Darshanam Mogilaiah

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 spent the Rs 1 crore fund given by the government on his three children’s weddings and building a house in Turkayamjal before running out of funds.

• He received a Rs 10,000 monthly honorarium from the Telangana government, which was stopped in 2024. The 600 sq yard allotted in Rangareddy district by the Telangana government was also not given.

• In December 2024, many sources started reporting about his death at the age of 73. However, it was later revealed that another folk singer named Pastham Mogilaiah had passed away, and the media houses had confused his name with Darshanam as they both share the same surname. ^[1]YOYO TV Channel – YouTube