BANGALORE: Among us lives a very talented man, whose talent in singing is never seen before. Apart from undergoing critical operations on his throat and his nose he is still considered as India’s best karaoke singer. Lakshman Sriram is known for his ability to know over 500 songs by heart and with precise timing. This earned him nick names like RAM (Random Access Memory) and the walking juke box. He can recollect over 500 songs with the exact lyrics, pauses, beats and rhythm. His musical life started off in America when one of his friends requested him to sing in a party to recorded instrumental background music. After his first song people couldn’t help but want more from him. He continued to sing a few more songs that night. This was when he realised that he was gifted with the ‘voice of heaven’. From then on his preparation for his never ending glory started. He practised day and night on each song in order to prefect it. Sriram now has given over 34 performances all over Bangalore at the Indian Institute of World Culture in Basavangudi. Releasing over 20 CDs all being a special tribute to well known legends such as Mukesh Kalyan, Raj Kapoor, Shankar Jaikishan, Hemanth Kumar, Dr Raj Kumar, Dr Vishnuvardhan, Dr S P Balsubramanian, Mohammed Rafi and many other legends.If there is a level of qualification in raagas, then by now he would have had a doctorate in raagas . He has performed in Yaman Kalyan raaga — a minor scale of five notes in five different languages (Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Sanskrit). His motive behind this is there is a lot of difference among us Indians and he believes the only way to unite people is through music. Hence he came up with an idea for singing hit movie songs in different languages all under one raaga. He named his work Ramu Remembers Raagas.Ram has mastered 21 different raagas and published works such as Raaga Yaman Kalyan, Raaga Shivaranjini and Ramu remembers Raagas. He has also mastered ghazals and performed in front the legendary Mandel.All is work is not sponsored by anyone or any company. He has worked hard to earn his money and spent it all on his never dying passion for music. He believes in helping others and the way he does this is by not charging any entry fee for his concerts. “People who come to my shows are true music lovers and hence I make sure that they enjoy my concert. Music is a way of expressing emotion and its makes no sense to charge anyone to share my emotion,” said Sriram.Karaoke that usually happens is considered as a past time because no one takes it seriously. And everyone does it just to kill time in a bar or a pub. But Sriram has given a whole new meaning to karaoke by singing the way it should be sung. The timing and the musical beat is all preset so one has no room to commit any mistakes. If there is even one missing beat then the whole song goes wrong. To perfect this is not an easy task you must be dedicated to music and enjoy what you are doing; only then perfection can be seen. The main idea of karaoke is not to imitate the vocalist but to sing in your own voice with the original track playing in the background.Apart from this all the songs that he chose in each concert are old classical movie songs from different languages and he rarely attempts to sing any of the latest songs. This is because he fears that the present generation will forget about the legends such as Mohammed Rafi, Raj kapoor, Shankar Jaikishan and many others. And he also concentrates on the youth so that music can unite two different generations. Said Sriram, “I am very passionate about music and whatever I do is all my hard work and I want people to recognise the effort I am putting in each of my concerts. Music to me is a combination of raaga, taala and love from the bottom of the heart.” He further added by saying “I’m really thankful to god who gave me such a gift, I always believe what we are, is God’s gift and what we make of it is our gift to God.”
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