ShrotaHouse takes Indian classical music in innovative ways to children
Bengaluru-based Madhumita Bhaskar believes it is best to introduce music to children when they are very young. So, she co-founded ShrotaHouse, an interactive music startup, along with her husband, Karthik Ramchandra, in November 2020.
ShrotaHouse is building an organic ecosystem in the Indian classical music by bridging the gap among artistes, rasikas, children and parents.
A trained Hindustani vocalist Madhumita has been looking at innovative ways to connect with young minds. One such is the ‘Little Khayal’ series, wherein children get to interact with various musicians. For instance, Jagannath, one of the participants in the series quizzes well-known Carnatic vocalist Sikkil Gurucharan on what made him choose vocal music when his grandmother was a flautist. He next asks him about the fears he initially experienced. The session was recently streamed on ShrotaHouse’s YouTube channel.
Like Jagannath, 23 other children got the opportunity to ask senior musicians about their journey, inspiration, advice and role models.
Madhumita, who is a disciple of Hindustani musician Prof. Milind Malshe, has as a child lent voice to children’s audiobook series ‘Karadi Tales’ and in the Hindi film Jajantaram Mamantaram. Though she never aspired to become a performing artiste, Madhumita now enjoys sharing her musical knowledge and skills with children. “I am happy that I have found a way to do this. We need to catch them young. It’s important that we introduce them to our rich art and culture,” she says.
The idea to launch a classical music startup came from her child. “I casually introduced him to music when he was a toddler and saw the positive impact it had on the child. That’s when I thought this creative musical pedagogy would benefit other children and their parents. We were thrilled to get selected for the NSRCEL IIM-B Incubation programme, accelerators such as Microsoft For Startups and The Gain.”
Madhumita developed a child-friendly Hindustani vocal class module, ‘Madhu’s Swar Sketches’, which blended art activities to explain raags, rhythm and pitch notes. “I saw children enjoyed listening to the lively raag Bhupali, equivalent to Carnatic Mohanam.”
Talking about the name of her venture, Madhumita explains, “Shrota means ‘listener’. We aim to create the next generation of rasikas through our projects.” Apart from the ‘Little Khayal’ series, the ‘Musical Book Tour’ events has families come with children and listening to vocal and instrumental performances by kids. They also get to interact with musicians . The little curious minds are also provided the child-friendly interactive colouring book — ‘Colour and learn with little Bajo’, which has pictures and details of instruments, space to stick photographs of musicians, and a QR code with the sounds of the instruments, all designed and sketched by Madhumita.
Over the last nine months, ShrotaHouse has conducted 13 book tours in Bengaluru, and one in Chennai. “Going by the positive feedback, we plan to undertake such tours across the country,” says Madhumita.
ShrotaHouse is all geared up for season three of the ‘Little Khayal’ series. Registration will open soon. “There will be an audition process this time. Selected children and parents will be trained for the programme,” says Madhumita. For details visit https://shrotahouse.com/.