Shantala Subramanyam born in Bangalore, was raised in Chennai, heartland of Carnatic music, renowned for its emphasis on improvisation on beautiful ragas within a highly evolved rhythmic vocabulary. She plays the VENU, a Carnatic bamboo flute, and it’s an instrument with a warm sonority.
Shantala displayed keen interests in music when she was only an year old and like many Carnatic musicians, Shantala started playing in early childhood under the guidance of her father M N Subramanyam, himself an amature musician and her brother Shashank, an eminent flute artist. It was also her good fortune to be trained by eminent performers - vocalist late Sri. Vairamangalam Lakshminarayanan and is currently pursuing vocal music training under Sri O.S.Thyagarajan and Sri T V Gopalakrishanan. She is grateful to the famed South Indian drummers Trichur Sri.Narendran, Patri Satish Kumar and Parupalli Phalgun for imparting rhythm training, spread over a decade.
Owing to her diligent training and hard training, Shantala has been highly appreciated for her melodic presentations combined with complex rhythmic patterns. Today, she’s recognized as an important and authentic voice in this demanding tradition and this view has been echoed by music critiques.