrashekar told Nair. The distinction is not a rejection of accompaniment; it is an argument for the ghatam’s capacity to take on other roles. Her performances and projects invite listeners to encounter it as a voice that can carry a story or stand at the center of an artistic exchange.
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Gender, visibility and the freedom to define a stage presence
Chandrashekar’s boundary-crossing also concerns the expectations she has encountered as a woman percussionist in a male-dominated music establishment. Nair’s feature recounts a 1979 exchange in which ghatam player Vikku Vinayakram was asked whether women played the instrument. His reported reply was: “Not in our culture.” It is a historical quotation in Nair’s account, not a comment from Chandrashekar’s own interview.
Chandrashekar has also chosen to perform in kurta-pajama and a turban or hat rather than conform to clothing expectations she felt were placed on women performers. She describes that choice in terms of agency: “I get to choose how I appear, how I define my space.” Her account is personal; it should not be mistaken for a claim that every Carnatic performer faces the same constraints or responds to them in the same way.
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The clay pot and the people behind its sound
The instrument’s presence onstage depends on knowledge and labor that audiences may not see. Nair’s feature describes the Manamadurai ghatam-making lineage and the specialized work involved in shaping and firing pots with the sound in mind. It reports that each pot is paddled “2,000–3,000 times” to strengthen it—a detail about the process described in that reporting, not a universal technical standard.
Chandrashekar’s official biography notes that she facilitated a ghatam-making training project in Manamadurai with support from the Sangeet Natak Akademi. That connection reflects an interest not only in playing the instrument, but in the craft and makers that make its music possible. As she puts it, “I have deep reverence for the craft and its makers.”
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A memoir that follows the instrument’s wider story
Song of the Clay Pot: My Journey with the Ghatam brings together the artist’s personal journey and the instrument’s broader cultural history. An NCPA excerpt describes the book’s themes as including the ghatam’s origins, mythologies, geographies, craft and gender. Its excerpt, “The Pin Code of the Ghatam,” also uses questions about women percussionists and the ghatam player’s “pot belly” to open discussion of history and playing technique; the latter should not be read as a universal physical requirement.
For readers drawn to the person behind the performances, the book offers a route into Chandrashekar’s story. For listeners, her work makes a related point through sound: an instrument often heard in an accompanying role can also lead a performance, carry narration and bring attention back to the makers whose skill shaped it.
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