Sibling star act

BhaVa — conceptualised around the music talents of Tamil sibling duo Basanth and Varshini Muralikrishnan — are ticking all the right boxes. The brother and sister duo from LA, California, have been taking the indie music scene by storm with their talent, and now are looking to make a splash in films too.

How did the idea come about? “So BhaVa is both of our names put together. Perfect since BhaVa also means expression, emotion, state of body and mind, and becoming and birth. We both grew up in California, and come from a family of musicians. Our parents are both Carnatic musicians and teachers in Los Angeles. So music has always been a huge part of our lives since childhood. Basanth played the saxophone and was in the marching band and symphonic band, while I sang in choir, theatre, and played French horn as a part of symphonic band as well,” explains Varshini, the elder sibling.

But music wasn’t the first calling for them. While Varshini was finishing her medical doctorate, Basanth was doing his engineering in Chennai and performing with his college band at cultural shows, which eventually led to him being part of a popular reality show.

Varshini elaborates, “No matter what I did in my medical profession, I always felt something was missing, I wasn’t happy with my work. I even looked into pursuing an MBA and getting into hospital management or going back to study and research medicine and music therapy. I had a wonderful opportunity to work on a musical project for The United Nations and another opportunity to travel to Chennai to work on a musical project. My brother was in Chennai at the time establishing himself in the industry as well and was the first person to say, ‘Let’s do it!’”

So what is BhaVa all about? “BhaVa stems from our values growing up and the interpretation from our individual experiences. We learned so much from observing the infrastructure our parents built in the US through education, performance and awareness of the various forms of music that we saw the beauty and power of how it unites communities, people, cultures and generations,” explains Basanth.

He adds, “We then realised we want to utilise our experience in music, travel, network, and groundwork we saw growing up to create our own platform for performance and production. We began creating a model to effectively build a bridge connecting our strong roots both on the east and west. We aim at creating sound and meaningful visuals that are both accessible and relatable globally. Our approach to music is what we term ‘primordial sounds.’ We stray away from the term ‘fusion’ as we firmly believe primordial sounds is a focal point of the different forms of music and styles, the root of which has always been in existence.”

Both their individual resumes are packed with honours too, with concerts across the world and shows with acclaimed musicians.

Now, they are all set to enter films. “Both of us have worked independently on different films and songs both in the US and India. However, our first song together under the BhaVa banner is for an upcoming Tamil film titled Ninjamellam Kaadhal with music director Nivas Prassana. It was quite a memorable experience. Nivas has amazing knowledge both as a musician and a director. It was inspiring and humbling to see his creative process and the similarities we saw in our own upbringing of music,” reveals Varshini.

As for the future, the plan is to balance their independent career with film work, Basanth concludes, “Performance and production under The BhaVa Network banner includes our own independent projects, collaborations with other artists and entities both locally and internationally, performance, as well as work in the film industry. And well, whatever else the stars have in store for us!”