The music video by Balakrishnan Gayathri Raghavan: an original piece produced for the “Performing Voices of Bhakti” Bay Area fellowship! In this video, Bala sings the poetry of two bhakti saints: Ravidas/Raidas, a Dalit cobbler who lived in 15th-century CE Varanasi, and Nammalvar (9th century CE), who was born into a peasant caste and is celebrated for his Tamil poetry to Vishnu. The two compositions in this project are inspired by raag Gauri, which is common to both south and north Indian art music traditions. Ravidas’ Begumpura is part of the Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, and is compiled under the set under the raag Gauri. In line with the utopian imagination of Begumpura (the city with no sorrow), the raga and the composition lend themselves to the long note intervals, aspirational and mercurial leaps, and are often associated with longing, separation, and gestured toward hope and union. A video project by Balakrishnan Raghavan for the Performing Voices of Bhakti Fellowship, 2024. Voice: Balakrishnan Raghavan Guitar: Alex Wand Video Composite & Photography: Saul Villegas of Moderno Mixing: Alex Wand
Sharing a two-year-old recording of a lullaby from a live performance and subsequent name-search to release a single titled “Tanjore Lullaby” led me to a 1910 recording of a school headmistress from Tanjore, South India, singing a Tamil lullaby titled, ‘Lālishrīta.’ Recorded by the English musicologist A .H. Fox Strangways in Tanjore, Strangways, in his book, The Music of Hindostan (1914), included the transcriptions and translations of this lullaby with a picture of the unnamed school teacher from Tanjore. Though the notation fails to mark the free verse rendition and instead notes that it was a six-beat scheme, the translation and the melodic transcription is an interesting node to think with. Voice: Balakrishnan Raghavan; Guitar: Alex Wand
The Land is calling through the body is a sharing of practice, traditions, and processes, exploring the connections between culture, body, voice, tradition and the wounded land with artists from India and Wales. Artists from India and Wales have explored these concepts with stimulus arising from the sharing of Punjabi Sufi poetry/song and traditional Indian instruments, the sarod and tabla, and traditional Welsh instruments, the harp and the crwth, alongside song.
Can the call for the secular come from a deeply religious place? How do I make space for other beliefs while I intensely experience my own? Can I perform my rituals in ways that simultaneously consolidate my belief and accommodate others? The poem, sung in free verse is a celebration of Allah being the greatest light, written by the great Tamizh Nationalist poet Subramania Bharathiyar, and is juxtaposed with a Bhakti poem from a few centuries ago on lord Shiva, both in Tamil. With dancer-coreographer Mandeep Raikhy.
For Ashoka University, with dancers Navtej Johar and Justin McCarthy, the 18th-century Sanskrit composition of Karnatik composer Mudduswami Dikshithar on goddess Kamalāmba of Thiruvārūr. Video by Anuj Chopra.