When vocalist, writer, and thinker T.M. Krishna speaks about music, his words ripple far beyond the stage. Over the years, Mr Krishna has evolved from one of Carnatic music’s most gifted practitioners into one of its fiercest reformers — interrogating caste, privilege, and the politics of listening itself. For the second edition of the KNMA Festival, Krishna steps into yet another role: that of curator.

Diversity As Principle

Titled ‘Voices of Diversity’, the festival brings together a constellation of musical traditions: from Maharashtra’s matriarchal Lavani songs, Manipuri folk rock, the ancient sarasvati veena, to Dalit drum collectives from South India, and contemporary pop and hip-hop acts. Krishna’s vision for the festival is rooted in cross-cultural encounters and recognition.

“We keep talking about the diversity of India, we keep saying we are a country of so many languages, so many faiths, so many ways of living, so many instruments, so many tunes, so many cultures,” Krishna says. “I don’t think that we really allow each of them to listen to one another. That can only happen if you bring that diversity together.”

For Krishna, diversity is meaningful only when different sounds coexist, sharing the same space. In his curatorial approach, the act of ‘listening’ goes beyond passive hearing to actively engaging with sounds, and becomes the festival’s core principle. “I listen to a tune from Manipur, I listen to the words from Karnataka, I listen to the voices of the Dalits, I listen to the protest songs, I listen to the celebration, I listen to the ancient Veena,” he says. “By listening to all this, we’re enabling, I hope, the possibility of greater love, understanding, and the word that I used in the beginning, empathy.”

The Ethics Of Sound

Mr Krishna believes that all art forms originate from their environment — from the relationships between people, communities, weather, flora, fauna, and history — and reflect the ethical values of their creators. He believes that music is different because, unlike dance or words that have tangible physical presence, music’s sound is fleeting and disappears quickly. It is this fleeting, almost spiritual quality that allows music to interrogate social hierarchies with unusual force. “I think that makes its capacity to transform people much greater because it remains in your memory,” he says.

Tradition As A Living Strand

A key aspect of Krishna’s curatorial approach is his rejection of seeing tradition and innovation as opposing forces. “If you define tradition as a fixed point in the past, then everything that follows is a disruption,” he says. However, he explains: “If you see tradition as a web — fluid, transmitted, altered, reinterpreted — then questioning itself becomes an integral part of tradition.”

In his view, modernity and tradition aren’t opposites but interdependent forces. “Without modernity, there can be no tradition,” he says. “And without tradition, there can't be modernity. They live together.”

Listening Beyond Comfort

The festival occurs at a time when Delhi’s music scene is sharply divided between classical recitals and mainstream pop, hip-hop, and party music. Krishna aspires for the festival to break down these barriers.

“Delhi is a city of multiple languages and people from across the country,” he says. “Those connections that people make in their everyday life must also be the connections they make in the music they listen to.”

In practice, this means dismantling the hierarchies of listening that place classical music at the top and popular or folk traditions at the margins. “All these hierarchies — of genre, caste, and class — must be challenged,” he says. “This festival, by its very being, I hope, does exactly that.”

Krishna also hopes for a “spillover effect” — that people who come to hear one form of music might stumble upon another. “Maybe somebody will come specifically for one form,” he says, “but then some other tone, some other voice, captures them. We are hoping that the KNMA Festival will encourage the people of Delhi to listen to all kinds of music.”

Against Passive Listening

Platforms like the KNMA Festival take on new significance at a time when listeners are conditioned for passive consumption of music. “We have reached a point where we are not only engaging in passive consumption but we are also sanitizing that passivity,” Krishna says. “The music that you listen to today on Instagram or the reels, it’s sanitised — made to be pitch perfect in an artificial way. It’s not the real voice of the singer. The real voice of the person is complex. The real voice is vulnerable. Real voices have jagged edges.”

Live performance, Krishna argues, can rekindle this lost intimacy between the musician and the listener. “I think the fact that people are coming for the live performance means they want to listen to these artists live. They want to see who they are in real life,” he says.

On Creative Freedom And The Role Of The Artist

For Krishna, the concept of freedom for an artist can be viewed in two ways. “First, there is the freedom to express oneself in music, sing about anything, and perform anywhere,” he says. “But there is another freedom. There’s another word that we don’t associate with freedom, which we should: privacy. Privacy is the feeling of freedom in a moment."

Privacy here is not about hiding or not hiding something, but about feeling free to be oneself in the moment. Artists, especially artists with privilege, have a responsibility to protect this privacy, he says. “The more privilege you have, the greater your responsibility to protect freedom. You have to be willing to take risks, to step forward and say: artists have the right to be who they are, to sing how they want.”

That conviction permeates his work as a performer, activist, and now curator. The KNMA Festival, under his guidance, becomes a reminder that singing and listening are themselves moral acts.

The second edition of the KNMA Festival, titled “Voices of Diversity”, is taking place at Sunder Nursery, from 9th to 12th October 2025. Learn more here.

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