10 Facts About Karaikudi Mani

Ganapathi Subramaniam popularly known as Karaikudi Mani was born on 11 September 1945, in Karaikudi, Tamil Nadu as the son of musician T Ramanatha Iyer and Pattammal.

Karaikudi Mani became involved with Carnatic music at the age of three and soon abandoned his vocal training in favour of learning the mridangam.

Mani began performing regularly at a time when another player of the mridangam, his idol Palghat Mani Iyer, was in his prime.

Karaikudi Mani first learnt music from Karikudi Ranga Iyengar and later on he took further lessons under the tutelage of Harihara Sharma after moving to Chennai.

Karaikudi Mani received his first national award at age 18 from the then president of India, Radhakrishnan.

Karaikudi Mani conducted and orchestrated several such concerts, notably a collaboration with Sri VS Narasimhan in 1990 called Melodyssey, a project with 40 artists, and including Western and Indian Instruments.

In 1993, Karaikudi Mani presented his first Thani Avarthanam concert along with the late Kanjira player G Harishankar.

Karaikudi Mani later conducted several such duet concerts featuring leading percussionists on Ghatam, Thavil, Chenda, etc.

Karaikudi Mani had collaborated with Japanese musician John Kaizan Neptune to create an album named Steps in Time.

In 2008, Karaikudi Mani collaborated with Sarangan Sriranganathan and other Australian musicians in a classical fusion concert called Unity in Diversity.