Another Indian emando player

[crosspicker]

I stumbled upon a photo of Suresh Kumar, a student or disciple of U. Srinivas , and the mando he plays looks decidedly different than the one U. Srinivas plays-it has more of a heavy metal axe look to it.
http://store.yahoo.com/koelmusic/medmanbysurk.html

[mrmando]

Further digging reveals:

"The dragon is a made to order instrument and has been specially made for Suresh Kumar by John Pereira of Peter Pereira (makers of mandolins, guitars and violins), near St. John the Baptist High School, Thane West 400 601, Mumbai, India (Ph: 91-22-5343314), one of the best instrument makers in the country. John Pereira has taken a lot of pains to see that the Dragon is made to exacting requirements."

More at:

http://www.carnatica.net/sangeet/mandolin2.htm

And even more at:

http://www.mandolinsureshkumar.com/

The copy here isn't as purple as the stuff on Srinivas' Web site...

[crosspicker]

Wow.Thanks for the links. There is a lot of information there. I'll have to try and get ahold of his album. Meanwhile, I'll try out some of those techniqes for the ornamentations-if I can follow the descriptions.
There's a DVD available by a guitar player by the name of Prasanna called "Ragamorphism" that shows you how to play Carnatic music on the electric guitar. I was thinking of getting that, thinking that maybe some of the technical aspects of playing that style of music could be transferrable to the mando.

[berkeleymando]

"Mandolin Raghavendra" is also worth checking out:

http://mandolinraghavendra.com/

Under the "concerts" link there are a few MP3 files that I enjoyed listening to.

Clearly electric mandolin in India has a growing number of talented artists.

[delsbrother]

Wow, lots of interesting links, thanks.

Some things I noticed:

Anyone else find it funny that Suresh Kumar is a multinational corporation's legal counsel AND he plays a heavy metal mando? That thing looks positively lethal (and kind of has a Dean Longhorn vibe).

Mandolin Raghavendra's mando also has the nameplate attached in the upper treble "rhino horn" area - though it's hard to see if it says "Shamax" (like U. Srinivas' did at one point). I still don't know if that's a brand name..

Interesting to see it appears to have a Fender-ish single coil pickup. Srinivas' looks like a P90 (or perhaps a PAF). Mine came with a cheap Duncan-ripoff humbucker.

Oh, and whoever designed that website should be taken out and forced to listen to Fu####susha!

I think I need to do a little more research on carnatic music - there's a huge Indian population here in Southern California - gotta go scope out some music stores.. There's a Sitar instructor who teaches at a Music Conservatory near me; I don't know if she would know anything about emandos, though.

[mrmando]

Well, our own Mitch ("Mandocaster") is a Lawyer too...

[mrmando]

Of course, I must shake my head when I encounter stuff like this (from the "Stringed Instruments in Carnatic Music" page I posted earlier):

"The Mandolin is not ordinarily used to play chords."

[mrmando]

Anyone in Austin? U Srinivas and his brother Rajesh (ANOTHER mandolin player) have a gig tonight!

http://www.icmca.org/

[mandocaster]

Well, our own Mitch ("Mandocaster") is a Lawyer too...

I occasionally get calls in the middle of the night from people for whom English is a second language who need a lawyer. They look in the white pages rather than the yellow pages. Their sons are in jail or something along those lines. I hate to have to tell them that my name is Lawyer but I am not an attourney.

[mrmando]

Too bad, Mitch. You could end such conversations with, "By the way, this phone call has already cost you $35."

As one might expect, there has been a recent expansion of coverage on Carnatic mandolin players over at emando.com...