Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

When the win­ner of Mas­tana Ba­har was an­nounced last year, An­je­ly Ra­jku­mar could hard­ly be­lieve it was her name they called. It capped over a decade of hard work in the realm of Hin­dus­tani clas­si­cal mu­sic.

It’s a jour­ney that start­ed with her grand­fa­ther when she was on­ly four years old. A Ra­mayana singer, her grand­fa­ther would in­flu­ence the ear­ly part of her life to go in­to clas­si­cal In­di­an singing be­fore join­ing class­es at the War­ren Road Shiv Mandir.

It would be a steady climb for Ra­jku­mar. From there, she moved on to the Bharatiya Vidya Sansth­haan, learn­ing Hin­di and In­di­an clas­si­cal mu­sic.

Now she con­tin­ues her craft at the Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi In­sti­tute for Cul­tur­al Co­op­er­a­tion. At the ten­der age of eight, Ra­jku­mar was ready for her first com­pe­ti­tion. Most of the oth­er com­peti­tors were old­er than her, but she would emerge first. “That, to me, gave me the mo­ti­va­tion to en­ter more com­pe­ti­tions,” Ra­jku­mar told WE mag­a­zine in a re­cent in­ter­view. She said it re­mains the most mem­o­rable com­pe­ti­tion she has ever won.

She would al­so en­joy suc­cess at Saraswati Girls’ Hin­du Col­lege, where she at­tend­ed. In the Sec­ondary Schools San­skri­tik Sangam, Ra­jku­mar won the clas­si­cal cat­e­go­ry of the bi-an­nu­al com­pe­ti­tion three con­sec­u­tive times in 2019, 2021, and 2023.

Her rise on the lo­cal In­di­an clas­si­cal scene was in­evitable. How­ev­er, she ad­mit­ted that the lo­cal mu­sic in­dus­try, when it comes to clas­si­cal In­di­an mu­sic, can be dif­fi­cult for up-and-com­ing per­form­ers.

She said, “Apart from Hin­dus­tani clas­si­cal, I al­so sing lo­cal clas­si­cal. That is a male-dom­i­nat­ed in­dus­try, and as a young fe­male artiste, I got a lot of chal­lenges where nepo­tism took the reins. Like find­ing song lyrics was re­al­ly, re­al­ly hard for me, and I have no pop­u­lar fam­i­ly in singing that I could come from, no lin­eage to say, ‘Well, I have in­her­it­ed all the lyrics, songs, books, what­ev­er was in­her­it­ed by me.’ That it­self was a chal­lenge. I had to ask a lot of oth­er singers for their lyrics.”

She added, “For me as a young per­son in this in­dus­try, it was very hard . An­oth­er thing with nepo­tism, plen­ty of times the chil­dren from these pop­u­lar singers were show­cased, and it sup­pressed my tal­ent for a while.”

Mas­tana Ba­har was not on­ly a ma­jor ac­com­plish­ment for Ra­jku­mar, but it was al­so eye-open­ing. Ear­li­er in 2024, she had en­tered an­oth­er com­pe­ti­tion with the same song and lost. She took the same song to the his­tor­i­cal com­pe­ti­tion and won Mas­tana Ba­har. “It felt so sur­re­al. I can’t ex­plain that lev­el of achieve­ment that I felt,” she added.

Ra­jku­mar said her Hin­du faith has been a source of sus­tain­ing her through her strug­gles. “Every­thing I have achieved and every­thing I con­tin­ue to work to­wards feels con­nect­ed to a high­er pur­pose. When I sing, it’s not just about per­form­ing; it’s a form of de­vo­tion. The mu­sic I cre­ate is my way of ex­press­ing grat­i­tude and stay­ing close to the di­vine.”

Ra­jku­mar added, “Even when I win com­pe­ti­tions or reach new goals, I re­mind my­self that my tal­ent is a gift meant to in­spire and serve oth­ers. It gives me strength when I feel un­sure or tired, and it keeps me fo­cused on do­ing things with sin­cer­i­ty and love.”

Now, she wants the same lev­el of mu­sic lit­er­a­cy she had as a child in all re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tions. Ra­jku­mar said, “I think both art forms are dy­ing, both Hin­dus­tani clas­si­cal and the lo­cal clas­si­cal, be­cause the young peo­ple are grav­i­tat­ing to­wards oth­er gen­res of mu­sic. I think that every tem­ple or in­sti­tute should have mu­sic class­es free to the pub­lic. I think that every re­li­gious in­sti­tute, like a tem­ple, or even schools, should have that op­por­tu­ni­ty where the youth can get an op­por­tu­ni­ty to go in­to the art form it­self. They need that ex­tra push.”

She al­so felt that fair­er com­pe­ti­tions would mo­ti­vate young peo­ple back to both art forms.

For Ra­jku­mar, Di­vali is an im­por­tant time to re­flect on the mean­ing of the hol­i­day. She ex­plained what Di­vali means to her. “Light over dark­ness. In my life, I al­ways try to look at the pos­i­tive things, the light in my life. De­spite there be­ing the dark­ness and the chal­lenges that were the ones to bring me down, Di­vali means the light al­ways pre­vails. I keep that at the back of my head. It’s al­ways light over dark­ness. Dark­ness will nev­er pre­vail.”

The dark­ness in her life has some­times been the lack of op­por­tu­ni­ties she’s had. Oth­er times, it has been when she’s been judged un­fair­ly.

And de­spite com­ing in­to the art form from sim­ply be­ing in­flu­enced–by her grand­fa­ther, and not from an aris­toc­ra­cy of Hin­dus­tani and In­di­an clas­si­cal mu­sic–Ra­jku­mar is not on­ly de­ter­mined to be the best singer she can be but al­so to in­spire oth­ers to al­so save these dy­ing art forms.