Artist Highlights
Sruti Sarathy — violin / vocals / composition
Sruti Sarathy is a leading Carnatic musician in the diaspora. She is a versatile violinist, singer, and composer with roots in the South Indian classical tradition. Her original music is a meeting place for Carnatic and Hindustani forms, spoken word, South Asian diasporic experience, literature in many Indian and Western languages, and theater. Her style and sound bring out the voice of the Indian violin in a contemporary and imaginative way.
Her groundbreaking experiments with the Carnatic form and the role of the violin in Carnatic music have been supported by several institutions. She received a Fulbright Scholarship in 2016 from the US Department of State to study cross-genre approaches in Carnatic violin. She is also the recipient of grants from the Alliance for California Traditional Arts (2007) and the Creative Work Fund (2021).
Sruti’s original compositions reach out to new contexts via Indian classical forms. She composes for small instrumental ensembles as well as for voice. Sruti’s original compositions offer scope for improvisation within and beyond the raga framework. Her compositions draw from South Asian diasporic life and history, reflect minority South Asian identities, and address contemporary political priorities. Carnatic Crossings is her new band, formed with the intention of creating a space for exploring a uniquely diasporic sound. Her experience as a composer and master improviser informs the vision for the band’s new repertoire.
Sruti has been featured in the San Francisco and Chicago World Music Festivals, the San Francisco World Percussion Arts Festival, the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, and the Drive East Festival in New York City. She has performed at major venues throughout India, including the Music Academy (Chennai), Shanmukhananda Sabha (Mumbai), and the Indira Gandhi National Center for Performing Arts (Delhi).
Roopa Mahadevan — vocals / composition
Roopa Mahadevan is a leading second-generation Indian classical and crossover vocalist. Her signature crossover project, Roopa in Flux, and collaborations in jazz, R&B/soul, free improv, and dance/theater have taken her to venues such as Jazz at Lincoln Center, MET Museum, Carnegie Hall, SFJazz, Sadler’s Wells, Jacob’s Pillow, and more.
Roopa trained in Carnatic (South Indian) vocal under Asha Ramesh and further under Suguna Varadachari in India through the Fulbright scholarship. Awarded the title “Kala Ratna” by Cleveland Thyagaraja Aradhana, Roopa has performed in prestigious Carnatic venues such as Chennai's Music Academy during the December music season, and become an in-demand Carnatic vocalist for leading Bharatanatyam dancers around the world.
Roopa was a featured soloist with Grammy-winning Album Calling All Dawns, by Christopher Tin. Roopa has worked with top artists across fields, such as Wynton Marsalis (jazz), Mythili Prakash (dance), Misha Chowdhury (theater), and Arto Lindsay (rock) and done residencies at Joe’s Pub, Banff Center, Ryder Farm, and Hedgebrook.
Through her multiple avatars - composer, choir director, dance accompanist, comedian, teacher, and more - Roopa brings a critical commentary, humor, and authenticity rarely found in a traditional Indian classical artist of her caliber. Roopa is excited to tour Roopa in Flux and and bring her brand of radical joy to more communities.
Erika Oba — pianist
Erika Oba is a composer, pianist/flutist, and educator based in the SF Bay Area. She is active as a performer on both piano and flute, and has composed for groups such as Del Sol String Quartet, Fresno Philharmonic, Shotgun Players, and Sharp and Fine. She teaches in UC Berkeley’s Music Department and is resident music director with Berkeley Playhouse’s Youth Conservatory Program.
Rohan Krishnamurthy — mridangam / khanjira / ghatam / morsing / konnakol
Indian-American percussionist, composer, and educator Dr. Rohan Krishnamurthy is one of the leading voices of Indian classical and cross-genre music in the South Asian diaspora. Acclaimed a "musical ambassador" by The Times of India, he received mridangam training from the legendary maestro, Sri. Guruvayur Dorai. Distinguished as a soloist, composer, and collaborator, Rohan performed with legendary Indian classical musicians and Grammy Award-winning global artists. Rohan leads The Alaya Project, an Indo-jazz-funk collective, which has performed at prestigious jazz and global music venues across the country including SFJazz, Joe's Pub NYC, and The Strathmore DC, as well as a national Jazz Road Tours grant for a recent Midwest Tour. Their debut album has been praised by Jazziz Magazine, NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, and more. Rohan holds a Ph.D. in musicology from the Eastman School of Music and directs the RohanRhythm Percussion Studio with students from across the globe. Rohan is the recipient of international awards and grants including commissions from the San Francisco Arts Commission, Zellerbach Foundation, and Goethe Institute (Germany). He has taught at renowned institutions and his patented RohanRhythm drum tuning system is available worldwide.
Vishal Sapuram — vocals / chitravina
Vishaal Sapuram is an acclaimed Indian classical (Carnatic) musician, and an exponent of the chitravina, a rare Indian slide lute. A disciple of the renowned chitravina maestro N Ravikiran, Vishaal began his performing career at age nine. He has since performed around the world at venues like the Chicago World Music Festival, Esplanade’s Kalaa Utsavam (Singapore), Navatman’s Drive East (New York), the Tyagaraja-Tansen Festival (Kuala Lumpur), several leading sabhas in Chennai and around India, and so on. He has also collaborated on unique concepts such as ‘Unfretted’, which explores the creative and collaborative frontiers in the traditional concert form, and ‘Immersed in Infinity’, which showcases spirituality through the Carnatic concert journey. He is a highly proficient vocalist as well. Praised by The Hindu and other publications as ‘showing his musical wisdom’, its ‘sonorous sound taking the audience into a trance’, Vishaal’s music has won honors like the Shanmukhananda Dr M S Subbulakshmi Fellowship (Mumbai), several awards from the Music Academy Madras, and the A Grade from All India Radio Chennai. Vishaal is also a passionate teacher, and has been teaching music since the age of ten. He has also lectured and presented on various aspects of Carnatic music at Brown & Emory Universities, Temple of Fine Arts Malaysia, and so on. A student of the poetry of Carnatic music, he is knowledge in Sanskrit, Telugu, and Tamil, and has written English translations for many Carnatic compositions.
Sukanya Chakrabarti — deviser / director
Born and raised in Kolkata, India, Sukanya Chakrabarti has worked as a playwright, director, dramaturg, and performer in New York, the Bay Area, and Kolkata. She served as the Cultural Dramaturg for Public Obscenities (Pulitzer Prize finalist), written and directed by Shayok Misha Chowdhury, produced by Soho Rep and NAATCO, and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company; and a Cultural Consultant for Cowboys and East Indians, written by Matthew Spangler and Nina McConigley. She is also the Co-editor of the journal Theatre Topics. Her current and ongoing research project is on performances of the South Asian diaspora across generations of immigration in California. She holds a doctoral degree in Theater and Performance Studies from Stanford University. She is an Associate Professor of Theatre Arts at the Department of Film, Theatre, and Dance at San Jose State University.
Pri Suryaneni — documentary storyteller / videographer
Pri Suryaneni is an Indian-origin media entrepreneur, documentarian, and visual storyteller residing in the unceded Ohlone lands (Fremont, CA). Her work amplifies local Bay Area and South Asian stories of immigration, identity, marginalization, resistance, joy, and community, spotlighting voices often overlooked within mainstream narratives. She has produced work in five languages: English, Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, and Punjabi.
Her current body of work represents the culmination of over a decade and a half of filmmaking expertise and a deep dedication to addressing social justice concerns. She focuses on creating character-driven, verite-style, and experimental documentaries. Her journey in visual storytelling commenced as an assistant director in Bollywood, India. Eventually, she founded her own production company, Pensar Creations. Pri has produced television shows, short fiction narratives, documentaries, corporate videos, and Ad films.
Photo Sources — in order of appearance
PBS/Nancy Kelly
Personal archives of Yakuta Poonawala
Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy
Personal archives of Tinku Ishtiaq
“First Days“ by SAADA
Vikram Bharath (videographer)
Neeraj Naik (videographer)
Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation
Creative Commons
Personal archives of Sandhya Jha
Pexels
Personal archives of Yanchan Produced
Personal archives of Jassotha Balasubramaniam
Resource Bank
Ali “Tinku“ Ishtiaq
Ishtiaq immigrated to the U.S. from Bangladesh in the early 1980s to study computer science at MIT and later became an engineer in Silicon Valley. In 1986, after responding to a poster asking, “Are you South Asian and gay?”, he met two other South Asian engineers, and together they founded Trikone, the world’s first South Asian LGBTQ organization.
+ Learn more about Trikone’s work here
+ Another amazing local organization is Parivar — the first South Asian Trans-led Organization to be fiscally supported by the state of California and the City and County of San Francisco
Dhan Gopal Mukerji
Dhan Gopal Mukerji was the first South Asian immigrant to achieve literary success in the United States, as a Newbery medal awardee and author over two dozen works across genres including fiction, poetry, and social commentary. A key figure in introducing Indian culture to American audiences, he is best known for Caste and Outcast (1923), which combines memoir and cultural critique, depicting his life as a Bengali Brahmin in India and his later experiences as a student, worker, and activist in California.
+ Caste and Outcast, with a forward by Stanford professor Gordon H. Chang
Sandhya Jha
Sandhya Jha (they/them) is an anti-oppression consultant and PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice, focusing on contemporary progressive and conservative social movements. Founder and former executive director of the Oakland Peace Center, they are a multifaith community organizer and ordained pastor with master’s degrees in divinity and public policy. As a SAADA Archival Creators Fellow, Sandhya documented the stories of South Asian workers involved in labor organizing in the U.S. They now lead a research team at UPenn’s SAFE Lab studying how digital belonging supports social movement mobilization.
+ Explore Sandhya’s work documenting South Asian labor organizers in the U.S.
+ Learn more about Sandhya’s DEI and anti-oppression consulting work here
Yakuta Poonawalla
Yakuta Poonawalla, the Associate Director of Community Stewardship and Engagement at the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, works to create programs and community partnerships that support stewardship, volunteerism, recreation, conservation and community science efforts. Yakuta, who also serves on the California Landscape Stewardship Network’s JEDI Roundtable and on the board of TOGETHER Bay Area, has written extensively for the National Recreation and Parks Association, the Children & Nature Network, the Center for Humans and Nature, and Bay Nature, and was recently a recipient of Bay Nature’s 2024 Local Community Hero Award.
+ Stream Yakuta’s “Acres of Magic “episode on PBS Awesome Women Environmentalists
+ Stewardship Story: What Kind of Ancestor Do You Want to Be?
+ What Kind of Light Do You Want to Be?
“Shanthi’s Story”
+ Berkeley South Asian History Archive, the companion website for the Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour, contains a multitude of research on South Asian American histories in Berkeley, the San Francisco Bay Area, and California, including Women’s/Feminist History
+ "Local and Global Divided: Transnational Exploitation against South Asian" by Sujatha Jesudason, chapter 17 of Body Evidence: Intimate Violence Against South Asian Women in America
Featured Artists
+ Discover the heartwarming story of Jassotha Balasubramaniam, a Sri Lankan Carnatic violinist who's sharing her love for music in the US.
+ Yanchan Produced is a Canadian-Tamil producer, mixing engineer, songwriter and Mridangist. Known for making beats with a South Asian twist, his release of solo and collaborative projects has garnered over 12 million streams on Spotify. Yanchan’s production has been affiliated with reputable labels and high-level artists over the years including collaborators Russ, SVDP, Shruthi Hassan, Pressa, Kristina Maria, Yung Tory, and Charle$.
Get Involved
+ ASATA, is a San Francisco Bay Area all-volunteer grassroots group working to educate, organize, and empower the Bay Area South Asian communities to end violence, oppression, racism and exploitation within and against our diverse communities.
ASATA’s work is member organized and member driven. Our history of organizing has taught us the importance of collective leadership, and that our work is only sustainable when we invest in each other, deepen our relationships, and grow our internal and external community. For many in our community, ASATA may be the first space where we feel belonging and safety. However, we know our work can’t stop there; while our shared identities are an entry-point for connection, they are not our destination. Instead, we look to a future in which all people are free, are safe to live, and where we have the tools to dismantle the systems that isolate us and create real solutions to meet our needs.
+ South Asian SOAR was founded in response to a growing crisis: 48% of South Asian men and women report experiencing at least one form of gender-based violence.
The COVID-19 pandemic, racial uprisings, and rising anti-Asian hate in 2020 only intensified these rates, sparking a moment of reckoning for grassroots advocates and leaders. Recognizing that true change requires collective action, these leaders—who had long provided life-saving services to survivors—came together to address the urgent need for collaboration, unity, and innovation. In just a few months, South Asian SOAR was born, uniting survivors, advocates, and allies into a national movement dedicated to building a future free from violence.
Explore South Asian immigrant history, archives, and storytelling
+ Secret Desi History | Snippets of South Asian American history, from the creators of the Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour
+ South Asian Radical History Walking Tour | A guided walk through more than a century of South Asian American history, set on the streets of Berkeley and San Francisco, California
+ South Asian American Digital Archive | Reflect a community of over 6.1 million people and more than 25o years of history
+ Hindus for Human Rights | Provide a Hindu voice of resistance to caste, Hindutva (Hindu nationalism), racism, and all forms of bigotry and oppression
+ The Secret History of South Asian and African American Solidarity | South Asians and African Americans have been standing up for each other for over a century. These are the histories we were never taught.
+ Smithsonian Exhibit on Indian Americans: Beyond Bollywood