The music of southern India and the rhythms it uses have developed over thousands of years into a highly complex system. The best tool to help understand this system is the syllabic language konnakol. Using it, tricky rhythms can be articulated precisely and at breathtaking speed.
»Konnakol ist a notation, an art form, a language and a teaching method rolled into one«, explains percussionist Magnus Dauner, who has specialised in the syllabic language. He travels to India nearly every year, where he studied with the master T.A.S. Mani, founder of the Karnataka College of Percussion, until Mani died in 2020.
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About Magnus Dauner
Magnus Dauner was originally a jazzman. Before he went to college, the native of Germany's Allgäu region won several prizes in the »Jugend jazzt« competition, both locally and nationally. His musical training then led him from the Bavarian Youth Jazz Orchestra via jazz studies in Munich to the Karnataka College of Percussion in Bangalore (India), where he took courses in southern Indian rhythm and the mridangam drum.
Dauner was so fascinated by this completely different way of making music that he returned to India every year from 2015 to 2020 to continuing studying with his guru, the Mridangam Vidwan T.A.S. Mani, in Bangalore. Today he gives konnakol workshops himself at prestigious institutions such as the Landesmusikakademie and the Jazzschule in Berlin. He has given concerts and toured with internationally well-known musicians like Kai Eckhardt-Karpeh de Camargo, Matthias Schriefl, Joo Kraus and the ensemble of the Karnataka College of Percussion. Magnus Dauner is also regularly booked for pop and hip-hop productions.
»If you want to learn a percussion instrument in India, you can't avoid konnakol. The same appliues to all rhythms: speak first, then play!«
Magnus Dauner
Konnakol in the Elbphilharmonie
Hear konnakol and tala live: On 4 November 2021 the singer Aruna Sairam appeared at the Elbphilharmonie – one of the leading representatives of southern Indian music.
