Darshanam Mogilaiah Age, Wife, Family, Biography

Some Lesser Known Facts About Darshanam Mogilaiah

• Darshanam Mogilaiah belongs to a Dalit family in Telangana along the stretches of Nallamala Hills.

• At the age of eight, he travelled along with his father 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, horse-tail, and used animal nerves as strings.
  

  Darshanam Mogilaiah holding kinnera

• His songs comprise folk tales of local heroes over five decades, heroes who helped the poor such as Pandugolla Sayanna, Endavetla Pakiriah, and Miya Saab.

• In 2013, his contribution towards keeping his tradition alive was incorporated as a lesson in the textbooks of class eight students of Telangana state as an honour by the Telangana State government.

• According to sources, of his nine children, three of them died from health issues, three were married and three others were students.

• He received Rs 1 crore cash from the Telangana government for reinventing the Kinnera instrument.

• As of 2024, he was in the headlines after his video went viral where he was seen working as a labourer at the construction site in Turkayamjal.
  

  Darshanam Mogilaiah working on a construction site as a labourer

• According to the sources, in 2024, he claimed that one of his sons suffers from seizures due to which he needs more than Rs 7000 a month for his son’s medical expenses and to sustain.

• According to sources, he had spent Rs 1 crore on his three children’s weddings, building a house in Turkayamjal which had to be stopped as he ran out of funds.

• According to sources, in 2024, his Rs 10,000 monthly honorarium was stopped and the 600 sq yard allotted in Rangareddy district by the government of Telangana was still pending.