Kota Satchidananda Sastry

Kota Satchidananda Sastry is an artist of Harikatha, a form of storytelling that mixes narration, song and acting. He was named for the Padma Shri in 2023 in the field of art, from Andhra Pradesh ^[1].

Seven decades on stage

Sastry was born on 12 August 1934 at Addanki village in Prakasam district and went to school there ^[2]. He began performing Harikatha in 1946 and has kept at it ever since ^[2]. He learned from Akkapeddi Ramakrishnaiah and others, took as his model the exponent Panditaradhyula Sambamurthy, father of the playback singer S. P. Balasubrahmanyam, and later studied the Mahabharata scripts under Musunoori Suryanarayana Das ^[2].

The art of the storyteller

From the 1960s into the early 2000s he performed widely across Andhra Pradesh, in other states and in England and Mauritius ^[2]. He drew on the works of Adibhatla Narayana Dasu and other masters of the form, sang compositions of Tyagaraja, Purandara Dasa, Ramadasu and Annamayya, and quoted modern Telugu poets such as Sri Sri, Jashuva and Arudra ^[2]. He acted out the characters to suit each scene, using the stories to carry moral lessons to ordinary listeners ^[2].

In a long career he has given more than 15,000 performances and was graded a top artist by All India Radio ^[2]. He received the Andhra Pradesh government’s Hamsa Puraskar for 2015 and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for 2018, along with titles such as Harikatha Chakravarthi ^[2].