Deepak Ram


Deepak Ram is a South African flautist, composer, keyboard player and producer of Indian origin. He has contributed on Shango and Labyrinth albums by the trance group Juno Reactor, Dead Bees on a Cake album by Jazz artist David Sylvian among others.

Early life

Deepak Ram's great-grandparents were brought to South Africa to work on sugar cane plantations as indentured labourers. He was thus born in South Africa to second generation immigrants during the apartheid era in the 60s. A few weeks after his birth the family home in Sophiatown, a racially mixed area, was bulldozed under Group Areas Act for effecting racial segregation. His family then settled in Lenasia - a township south of Johannesburg earmarked for those of Indian origin. His earliest influences were the Jazz records his brothers listened to and the Bollywood and Indian music his parents listened to. His first flute was fashioned out of a drainpipe with six holes drilled arbitrarily on the sides.

Career

Deepak Ram first traveled to India at the age of 17 where he received training in classical Indian music under the tutelage renowned flautist Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia and the late Shri Suryakant Limaye. Before passing away, the latter bequeathed a collection of flutes to Ram.

Discography

Solo albums

Live in California with Pandit Anindo Chatterjee (includes interviews with Deepak Ram and Pt. Anindo Chatterjee

Production