“That was a really grounding thing: to find that link between what I researched, as a PhD researcher, and what I was performing in clubs. To find a place you go to because it’s some[where] you can find peace, meditate, gather your thoughts… That’s what dance music is to me.”
Vinthya Perinpanathan
Vinthya Peripanathan (b. 1998, Emmen) is a composer, interdisciplinary artist, and researcher based in Manchester. Vinthya’s music and research explores combining the increasingly ethnicised traditions of her Sri Lankan heritage in the contemporary context of her musical upbringing; drawing parallels between ancient, ritualistic music and contemporary acoustic and electronic music (at times practicing under the alias Vindya). Her composition and ethnomusicological research has been carried out at the University of Manchester, supervised by Camden Reeves and funded by the AHRC NWCDTP Postgraduate Research Studentship. Vinthya’s work has been commissioned and performed internationally, most notably by ensembles such as the Sonoro Quartet, Kyan Quartet, GATE Duo, and Elisabeth Hetherington and the ADAM Quartet, the latter of whom premiered her large-scale work ‘Her Resistance’ at the String Quartet Biennale 2026 in Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw, subsequently performed across the Netherlands.
Vinthya’s upcoming and debut orchestral commission, ‘Mēlam’, will be performed at the University of Manchester on 24th October. Ahead of the premiere, we caught up with Vinthya to discuss her extensive interests in electronic music, stasis, movement, reconciliation, storytelling, and incorporating Sri Lankan traditional music into her practice…
header photo by Shehan Obeysekara
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Zyggy/PRXLUDES: We’re chatting towards the culmination of your composition (and ethnomusicological) research at the University of Manchester, exploring the relationship between European and Sri Lankan musical styles. Can I ask what spurred you to pursue this PhD, and what first led you through this line of research?
Vinthya Perinpanathan: The way that music histories are written, the way composition and music is taught and viewed, is very Eurocentric. As a musician, I wanted to answer that question musically — what distinguishes Sri Lankan music — but that’s a really loaded question, because it’s an island with many ethnicities, has been colonised three times, and a lot of people have come and gone from that place. [But] as soon as I started my PhD, I read a book called The Musical Gift: Sonic Generosity in Post-War Sri Lanka by Jim Sykes. In this book, he [Sykes] talks about the ethnicisation of music, and how this could be inherently divisive. To only say that “this music belongs to this ethnicity” negates all other influences in the developmental stages.
For context, there was a war [in Sri Lanka] between 1983-2009, between the Tamil and Sinhalese ethnicities. I am mixed Tamil and Sinhalese. So looking at the original binary of Sri Lankan and European [music] first became looking at this other binary between Sinhalese and Tamil musics, bringing those together. And finally realising the way forward was to discard these labels entirely which opened the doors to all other musical influences, sound, and nature, as it is all — and we all are — connected.
I guess any sort of research in those contexts will open up so many cans of worms… What particularly were you interested in exploring in your approach?
I just wanted to look at the similarities. The shared cultural heritage between these musics. They’re both very percussive, repetitive, loud and almost always communal. Instrumentation: they both use voice, drums, the conch shell (called the sangu/hakgediya) and they both have a sornali/horanǟva, which are the Sinhalese and Tamil names for a loud, outdoor wind instrument that is played at ceremonies. A lot of the [music] is to do with nature — for example, gratitude for a good harvest, or singing all through the night to protect the crops.
What I took from the book — The Musical Gift — was that music hasn’t always been this identity-driven, self-expression [based] thing. It’s actually a gift: to the deities, to the land. Seeing all of these instrument-based similarities, and the reason-of-practice based similarities between Sinhalese, Tamil, and other ethnic groups in Sri Lanka… I decided I wanted my gift to be that through music, I celebrated [both] individuality and shared cultural heritage between Tamil and Sinhalese people.
I guess that’s what my PhD evolved into, from this really naïve European context. My fieldwork, for example, started to feel quite extractive: “oh, I’ll go over there as a researcher from Manchester, and talk to these people, do these interviews, and come back to Europe and have my pieces only performed where I am based”… And [I] started to feel really uncomfortable with that. I have a lot of plans to spend more time in Sri Lanka. I would love to be a composer there and here — teach composition, share ideas musically, ways of making music. Ultimately I would like more of an ebb and flow rather than a one-way street.
There’s something really important there, at least for me, about challenging the kind of Western hegemony that often accompanies the study of these musical practices. Can you tell me a bit about your musical background, and how these different facets of your musical identity were first introduced to you?
My family moved to the UK when I was 3, and I started playing the violin when I was 7. I played in my local Saturday music centre, in Potters Bar, outside of London. I played in the orchestras there and at school. I had a few bharatanatyam dance lessons — a South Indian dance form — [and] I had a handful of carnatic violin lessons, but I really rejected it when I was a child, because it made me way too different at school. And then I did Music and Music Technology A-Level — and I really feel like that was the beginning of everything that I am now, because I was straddling a “traditional” notated music course, and then also production and popular music.
And then I went to uni. At that point, everything to do with my heritage was always outside of academia. I went to my now-supervisor, Camden Reeves — who was teaching me at the time — and I was like, “is it okay to use Sri Lankan music in my free composition?”… And he was so shocked that it was even a question. He was so encouraging of me being inspired by my heritage; he didn’t understand why I was making this distinction between what I did at uni, and what I did outside of uni. He encouraged me so much to get rid of that division — [that] any music that I like should inspire me.
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I understand you are also involved in electronic music, predominantly techno — can you tell me about how this facet of your practice first materialised?
In [my] first year of university, one of my best friends — Isaac Milhofer, who’s studying a PhD with me — they took me to see Jeff Mills. I just thought it was incredible! There were some other students in the year above who took me to see Floorplan. It was years later, after I started DJ’ing, that I really started to understand what all this meant. I knew how to mix, and I knew how to beatmatch, because of the musical background — but I still didn’t really start to understand techno until around 2023. I still don’t think I understand it by any means, but I feel more affirmed with the knowledge that I have.
In 2023 — my gap year between my Masters and my PhD — I was experiencing dance music across Europe, spending a lot of time at festivals. Most of my best friends, the people I talk to about music the most, tend to be from this electronic music world.
I realised there was so much more music in me. I think dancing, unity, and the types of people, audience, space — the fact that these things happen in nature, the fact that these things happen for everyone — it makes music so much more accessible.
I’ve sometimes been in circles where people are less open-minded, making it difficult to create an interdisciplinary practice. There are things that have always made me feel like a bit of an outsider in the contemporary music world: an outsider who was welcome, if that makes sense? It was seen to be “cool” that someone like me was doing it…
But you’re still having to do it on “their” terms — in my experience, at least.
In London, for example, you know how you can walk down the street and go unnoticed? That would be my dream: to go into places and never feel like I’m the odd one out, for any reason. I feel like I really found that in the electronic music world. To be able to recreate that, but with other musical elements — Sri Lankan ones, acoustic ones — would be really cool.
And I see people doing it! I’ve just seen one of my favourite things I’ve ever seen — Mere Mortals, with the San Francisco Ballet and Floating Points. I just saw the European premiere in Edinburgh, and it was in-saaaane. It was kind of like dance music, but with an orchestra [and] ballet. The ballet aesthetics were there, but they were also moving slightly differently, with influence from other dance and movement forms.
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Let’s talk a bit about your musical practice, and how you’ve incorporated sounds and techniques from these different musics into your work. I feel like a nice place to start might be your solo violin work, ‘Caprice in Raga Kharaharapriya’, which you wrote in 2021…
The violin piece was written actually before I started my PhD! Meaning, before I had started delving into Sri Lankan music. Here I drew on Indian Classical music as it was much easier to find resources to learn from online. I always think, “that was wildly different thoughts”, but when I strip back to basics, it’s also kind of similar. It starts with stasis, then develops into rhythm and movement. So much music typically starts and develops in this way: for example, the alaap in Indian Classical music, or an ambient, experimental soundscape prefacing a rhythmic electronic set. Even in a concert hall, finding that pin-drop silence before players begin their performance.
That’s how the ‘Caprice’ starts, I guess. The improvisatory opening section introducing the raga is slow, meandering and finds stillness and then bam — percussive, double-stopping, fast section in 5/16. And then there’s a break! That sort of rhythm-break-rhythm-break is how I have worked for a while. That was a free-flowing, through-composed piece of music. That one specifically was inspired by Indian Classical music, and had much more of a divisive “these things are from Indian Classical music, and these things are from Western music” in my thought processes…
How did your artistic thinking evolve through your compositional practice? I’m thinking about your incredible work ‘Temple Road, Jaffna’, for soprano saxophone and piano…
‘Temple Road’ was [composed] in 2024; two years later, I am finishing my PhD, and I’ve been to Sri Lanka twice more — my relationship with Sri Lanka, and how that changes, it’s such an interesting thing. ‘Temple Road’ is inspired by this sort of calmness you feel around the temple. Outside of temple days, it is so calm there. There’s a long road [in Jaffna] called Temple Road, which is where B. Sakitjyan lives — a nadaswaram performer at Nallur Temple in Jaffna — and I went to his house [on Temple Road] with my parents to learn more about this traditional instrument during my first “recce” fieldtrip. I can get by in Sinhalaese, but my Tamil is poor, and my dad was gonna help me. They were my unofficial research assistants for this one interview… -laughs-
I wanted to ask him if it’s okay to mix the nadaswaram with any Sinhalese-influenced music, and he said [he] was on board. He’d done a tour around Sri Lanka with a band called Hard Boiled Wonderland — he plays the nadaswaram, but he’s in a band with Sinhalese people as well. So this trip was my first taste of: “in Sri Lanka, Sinhalese and Tamil people can get on” — and it’s so different to what I know in the Sri Lankan diaspora. Now I know a lot of Sinhalese and Tamil people who get on, but [for me] that was the first time ever. It was really emotional — so the piece became emotional.
In what ways did you end up exploring the nadaswaram, musically?
The nadaswaram is loud, can be considered sharp, and traditionally incorporates lots of ornamentation and glissandi in its melodic playing. I like to view the piano as a percussion instrument: you’re hammering the strings with the keys. You have this section at the end where it really does sound like nadaswaram with percussion accompaniment; they are loud, and very rhythmic, and the soprano saxophone is extremely high in its register. I was working with these two amazing people called William and Simone — GATE Duo — they reached out to me asking if I would write them a piece. I’ve been really grateful — I feel like everyone I’ve worked with, ever, is so interested, and wanting to be authentic to the music I’m inspired by. I worked with Simone to get the more piercing timbres out of the soprano sax, and his openness and enthusiasm with doing this was really helpful!
One of my biggest inspirations is Takemitsu. I did a bit of research on him during my Masters, and he writes [that] he’s never trying to mimic the music that he’s inspired by. There was a school of Japanese composers notating Japanese melodies for ‘Western’ instruments, and that was the cross-cultural combining of tradition; I guess he [Takemitsu] wanted to go a bit further. Without wanting to get into essentialism, I guess he want[ed] to take whatever one may call the “essence”… And that would be different for everyone. For me, it’s this philosophy around movement and music — the feeling, I guess. It’s hard to articulate in words, but it’s maybe easier to write music based on.
So [for me] it’s the ornamentation; writing all the tiny, micro, fast notes as grace notes instead of measured rhythms, because then it’s much more open to interpretation and unmetered — and it will be different every time. Just like it would be if it was orally passed down. It’s not specific rhythms, it’s a gesture. Or glissandi: glissandi can be taken at different speeds. This notation invites an improvisatory feel.
I also do a lot of grace notes, or ghost notes, before any percussive material. Because the way that rhythm is perceived in Sri Lanka, and South India, is very different. You often hear a small beat on, or before, or slightly after; I used to see it as something that needed quantizing, or was out of time, but it was only because of my “Western” classical training. As soon as you start to embrace those notes — they’re not a discomfort — it’s just something you hear as a natural thing and gives character. You would never hear a bird call in a loop where the bird sings the exact same thing every time — it’s always changing.
It’s those kinds of things I try to evoke. More and more so. I guess they started with this ‘Caprice’, and they evolved and are ever-evolving — as part of my compositional voice.
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That’s absolutely fascinating. Can you tell me a bit more about where these musical understandings took you? I’m particularly interested in how ideas of movement, ritual, and dance come into things — especially considering your practice in techno.
Well, recently there was the fourth movement of my string quartet, ‘Her Resistance’, which was kind of a shove in that direction. It was an extremely repetitive piece of music with electronics. In a concert setting, I want that pulse to be felt internally. As an audience, we’re sitting down and we can’t move, but I still want people to feel that movement — that feeling of movement. Feeling like they’re inside something.
My debut live set at Waking Life, in Portugal, was a 45 minute collage of music from all corners of Sri Lanka, taken as part of my field recordings, with an alternating kick pattern underneath. It was around 80 beats per minute. I produced a fixed-media piece, which had sounds of rituals from Batticaloa and as well as snippets of different drumming traditions from both ethnicities — Tamil and Sinhalese. Tying it all together, nature was the most all-encompassing part of that set. The water, the birds, the wind — all of these things bring the people together. This set was an honest and first meeting of my research and electronic music.
I produced this music knowing I would play most of it as fixed media because I wanted to improvise violin on top. I made it sparse and open to give that room for the live element of an instrument. I haven’t played that much as an adult; I love to play, I just didn’t love playing in a classical setting. Whenever I do get my violin out in a more informal setting, it makes people feel things! Happiness, beauty, emotion, calmness… I know that when I play my instrument, it means something — something is missing if I never play my violin again. I really wanted to construct my live set to incorporate my violin.
When techno elements — music that is dance music — come into my compositions, it’s not that I’m trying to get people to dance. I’m trying to evoke this feeling of moving, and dancing; even when you’re sitting down and listening to a piece. I have a piece called ‘Kurullo’, which I can’t wait to have premiered. It’s a string quartet — about six minutes — it’s really repetitive, using a lot of extended techniques on the strings to make them sound really percussive. I was seeing the four different members of the string quartet as four different EQ knobs on a mixer. It really helped churn the piece/track out of me, as well: “oh, at this point, I would turn the bass down/filter, so the cello gets quieter/goes up an octave, stops playing”…
I also understand you have an orchestral premiere taking place next month on the 24th October, with the University of Manchester. Does that also relate to your interest in dance, movement, and ritual?
The orchestral piece is exactly that, as well. I transcribed a ritual from Jaffna, rhythmically. The harmonic content is made up of this ancient harp called the Yaal. My dad’s hometown is Jaffna, which in Tamil is Yaalpanam — the land of the harper. I finally found my familial connection to music… -laughs- I took this harp, the strings of the harp, with those more non-equal temperament inflections through extended techniques, pitch bending, flautando bowing; slightly detuned. This is the first time I had a closer look at harmony; because it’s for orchestra, and I really wanted to be inspired by this harp, I felt like the piece needed chords, and the pitches of this harp would produce really interesting ones! The ritual from Jaffna is called parai melam — it’s the type of drumming ritual I was looking at.
Taking a look at my portfolio, there was a bit of a weight on Sinhalese influence — naturally occurred as this is the language that I can speak, consequently spending some more time with those communities — but I didn’t like that imbalance, even in my portfolio. I guess I’ve been thinking more in terms of: what do I want to be expressed in this piece? A bold statement from my Tamil roots. The parai drums are big drums, and they’re hit with mallets… I feel like instruments like toms are a relatively modern version of these drums.
I feel like hitting a drum — plucking a taut string — that doesn’t feel new. Percussion and moving doesn’t feel new. We like to distinguish and talk about things, where they’re from. But the unifying aspect of it is to understand that, ultimately, probably everywhere on this planet, we’ve had some form of movement, dancing and percussion-oriented music, or simply, “music”. That was a really grounding thing: to find that link between what historical things researched in my department and what I was finding in clubs. To find a place you go to because it’s some[where] you can find peace, meditate, gather your thoughts… That’s what dance music is to me. To have those experiences is really similar to why we were gathering and moving in the first place. Because I think about these things all the time, they naturally enter my music.
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You’ve mentioned that a big shift in perspective for you involved going back to Sri Lanka and spending time there. You also mentioned field recordings — can you tell me about the experience of going back to Sri Lanka and working there?
The first time [I went back] was for my recce trip in my first year of research. A highlight of this trip was going to Batticaloa, in the east, with the University of Visual and Performing Arts — and doing some research into various kooththu rituals: community theatre practices. An intersection of theatre, music, and dance. Kooththu performances are constructed by the community coming together over months of rehearsals and being involved with the development of the story told. One could say, it’s a collective community artform void of institutional hierarchy.
We went there, and we learned about four forms of kooththu from communities based in Batticaloa. After this, the students I travelled with were involved in [what I would call] a top-down reconciliation project at the Swami Vipulananda Institute of Aesthetic Studies — where the Tamil and Sinhalese students together learned each others’ folk songs and performed a concert.
I had never seen Tamil and Sinhalese students together in a class before; not in this musical way, when they’re learning from each other. That was really inspiring at the time. After this trip, I continued meeting people outside of the university setting — people who play the nadaswaram, the horanǟva, the bass. I met people from bands, and even played a DJ set out there, learning about what is going on in the touristic south and the politics behind this. It became a time of learning about the island as a whole.
The second trip was the Mallung residency — this was a year and a half later. A residency organised by a friend who is walking a similar path to me. The residency was a meeting point for musicians from different backgrounds to learn from one another. I was predominantly learning about rhythm: that’s where I really learned a lot of the more philosophical and cultural rhythmic language that I’m trying to exude. On this trip, I learned a lot about tea, about nature; the colonial tea history, and how this is shared with a lot of South Asia.
I guess it makes sense, considering how they were all colonised by the British.
Again, the binary gets deconstructed. It’s not about Sinhalese and Tamil people. My Sri Lankan uncle sent me a folk song — a Bangladeshi folk song — sung by tea workers in the Assam region; and a lot of people in the YouTube comments are saying “this is so similar to Sri Lankan music”. So I’m looking at other musics which have very similar meanings and histories.
On my third trip, I understood more about the culture, the country, the people there, and the current musical and artistic landscape. The fact that there are people there already doing everything that I’m passionate about: they care about the issues around tea, the issues in the south; they care about reconciliation, justice, and storytelling. That’s all I’m trying to express over here, through music. But I’ve struggled to find others of diasporic heritage with similar intentions A lot of people will want to help communities over here [in the UK] — important work also — but I am relieved to say I am finally starting to meet people who are actively working with, witnessing, and understanding people over there [in Sri Lanka], quite late in life.
Can you tell me more about some of the key feelings you left with, about your communities in Sri Lanka, following your trips there?
I felt very at home there. It’s beautiful; they eat what and how I like to eat, I like the weather, everyone I meet is so warm, kind and generous. It felt good to blend in. I feel like I’m around people who are talking about the war, but not in a divisive way, but in a more “what can we do about this” way. I found people to be creating music, and other forms of art, that attempt to answer questions I also ask. I felt like I have a lot in common with the people I met in Sri Lanka, and they made me feel so welcome.
I felt confident to express what I want to express about unity through my trips in Sri Lanka. I felt like it’s an okay thing to do, the right thing to do. While I was working on my set for Waking Life, I was talking to someone in London, and he literally said to me “I don’t believe in this one island, one people bullshit”. And that’s what I called the set. -laughs- Do you see what I’m dealing with? I wonder if people think I’m not aware of the genocide — that targeted my dad’s people — apparently, I don’t know anything about that. But I do know. I just see power in numbers, and supporting those who are trying to make tangible changes.
I obviously can’t speak for Sri Lanka, at all — but I feel some parallels to conversations I’ve had regarding people from other parts of the world. Maybe this is controversial, but I sometimes feel like the stoking of division, particularly in the Western world, can often come from quite a neocolonial place.
I mean, honestly? Yeah… Because divide and conquer is a colonial tool, and some are still benefiting from the colonial and imperialist roots of society. In fact, I have — by being born in the Netherlands and growing up in the UK. And honestly it’s a hard pill to swallow, and I now feel empowered to help reconcile this. Maybe it starts with finding common ground and being kind.
I’d love to wrap up by talking about your sense of place, and community, in your work. Following your PhD, do you feel like you’re forging that sense of place in your work — are you looking to make work that actively strives to create this unity between communities?
I think so. I’d like to make everything. I don’t think I’m necessarily a contemporary concert composer — [even though] I love doing that, and I always will do that. Nitin Sawhney is a great example of an inspiration of mine: he’s a producer I knew through a jungle track called ‘Nadia’, a track with South Asian influence. And then I find out, years later, [that] he also composed the soundtrack for the new Jungle Book film Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle! And there’s other eclectic musicians like Floating Points, Jon Hopkins, Xiaolin, and many more I can’t name right now…
This year I released a track called ‘Monkey’. t’s the only piece of music I’ve ever officially “released” into the world. ‘Monkey’ was released on Mallung, which is a new record label that my friend set up in Sri Lanka — it’s the debut single on the label. The track ‘Monkey’, I think, is the most all-encompassing piece of music that anyone has listened to [of mine]: it has a conch shell, played experimentally, but also sounds like jazz — like a jazz improvisation. It’s accompanied by this repetitive bassline, sampled drums, violin improvisation, and the rainforest’s soundscape. The different kinds of drums in Sri Lanka have such a specific sound; usually they’re the absolute foreground of all rituals, but in this track, they’re small, subtle things that are interwoven into the texture. It’s because I know these drums can sound overpowering — and I wanted the main “character” to be the conch, or nature, because they were the things I was most enthralled by.
I feel like I want to make a broad array of things that have different places in mind, that speak to our collective humanity and individual beings. I think regardless of my own inspirations and ethnicity, a lot of people connect with my music and values. I think that comes from the fact that even though my central research has been in and around Sri Lanka, I have unravelled what could have become quite insular and found a way to share music with many places and communities. So maybe, the “place” in my work is wherever sound can be heard in the universe. -laughs-
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The premiere of Vinthya Perinpanathan’s orchestral work ‘Mēlam’ takes place on 24 October 2026 at the University of Manchester – more information and tickets:
Learn more about Vinthya and her practice:
- https://www.perinpanathan.com/
- https://www.youtube.com/@vinthyaperinpanathan
- https://soundcloud.com/perinpanathan
- https://www.instagram.com/vinthyaperinpanathan/
References/Links:
- Jim Sykes, The Musical Gift: Sonic Generosity in Post-War Sri Lanka (Oxford University Press, 2018)
- Sri Lankan civil war, Wikipedia
- Floating Points – Mere Mortals (Deutsche Grammophon, 2026)
- Hard Boiled Wonderland, live in Sri Lanka (2024)
- Kooththu Drama in Batticaloa, University of Peradeniya – Faculty of Fine Arts
- Nitin Sawhney, ‘Nadia’ (1999)
- Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (2018), dir. Andy Serkis
