Mumbai-based harpist is helping students learn how to play the instrument with novel approaches

Pandian with Irina Mishra during a lesson. Pics/Sameer Markande

On an early morning visit to Mazgaon, we look for the house of a harpist. Wandering with our ears as we step into the colony mentioned in the address, we expect to hear the faint sound of the instrument.

But tucked inside the farther end of this home, the notes of a harp rebound off the walls and encompass the player alone. From the outside of this unassuming structure, no one would have guessed Amazing grace was being orchestrated through the most angelic tones that we were privy to. Inside, musician Meagan Pandian presents to us one of nine level, pedal and electric harps that stand in all its grandeur, largeness, and intricate carvings. You wouldn't be wrong to associate the instrument with heaven.

Growing up in a Goan musical household, Pandian didn't need an introduction to music. "At family gatherings, even if you did not know how to play an instrument, one was placed in your hands," she recalls. For a long time, Pandian focused on the piano and violin. But after seeing the harp being played on television, she felt that it remained a seemingly inaccessible dream, and "too wonderful a thing to be true", as she calls it. Travelling to France in 2013 - under The Olga and Jules Craen Young Musician of the Year award, where she saw people playing the harp - strengthened her resolve. Three months later, she bought a second-hand 26-string harp from an expatriate.

Meagan Pandian plays a tune on the harp

Apart from seeking lessons from international artistes visiting Mumbai and websites, Pandian is mostly self-taught. Along with the difficulty of finding a teacher, she shares about the tricky process to acquire an instrument. Her journey led her to launch Harp India in 2018, a platform through which she teaches, rents, and helps musicians with repairing and purchasing harps, books, strings and other accessories that are imported.

Currently, Pandian has eight students. Apart from teaching in person in India and taking online classes for international students, she writes scores for Indian classical and Bollywood music. She has worked with AR Rahman and Pritam, and has also toured with Arijit Singh.

A certified Montessori teacher, she also works to incorporate its philosophy to enhance music education. She began this endeavour through collaborations with schools, where programmes include playing for kids and allowing them to explore the instrument by themselves as an introduction since, apart from the Indian harp or Swarmandal, it is not a common instrument in the city. "The Montessori approach to music is holistic and based on the understanding that young children learn first through their experiences and senses. So I try to engage the ears, eyes, voice, hands, body and soul of the child all at once.

Then, the child is entirely and actively involved in the whole musical experience," she shares. The same goes for teaching adults, where Pandian observes and comprehends the needs of the students and responds to them through her lessons. She follows the same method used in Montessori education, where in every area of exploration and analysis, teachers do not give more to the mind than to the hand. Similarly, Pandian ensures that new concepts are experienced by the mind as well as through movement and the senses.

Guitarist, pianist and vocalist Irina Mishra travels from Navi Mumbai twice a week for harp lessons with Pandian. Struggling to find a teacher in the city for in-person classes, Mishra came across Harp India nearly four years ago and has been a student ever since.

The platform also helped Mishra buy the instrument through proper channels after a bad experience trying to acquire a harp by herself. The teaching hour begins with tuning the instrument, and practising scales under the attentive watch of the teacher. With hands on the strings and feet on the pedals, both musicians are thoroughly absorbed in the music, when Pandian steals a moment to reveal, "One lifetime isn't enough for this instrument."

Learn online
>> learningtheharp.com
>> udemy.com
>> hipharp.com
>> handsonharps.com

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