About us

Sruti is India's leading monthly devoted to Indian classical music and dance and theatre. The target audience of Sruti comprises several groups. These include lay music and lay dance enthusiasts, connoisseurs, musicians, dancers, teachers, scholars and students of the fine arts, institutions and organisations active in the field and officials of Government agencies concerned with the arts.

Featuring Carnatic music doyenne D K Pattammal and child prodigy Mandolin U Srinivas on its inaugural cover in October 1983, the magazine created quite a stir in artistic circles. It was without a parallel in English magazines then—or perhaps even now. That cover page spoke volumes about the magazine's twin objectives of preserving tradition and encouraging innovation, something Sruti has assiduously pursued ever since. Many customs that have today come to be recognised as established best practices in the performing arts especially in south India have been the result of Sruti's systematic campaigns in favour of good taste, decorum and performance excellence. Among its early triumphs was the restoration of the importance of ragam-tanam-pallavi, which had become conspicuous by its absence on the concert platform.

For over two decades, Sruti has constantly practised what it preaches—adherence to high standards of authenticity, objectivity, sophisticated writing based on thorough research, and a healthy respect for individuals and institutions, balanced by an equally healthy irreverence towards holy cows. Sruti is not an academic journal, even though it carries scholarly and technical articles from time to time.

Sruti's several profiles of the leading exponents of music and dance have been pathbreaking in the annals of Indian journalism, as have been its special projects to document the teaching methodology and stylistic characteristics of leading schools of dance and music. It is a veritable treasurehouse of in-depth knowledge of the many centres of excellence—the kshetras which have served to propagate the classical arts of India.

Started under private auspices, Sruti was promoted as a not-for-profit venture and placed under a Trust in April 1985 when the Sruti Foundation was established with Founder-Editor N Pattabhi Raman as its Managing Trustee. Sruti, is its `flagship' endeavour, while Samudri (Subbulakshmi-Sadasivam Music & Dance Resources Institute), is an ambitious initiative towards archiving valuable resource material in music and dance and promoting research and cooperative endeavours to ensure the sustainable development of the performing arts, based on traditional ideas and practices.

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