We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Priya Subramanian. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Priya below.

Alright, Priya thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

One of the most meaningful projects that I have undertaken as an artist and a curator is a collective arts series that is presented digitally each year, during the months of December-January to audiences across the globe. The series encompasses classical music, classical dance, traditional treasures and other topics centered around ethnicity and culture. With the blessings of my Guru, His Holiness Maharanyam Sri Sri Muralidhara Swamiji, my team and I embarked on this venture with the onset of the pandemic, to keep spirits high and with a mission to heal through the arts. Today, this series is shaping up to be one of the most sought-after programs in the online space to immerse audiences and connoisseurs in arts and culture and we could not be happier!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I am primarily a Pharmacist, and a Health Informatics professional with a deep penchant for arts and culture. When the pandemic cast its dark and evil spell in early 2020, our then scheduled dance production in Seattle, WA featuring global artists was cancelled. It wasn’t an easy pill for us to digest, because our team had been learning and rehearsing for months! In any case, it was a call to action for us to be creative, and provide our audiences with content that was meaningful and beautiful to enjoy, albeit in an online format. I took a sabbatical from my demanding job at this juncture, and decided to channel my energy, resources and creativity towards this arts initiative. My co-curator Kripa (from Milwaukee, WI) and I brainstormed some ideas and ventured into creating a month-long series featuring Indian classical music, dance, food, and and other indigenous traditions. The online series, titled Rise of Margazhi featured world-renowned artists from India from all of the above spheres. The series premiered on YouTube each day, and was released as a 25 minute episode each day. The format and content was so powerful, engaging and successful, that many art organizations started emulating this concept and creating their own content. We are very proud to have set the trend and to have been trail-blazers in this regard!

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding aspect for me as a curator is to see a small, and a humble idea come to fruition in a very organic manner. We sow a small seed in the form of poetry that inspires us (these verses/compositions are known as Madhurageethams, meaning sweet songs) and soundboard for months together with the artists. These amazing artists add their ideas, and creative elements to these compositions and they ultimately morph into something unimaginably pristine and beautiful – be it music, or dance! On the day this event premieres, when my team and I sit back as audiences and watch the program, we have nothing but tears of joy!

How did you build your audience on social media?

Absolutely! The journey on social media wasn’t very easy but very rewarding nevertheless! Rather than focusing on getting ‘likes’ and being obsessed about number of followers, we had to stay focused on creating content that was organic and of very high quality. We created engaging content, and learnt the art of leveraging the gram to paint a solid narrative about who we are and what we do. The process is time consuming and doesn’t always reap the rewards (in terms of engagement) that we expect, but the takeaway is to stay consistent and NEVER compromise on quality. Followers who are seeking quality content will eventually find you :) So we trust the process and chug along.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spiritofmargazhi/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/spiritofmargazhiutsav
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SpiritofMargazhiUtsav

Image Credits
I do have rights to the images and permissions to use the uploaded photographs