Ramamurthy Dharmala is the elder son of Late Sri Dharmala Venkateswara Rao, a renowned Mridanga Vidwan from Andhra Pradesh. He is also the grandson of Late Sri Dharmala Ramamurthy, who is the author of two scholarly books “Theory and Practice of Mridanga” and “Mukthayee Suthra Bhashyam” which are well known in music world for past 40 years.

Ramamurthy has a Masters in Computer Science and worked as Software engineer in ECIL for six years before moving to USA in 1996. Since then, he has been working in Portland as a Software engineer.

Ramamurthy learnt Mridangam under his father and is keen on developing the mathematical calculations of Mukthayees. Ramamurthy has been a graded All India Radio artist from Hyderabad and has accompanied several leading musicians on the All India Radio and in public carnatic music concerts in India/USA/Canada for past 15 years. Some of the musicians he performed with include Dr. Nookala Chinna Sathyanarayana, Rajeswari Padmanabhan, Seetha Narayanayan, Manda Sudharani,Prema Ramamurthy, Geetha Bennett, Suma Sudheendra, Nagavalli Nagaraj , Lalgudi Vijaya Lakshmi, Savitha Narasimhan and others. He has also performed extensively with local musicians in Pacific Northwest in USA and in the annual Thyagaraaja Aradhanas. He has also been teaching Mridangam in Portland, Oregon and his students continue to participate in Thyagaraja Aradhana and other local music events. He strives to propagate the art of mridangam in the USA through his teaching and lecture demonstrations.

His wife, Sailaja, is also a Violin artist. She received training under Sri Akella Mallikarjuna Sharma and Sri Peri Sreerama Murthy, who are the exponents in the art of Violin and music. She has been performing on the Violin for past 15 years and also teaches Violin in Portland, USA.