From a Great Musical Mind: Learnings about Life (Part 2)

Intro: Welcome to Listen For Insight. I’m your host Logan Raukar. We have for you Srini , a musical genius and miami alum, and his insights on creativity. This episode is part one of a 2 part collection. I send you now to our interviewer Eric Dibble.

Eric: Srini, will you please define creativity? And do you believe that everyday creativity, as in business or school aspects, is the same as musical creativity?

Srini: [Saying “My name is Srini in several languages]

Srini: I personally speaking for myself, I incubate a lot, I don’t normally tell it or share it with others. I will observe something, I will keep it in my mind for 2 years or 3 years and then bring it out. But when I bring it out it will look as though I conjured the whole thing and it’s perfectly fine because I may have given it that much more of time to give it that due respect it needs. And uh anything that you construct eventually, in context of global rhythms, for example, it must relate, relating is very important. Relating to an idea, relating to an audience, relating to a student, relating to a grandmother. So my audience is a very important criteria, my student is my client. And I cannot live with any other benchmark. And as a result, you know, I never was, you know… I personally feel that some of the most bold ideas that I’ve got have never come for any… they have never earned me money, you know, they come naturally and everyone’s had a ball, which to me is the coolest thing. And I think uh the best things in the world have happened that way, the best things in the world for all of us are always free. I’ve always said the things that we’ve spent so much money are all bare but some of the most beautiful things, the mountains, or you know uhh when you think about uh going fishing, you know, in a beautiful lake, they’re all free, so um that’s generally, so creativity to me is this journey which um I don’t necessarily keep it for the stage alone. I am creative at different platforms. Even when I am in India I am consciously, unconsciously it has nothing to do with that. I just feel very free. I have no agenda, no plan. people say he doesn’t plan, it is true, I don’t plan too much. I don’t believe because I’m doing plans only to serve my convenience, I have to think of other people, my production has 600 people. How can I plan everything to suite my needs? It doesn’t make any sense, you know. So I don’t plan, I tell people sorry, I’ll not plan that. And I don’t necessarily tell them 20 reasons why, but I’m sensitive too some other guests, which I don’t tell, and I don’t make a big deal out of that, now I can tell you because I’ve done this thing for 20 years, sitting in another country, you know, and I’ve loved it. And God bless the students because I think every year they surprise me. They are my teachers in ways they don’t know…. You see something you observe something and you take a little bit from there and a little bit from there and you make it your own, it’s not necessarily musical, I’m talking about general comments, the casual remark they have made, or um when I’m hanging with them in high street or going on a drive with them, so at different layers, that’s why I recently collaborated with students from tallawanda for, you know, for a good reason there is some spark there. There is some sense- and then everyone is not wondering how is this team going to perform? Is this, you know, high school kid there’s a PHD professor on the team. There’s Miami graduates on the team, A.R. Rahman is on the team, you know, 2 time academy award winner. And I think there is some magic, you know, in a package like that. It’s there everywhere, if we look deeper and deeper. 

Eric: You made a comment earlier about how you might get an idea and how you might keep that to yourself and let this incubate for 2 years, during that time are you thinking about it and constantly changing it and trying to make improvements, or is it just kind of something that is there and you’re just letting it ride out until it comes into fruition?

Srini: I let it ride out, I never manipulate it, I allow it to flow. So as I stated I just allow it to meander itself and find a place, it just finds a home somewhere. So coming back to incubating, I allow certain things to live it’s life, and uh take a shape, certain ideas that I have I implemented in another project elsewhere, you know, not necessarily over here, you know, it could be, you know, in another platform. For example we are doing a global rhythms show in India in another month, so certain ideas will just come up there once we go there, I’m not come up with them, I’m not saying I have this to be implemented, but it would come basicly, the word is organically. It would come organically. 

Eric: You said just a second ago that you- during the process you observed the small things. Would that be making some creative changes last minute during performance or what exactly do you mean by those small changes?

Srini: Yeah, I think uh, I love making changes until the very end. I never liked being confined to a certain prototype, uhhh and this is not how I, you know, I was wired I guess, and this has to be different, so even global rhythms as a show, has never been the same for anywhere, I mean the people who have seen it, they have commented that from the time they have seen the show being performed here or at Duke or at MIT or UPenn they’re all be we’be played at several venues around the US, around the world, it’s been different everywhere. So the point here is not having a um standard, but looking at the bigger picture, looking at who are my players on the team? What am I gonna do with that team? How am I gonna work? Constantly observing, constantly being flexible, being adaptable, you know, working with people. Very important, and always putting people higher, we must uh think of being sensitive, very sensitive to people, I will not do it if it’s hurting someone, you know, I won’t do that obviously. I mean I’m not talking about someone outside the- I’m talking about someone within my team. So if my guest artist is not comfortable with that I would work around that and you know, definitely- I don’t want to impose something on somebody, no way, you know.

Eric: You said flexibility and adaptability when you were describing yourself and how you wanted to be in situations. And obviously as the leader in Global Rhythms, what else do you think leaders need to embody from a characteristics aspect, in order to be the best leader and get the most respect out of the people that they are leading.

Srini: I think I want to think about doing something for that guest to come back, so what do I do to have him or her come back? So anything that you do, I’ll be putting ourselves in a frame of mind that we are thinking long term, long term is very important, and so in saying so, many of my artists were part of the team who have been working for us for 20 years. So that says something about how we work together, you know, there is what I call, team spirit is too small a word, there are two things here, contributability and controllability. Contributability is your ability to share, your ability to add, your ability to enhance, your ability to upgrade. Controllability is your wanting to resist, wanting to diminish wanting people to package “Oh we have to have a program note written”. I don’t want it to go down by the wayside, so I use technology. So everyone, the whole promotion was done on Facebook, and you can do things today using technology. So the point I’m making again is, with controllability one of the most important things when people try to control, the biggest danger, the biggest danger is they want to maintain the status quo. I will never want to retain the status quo. You have to go beyond, you have to let go, and if you don’t know how to let go, then you’re in trouble because you are unnecessarily torturing yourself let alone others. I travel all the time. But there is a sense of humility in that team which makes me feel I have to do something to serve this group. Similarly with artists and students who work with me, there is that sense of humility that we have to see in them. And once we recognize it and once we are able to comprehend it, then creativity is at it’s maximum. You must give them that respect, you must give them that love and only then can you make the project successful and make them look successful, because you can’t think of it any other way, because otherwise they won’t come back. If people say I want to do a creativity project for one year, it’s a very dangerous thing. It is not a one time event, it is a constant, IT IS A CONSTANT. If people think oh this is my month of creative, it’s a very, very unfortunate consequence. Creativity is a bi-product of our journey. It is a given for me, it will never.. I just, I don’t know what else I could do. If I don’t have it I’m in trouble.

Outro: You just heard part one of the two part collection of insights from Srinivas Krishnan. Check back in to hear the second installment soon. And as always, thank you for listening for insight.