Darshanam Mogilaiah Age, Children, Family, Biography
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Caste: Madiga (SC)
Age: 73 Years
Hometown: Telengana, India
Some Lesser Known Facts About Darshanam Mogilaiah
- Darshanam Mogilaiah belongs to a Dalit family in Telangana along the stretches of Nallamala Hills.
- At age eight, he travelled with his father to different parts of Andhra Pradesh (now Telangana) and learned to play kinnera.
- The tradition of playing kinnera came from Darshanam’s ancestors who started playing the instrument 400 years ago at the court of the Raja of Wanaparthy in Hyderabad.
- Before getting recognition as an artist, he worked as a daily wage labourer for 14 years in Adilabad, Karimnagar, Warangal, and Mumbai.
- Darshanam reinvented the instrument kinnera by making it a 12 stair instrument with metal strings. Earlier, his forefathers used to make kinnera with eight to nine stairs built with women’s hair, and horse-tail, and used animal nerves as strings.
- His songs comprise folk tales of local heroes such as Pandugolla Sayanna, Endavetla Pakiriah, and Miya Saab.
- In 2013, his contribution towards playing the kinnera instrument and keeping the folk songs alive was incorporated as a lesson in the class eight textbooks of Telangana State Board of Intermediate Education (TSBIE) as an honour.
- Out of nine of his children, three of them died from health issues, three were married, and three others were students.
- In 2022, he received Rs 1 crore cash from the Telangana government for reinventing the Kinnera instrument.
- In 2024, a video of his went viral in which he was seen working as a labourer at the construction site in Turkayamjal.
- According to him, one of his sons suffers from seizures due to which he needs more than Rs 7,000 a month for his son’s medical expenses.
- According to sources, he had spent Rs 1 crore fund given by the government on his three children’s weddings and building a house in Turkayamjal after which he ran out of funds.
- According to him, he received a Rs 10,000 monthly honorarium from the Telangana government which was stopped in 2024 and the 600 sq yard allotted in Rangareddy district by the government of Telangana was not given.