'Copeland Fellowship' for mridangist Umayalpuram Mali

Chennai based mridangam artiste Umayalpuram Mali has been awarded the prestigious 'Copeland Fellowship' by the Amherst College, Massachusetts, USA. Mali will be in the USA from late January till the end of May, 2006.

While on campus, he will be interacting with students who sign up for a course in music. Mali has been on this campus before and he says that about 60 students have signed up for the music course. "They show keen interest in the way the mridangam is played and our form of music,"he told KutcheriBuzz on the eve of his journey to the USA.

Off campus, he will reside with four other scholars from different countries who have been awarded similar fellowships in their own streams like film making. Mali says this will give him the opportunity to interact with creative people off campus too.

While in the USA, he will also be working on a book manuscript on 'The role of mridangam as an accompaniment in the Carnatic concerts'. This paper will have to be presented before he winds up his tenure there.

His weekends are free and Mali says he hopes to team up with an American tabla player and present percussion concerts.

Mali trained under gurus Kumbakonam Rajappa Iyer and Umayalpuram Sivaraman. Recently he released a CD titled 'Jackwood' along with Avudayarkoil Subramanian (Gethu Vadhyam) and Prof. David Reck (veena).

"It took me ten years to really get a hang of the profession as a musician and there have been many challenges I have had to face,"says the artiste who learnt the instrument even as he was employed privately and then chucked his job to become a full time professional artiste.

"Today, young artistes here have lots of opportunities, tours and better renumeration,"he says.