Oscar nomination for veteran classical singer in Mumbai elevated star's – and genre's – profile ever higher

She may not have won, but the nomination of a veteran classical songstress from Mumbai for an Oscar sent India into a prolonged frenzy, writes Vinita Bharadwaj

"Bombay" Jayashri Ramnath, the accomplished classical singer from southern India, at the Lotus Hotel in Dubai before her concert last week. Sarah Dea / The National

As news of the 2013 Academy Award nominations reached India, one of the nominees was a little unprepared for the attention that followed.

"Obviously the Oscars are big, but the magnitude was definitely a revelation," says "Bombay" Jayashri Ramnath, a south-Indian classical vocalist who was nominated for Best Original Song with composer Mychael Danna for Pi's Lullaby from Life of Pi.

Ramnath performed in Dubai last week in a fusion concert that featured the renowned Hindustani, or north Indian, classical flautist Ronu Majumdar and two young percussionists.

In the Indian classical music scene, particularly the south Indian genre known as carnatic, Ramnath is a celebrity. But with the Oscar nomination, her fame has been elevated into the stratosphere by a media-mad India, with television vans parked outside her home in a normally quiet suburb of Chennai.

"I wasn't used to that kind of attention," she said, even more surprised by the curiosity over her wardrobe at the February ceremony.

Unmoved by the pressures of Hollywood's red carpet, Ramnath stayed close to home, wearing a traditional silk sari and her signature tight-bun hairstyle.

Indian classical music is considered a divine art form. Its emphasis on perfecting its elements - pitch, notes, melody and rhythm - and rarely, if ever, on the external packaging. The art allows for improvisation, but within a strict framework.

"It's a divinity, a spiritual connection that comes from devotion to the raga," she said, referring to the term for a series of notes that are manipulated to create melodies. Indian classical music features several ragas that comprise various permutations of the seven basic notes.

The staunchest patrons of this art can be demanding, exacting and extremely critical of deviations such as working on non-classical projects.

Ramnath is no stranger to such criticism, having sung a seductive-sounding song for a Tamil film.

"If I find a project musically interesting, I go ahead. The reaction - positive or negative - is not important," she said.

Her musical initiation began at home in Mumbai, formerly Bombay, hence her prefix nickname, although she was born in Kolkata and later relocated to Chennai.

Her parents informally taught singing to the neighbourhood children, so the house was always filled with music.

Ramnath's formal training commenced when she was six, after which she grew up knowing little of the outside world beyond classical music and school. She would get up at 4am and practise singing until it was time to get ready to leave for school.

"My mother was determined I become a singer," she said.

The family's leisure time was often spent listening to music from Hindi films on the radio.

"Living in Bombay, film music is inescapable, and my own work in film has probably been a consequence of that exposure. Film and music in India are too closely connected and, as an Indian musician, avoiding contact is almost impossible," she said.

Working on a Hollywood project, however, was completely unexpected. "Ang Lee and Mychael [Danna] contacted me as they wanted a female voice to sing a lullaby in Tamil, which is my mother tongue. I just went with the flow of the experience of working with them. I don't think any musician or artist thinks of the reward when immersed in a project," she said. Danna won the Best Original Score Oscar for the same film.

She is the second musician from Chennai in the last four years to come under the Oscar spotlight. The composer AR Rahman returned with a double win for Slumdog Millionaire in 2009. This year, with all arrows pointing at Adele for Skyfall, it was extremely unlikely that Ramnath would return with a statue.

Adele did win, but the attention raised the profile of carnatic music internationally, she said. "There was curiosity about the differences between the north and south Indian styles; the north Indian [Hindustani] style having been so popularised by stalwarts such as Pandit Ravi Shankar [the legendary sitar player] and Ustad Zakir Hussain [the tabla maestro]," she explained.

It also increased the glamour factor of carnatic music, considered in contemporary India to be a tad old-fashioned.

While popular reality talent shows are primarily film-driven, successful participants in such competitions almost always have a grounding in classical music.

"I wouldn't worry so much about the future of classical music. It's in a healthy space," she said, "especially with the interest from Indians abroad. If children want to learn classical music as a stepping stone to film or celebrity, it really doesn't matter.

"Globalisation is not a problem when the music is strong and I think all of us are attracted to our roots at some point in our lives."

Non-resident Indian parents keen on fostering in their children an appreciation of music are a key constituency of the classical music fanbase. "It stems from a desire to retain contact with Indian culture and also preserve the art," said VG Krishnan, the chairman of Sruthilaya, the UAE-based association responsible for Ramnath and Mazumdar's concert in Dubai.

In the UAE, private music institutes, as well as individual tutors, offer training in Indian classical music.

"The challenge is taking students to a performance level. Opportunities in India and even the US and Australia abound, but the trend in the Gulf region is to learn until they're in the 10th grade, after which they discontinue due to academic pressures," said Krishnan.

Established in 2004, the organisation has been hosting an annual competition for students of classical Indian music since 2011.

Judged over three rounds, the final five selected perform live on stage with accompanying musicians and a panel of well-known musician judges, who are all flown from India.

The Indian community in the Emirates is regularly exposed to top-tier performers and exponents of Indian classical music. However, the nurturing of locally grown talent presents challenges given the limited interest within the community.

"Music lovers come out in full force when a high-profile musician performs, but stay away when local talent performs, unless their children are on stage," said Krishnan. "Our hope remains that celebrity draws such as Bombay Jayashri will encourage the community to support local events as well."

Vinita Bharadwaj is a writer based in Dubai.