T.N. Bala (தி.என். பால)

T.N. Bala

T.N. Bala hails from Tiruvayyaru in Tanjore District in India. He is one of the very early disciples of Late Ganakaladhara Madurai Mani Iyer. A professional Broadcaster, artist and executive in All India Radio in Madras and Delhi, years after his Masters in Journalism and Economics, he migrated to US some 38 years ago after being selected to join the Broadcasting division of American Radio and Television. Bala retired after working more than 28 years with ABC-TV Network Affiliate Station in Philadelphia. Since retirement he is devoting his entire time and energy to serving the cause of music by promoting Carnatic music. Until very recently he used to travel quite a lot to perform and demonstrate the Carnatic Music style as far as Long Island in the North and Washington DC area in the South. He has conducted music workshops, seminars and lec-demos. He is a vocalist, percussionist (plays both mridangam and kanjira), and composer. He has accompanied many artists like Maharajapuram Santhanam, TV.Sankaranarayanan, DKPattammal, DKJayaraman, MLVasanthakumari, Mandolin Srinivas,Trichur Ramachandran , to name a few, both in India and abroad. His compositions have been rendered by artists like Maharajapuram Santhanam, Sudha Raghunathan, Trichur Ramachandran, Neiveli Santhanagopalan, DKJayaraman and many more.

He currently lives in Havertown, PA, with his wife B. Susila, also a vocalist, whom he trained. They have 3 sons.