walking upstream…
Shankar Mahadevan
photo: bollywood hungama · cc by 3.0 ↗Shankar Mahadevan
Shankar Mahadevan is a Mumbai-born playback singer and composer who trained in Carnatic and Hindustani classical singing as a child before spending a decade as a software engineer, only turning to music full-time as an adult. His 1998 indipop album Breathless made rapid, single-breath vocal runs his signature and launched a parallel career as one-third of the Bollywood composing trio Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, while his classical grounding also carried him into jazz fusion as Shakti's vocalist alongside John McLaughlin and Zakir Hussain.
the sound in question
1998
BreathlessShankar Mahadevan
walk the tributaries ↓
John McLaughlin1970s–1990s · Jazz fusion / Progressive rock / World music
Mahadevan has said the jazz-fusion group Shakti was 'a group I grew up listening to and it was part of my learning process from my childhood,' and calls guitarist John McLaughlin 'a complete master' and 'our guiding light.' He became the group's vocalist in 2001 (on Saturday Night in Bombay) and remains its voice on 2023's Grammy-winning This Moment, applying his Carnatic-trained vocal technique - including konnakol, rhythmic solfège - inside McLaughlin's jazz-fusion framework.
listen: upstream & here
1973
Birds of FireJohn McLaughlin
2023
This MomentShankar Mahadevan
listen forThe rapid, drum-like konnakol vocal percussion Mahadevan trades with McLaughlin's guitar lines and Zakir Hussain's tabla - Indian classical rhythm syllables repurposed as a jazz-fusion instrument in their own right - is the clearest audible fingerprint of this collaboration.
Kishore Kumar1970s · Filmi / Bollywood playback / Indian pop
Biographical profiles list Kishore Kumar among the artists who inspired Mahadevan from an early age, and his own account describes Kishore's freewheeling, self-taught style as a formative counterweight to the strict classical discipline of his Carnatic and Hindustani training - proof a playback voice could be technically loose and still define an era.
listen: upstream & heresource: Cinemaazi — Shankar Mahadevan biography (Carnatic training; inspired by Subbulakshmi, Kishore Kumar and others) ↗
1969
Roop Tera MastanaKishore Kumar
2001
Dil Chahta HaiShankar Mahadevan
listen forThe conversational, almost improvisational ease Mahadevan brings to breezy, comic or romantic film numbers - letting a phrase bend or crack for effect rather than staying inside strict raga lines - echoes Kishore's instinctive, unschooled charm.
M.S. Subbulakshmi1940s–1970s · Carnatic classical / Devotional / Bhajan
Mahadevan has named M.S. Subbulakshmi among the classical musicians who inspired him from childhood, and has publicly called her 'a total inspiration' - a natural pull given his own Carnatic training under Pandit Shrinivas Khale and T.R. Balamani from age five. Decades later he recorded his own version of Vatapi Ganapatim, the same Muthuswami Dikshitar kriti Subbulakshmi made globally famous.
listen: upstream & here
1960
Vatapi Ganapatim BhajehamM.S. Subbulakshmi
2020
Vatapi GanapatimShankar Mahadevan
listen forThe precise gamaka (note-bending ornamentation) and unhurried, full-throated control Mahadevan brings to devotional and classical-adjacent passages - holding a raga's shape rather than rushing through it for effect - carries the discipline of the Carnatic kriti tradition Subbulakshmi embodied.