Getting into the groove

The fourth edition of the Delhi International Jazz Festival is packed with international surprises

Tres Butacas (from left) Kike Harker (bassist), Pedro Acosta (drummer), and Camilo Vásquez (vocalist).

“It’s said that there are 400 songs that a jazz singer should know if he is of any consequence,” says Mumbai-based Joe Alvarez, who will be performing with his group Trident Jazz Trio at the fourth Delhi International Jazz Festival, starting on Friday in the Capital.

Mina Agossi

For the past three years, the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), the festival organizer, has been bringing jazz artistes and newer styles to the Capital. This year, it’s the myriad international acts that will be grabbing eyeballs over the next three days. The event will host 10 groups from countries like France, Hungary, Poland, Colombia, Canada, South Korea, Spain, and the US, apart from India.

The Colombian embassy will be bringing Tres Butacas (or Three Chairs), comprising Pedro Acosta (drummer), Kike Harker (bassist) and Camilo Vásquez (vocalist), on Day 2 of the festival. The trio will present “(new compositions) Los Pajarillos of Popocho, the bass swinguero, and their usual Rio Cali and Porro Bumangues (www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6rRy-88zE0)—that represent much of Colombian music”, says Vásquez, adding, “In Colombia there is a strong movement of jazz: classic, fusion, avant-garde, and experimentation with traditional folk.” The band’s influences include Chick Corea (pianist), Miles Davis (singer) and John McLaughlin (guitarist), and their sound is a heady mix of local rhythms, traditional jazz with bolero, Colombian folk and Brazilian music. Vásquez says, “Jazz is the most fun way to play music; it alone has the ability to play with all the other genres: classical, pop, etc.”

South Korea’s Modernhan

Ever heard a Korean jazz band before? Witness the instrumental band Modernhan from South Korea on Day 3 concoct jazz, tango, Latin and New Age with Korean traditional music on ajaeng, the traditional Korean stringed instrument. Hear their rendition of Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto’s soulful Girl From Ipanema , a classic bossa nova.

Ari Roland Quartet (the US), Smarton Trio (Hungary) and bass guitarist Anthony Braganza’s Delhi-based Goan Indo jazz band Black Slade Jazz Rock Fusion Band will perform on Day 1; the Delhi band will present a mix of traditional, modern, original Indo jazz and Dave Brubeck’s Take Five and songs of the American jazz fusion band Spyro Gyra. On Day 2 hear the eclectic Quartet from Poland, led by composer and alto saxophonist Maciej Obara; and the West African-French modern jazz singer Mina Agossi; and on the final day get ready to groove with The PJ Perry Trio (Canada) and the Spanish Ximo Tebar and IVAM Jazz Ensemble.

“Jazz is an expression that has evolved from the tribulations of mankind. Its origins lie in the blues, the gospel; the African-American slaves would sing it while picking cotton in the fields,” says Alvarez, who will be performing on Sunday. Alvarez, a rock singer in the 1970s, switched to jazz rock 10 years back. He has collaborated with Louis Banks, who he calls the “godfather of jazz in India”, pianist Loy Mendonsa (of Bollywood’s music director trio Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy fame), and with classical giants like Rahul Sharma (santoor), V. Selvaganesh (kanjira), the late U. Srinivas (mandolin) and Fazal Qureshi (tabla) for his international shows like the Montreal Jazz Festival and the Havana International Jazz Festival in Cuba. For this concert his repertoire will be a combination of 70% original material (sample one: Masterplan [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMcBx4W5h3Y], and 30% jazz standards like Nearness of You [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVi_IxCjXNc] and What A Wonderful World).

Joe Alvarez

Alvarez quotes the legendary saxophonist John Coltrane: Jazz is “that which flows from godhead to the musician to the audience in one undiluted moment”. The format, like Indian classical music, takes off after establishing a certain verse (or main body of music) and comes back to the original melody after travelling. And like Indian classical, jazz too has immense scope for creativity and improvisation but requires evolved listening. The style is definitely a prerogative of an evolved culture, one that calls for discerning listeners, he adds.

Jazz, however, is still fairly niche. As Alvarez says, it has a smaller audience compared to pop. Nonetheless, the scope of festivals like these is far greater. Not only do they bring great musicians from world over on one stage, it’s also a great way for musicians to strengthen networks and create opportunities for collaborations.

The 4th Delhi International Jazz Festival is on from 28-30 March, 6.30pm onwards, at Nehru Park, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi. Be seated by 6pm.

 

Songs for the father

A new music album, with over 100 poems turned into songs, kickstarts a project on Gandhi

It wasn’t so long back that children would congregate in precise military lines in the school grounds to sing Vaishnav Jan To…. The mnemonic lines conjure up the image of a frail, bespectacled man in white loincloth spinning a charkha and singing the bhajan. Now Harshal Vyas, 14, has sung the same song in traditional Gujarati folk style for a new music album.

The album, which has 108 songs, mainly on Mahatma Gandhi, is the first phase of retired government officer Kalpana Palkhiwala’s two-decade-long project, BapuGeetika: Songs For the Mahatma. The next leg will involve taking the set of album DVDs to schools and colleges, organizing lectures by Gandhians, and conducting a series of concerts in different states.

Kalpana Palkhiwala

It was the desire to “free Gandhi from Indian currency notes and the image created by (film-maker) Richard Attenborough” that propelled Palkhiwala, 62, to create a musical anthology. “I was fed up with the set of same songs being played as a ritual on 2 October and 30 January every year on radio and television, and thus this anthology started to take shape,” she says. This month Palkhiwala unveiled her BapuGeetika project with this album, ahead of Gandhi’s death anniversary on Thursday.

This project germinated in the early 1990s, when Palkhiwala was with the Union ministry of information and broadcasting’s Publications Division in New Delhi: “There was a cleaning operation going on and all old books were being thrown away. Among others, I got hold of Gandhi-Shatadal; the book in Hindi had 100 poems on Gandhi penned by renowned poets. I then sought the assistance of the language editors in office to translate and explain the essence of the written words.”

Album cover

The number of songs in the 14-hour, 30-minute album—108—is the same as the number of beads in Gandhi’s rosary. The songs have been sung in 14 Indian languages, breathing music into the words of 104 poets, and set to tune by seven composers, 60 singers and 65 live musicians. “Songs were central to the× Mahatma’s message. Early mornings at Ashram and across India, people…would form Prabhat Pheris, dressed in pristine white, singing verses known intimately by Bapu,” says Palkhiwala.

These songs have been sung in the Sugam Sangeet style which anybody can sing, and include elements of Hindustani classical, Carnatic, and folk styles like baul. But for the composers of the album, including the 85-year-old chief composer, Uma Shankar Chandola, the most difficult part was the lack of chhand (quatrain) in the poems. Incidentally, Palkhiwala says Chandola gave the Indian broadcasting world its first ad jingle (via Vividh Bharati): “Chehre ki sundarta ko nikharta Hamam…”.

The project’s Facebook page

The poets in this anthology include literary giants like Rabindranath Tagore, Subhadra Kumari Chauhan, Maithilisharan Gupt, Subramanya Bharathi, Amrita Pritam, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, Umashankar Joshi, Sumitranandan Pant, Rayaprolu Subba Rao and Natu Gopal Narhar.

Palkhiwala’s All India Radio (AIR) association and acquaintances—she is a former radio news reader and voice-over artiste, and was a deputy director in the ministry of information and broadcasting—came in handy. She did think of approaching government and corporate firms to support her project, but when she found no takers she put in her savings. “It was difficult to get the copyright permissions. I had to personally contact the poets and in most cases request their families, since most of the poets featured were then dead.”

Palkhiwala doesn’t plan to commercially sell this DVD, for she knows it will most likely gather dust in music stores. Instead, she plans to organize concerts, primarily in schools and colleges, of the singers who contributed to this album, and eventually of school and college student-singers who would like to sing these songs. Ultimately, she wants the youth to run, and carry forward, this project.

To follow the project, visit http://www.facebook.com/bapugeetika

All films Hitchcockian | ‘Hitchcock far surpasses the work of other directors’

NYU’s Richard Allen on the auteur and his influences, Indian cinema, and a workshop

Master of Suspense: Alfred Hitchcock

“I have a perfect cure for a sore throat: cut it.” Alfred Hitchco  k had a sure-shot remedy for curing dullness in cinema. The master of suspense was unabashed in his brand of cinema, which promised a bone-chilling, hair-raising, transfixed-in-your-chair experience for the viewer. Watch Rear Window and you’ll be scared to look out of one; watch The Birds and you’ll lose your nerve every time you see one flying towards you.

His brand of film-making and its influence on generations of movie-makers is the subject of a film appreciation course, “Hitchcock and His Influences”, to be held from 11-22 January at the India Habitat Centre (IHC), New Delhi. The course will be conducted by Richard Allen, professor and chair of cinema studies, New York University, US, and author of Hitchcock’s Romantic Irony.

Allen, who co-authored the book Islamicate Cultures of Bombay Cinema with Jawaharlal Nehru University professor Ira Bhaskar, has so far conducted three workshops at the IHC, the last one in 2012. “Richard Allen’s workshop has got an overwhelming response and it comes back on popular demand. We have queries about it round the year,” says Vidyun Singh, director, programmes, Habitat World, IHC, the organizers of the course.

When asked about Hitchcock’s influence on Bollywood films, Allen says this was the subject of his 2008 workshop, his second in Delhi; his third workshop, “Film Appreciation: An Introduction to Narrative Film”, in 2012 dwelt on “film aesthetics and critical analysis”.

Workshop poster

“This workshop seeks to understand and explain the peculiar fact that Hitchcock’s work far surpasses that of other directors in its influence and importance, even though many directors in the history of cinema might be said to equal or surpass him in talent and achievement,” Allen said in an email interview.

The 11-day workshop, spanning about 3 hours on weekdays and 9 hours on weekends, will deliberate on Hitchcock’s influence on film-makers, like those of the New Wave and European Art Cinema; on directors like Brian De Palma, Pedro Almodóvar, David Lynch, David Fincher, Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino; and on American popular, horror and postmodern cinema.

The focus will be on film form and style. Each day will have a different theme, and the classes will include screenings, film theory and discussions. The classes are for all, but Allen thinks “general film-wallahs and people who go to the Habitat Film Society, aspiring film students, people who might for example want to study in the US, and people who are in, and working on, the fringes of the film business” would benefit from it.

“I’m frightened of my own movies. I never go to see them. I don’t know how people can bear to watch my movies,” said Alfred Hitchcock in 1963, in one of his many interviews that were compiled into a book Alfred Hitchcock Interviews, edited by Sidney Gottlieb. The master of suspense had a pioneering five-decade career—from silent films, black and white to colour; German and British film industry to Hollywood; and dabbling in films and television. Since the subject of exploration at hand—Hitchcock and his brand of cinema—is so vast, Allen, author of Hitchcock’s Romantic Irony, keeps revisiting India, particularly to Delhi’s IHC, to take film appreciation courses—this time on “Hitchcock and His Influences” from 11-22 January. Allen gives us his reasons for being back and talks about Indian cinema. Edited excerpts from an email interview:

Prof. Richard Allen

What is it about these workshops and this place that draws you here time and again?

Well it’s a way of spending an interesting couple of weeks in the centre of New Delhi and keeping connected with colleagues and friends. It also helps sustain my own research and writing on Indian Cinema. I enjoy teaching a largely adult clientele. They are enthusiastic and engaged. I enjoy cross-cultural dialogue and discussion.

What do you think of the Indian audience? And of the new crop of Indian directors/films?

The Indian film audience is changing and so is the Indian film. There has always been an opposition between the masses and the classes in the perceptions of Indian film producers, but traditionally that was played out in terms of the basic contrast between the masala-melodrama and “realist” and government melodrama. First you had the emergence of the self-reflexive masala film made for the masses but also the knowing NRI audience like Om Shanti Om or Kal Ho Na Ho and then the multiplex which has been a game changer in terms of the industry in terms of abandoning the 3-hour format, the masala idiom, and embrace of genre cinema: gangster, comedy, thriller and so on.

I think this had has good results: Dibakar Banerjee, Vishal Bhardwaj, and to some extent Anurag Kashyap, though his work is very uneven. Of course, there are important directors who have been around for sometime like Sudhir Mishra, Mani Ratnam, and the late Rituparno Ghosh.

Which directors, according to you, have greatly been influenced by Hitchcock besides Brian de Palma, Pedro Almadovar, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch and David Fincher?

Well you mention a few. Each generation seems to renew their enthusiasm in different ways. The list is long. Francois Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais (Hitchcock appears as a cardboard cutout in Last Year At Marienbad), Michelangelo Antonioni, Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese (he made an Australian wine commercial in homage), Jonathan Demme (example: The Silence of the Lambs), Dario Argento (The Italian Hitchcock), Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct), Christopher Nolan, Gus Van Sant. The horror genre in general as well as more recently art installations and American quality TV too like Breaking Bad and Homeland.

Hitchcock has influenced Bollywood as well. We know Dev Anand in Jewel Thief resembled Cary Grant in To Catch A Thief and James Stewart in Vertigo; and Waheeda Rehman-starrer Kohraa was modelled on Psycho and Rebecca. But are there any Hitchcockian streaks that are noticeable in contemporary Hindi cinema?

Robby Grewal’s Samay is an obvious tribute to Hitchcock. The kind of unreliable narration and mixture of sex and style that characterizes Abbas-Mustan’s films is deeply influenced by Hitchcock via American films—often Hitchcock’s influence is mediated by other Hitchcockians. A fairly recent, and not very good, Hitchcock Rebecca remake Anamika. And more indirectly and loosely, the modern Indian thriller, the turn to suspense, is inevitably indebted to the idiom perfected by Hitchcock.

Of grace and rhythm

A Kathak and ghatam ‘jugalbandi’ will leave Mumbai audiences wanting more

Kathak master Chitresh Das

One moment he is Duryodhan, ordering the disrobing of Draupadi after winning her in a game of dice. The next moment, he is Draupadi. He is also Krishna, protecting Draupadi by infinitely extending her sari. Watch Kathak exponent Pandit Chitresh Das, along with Grammy Award-winning percussionist Vikku Vinayakram, imbue life into the characters from the epic Mahabharat’s Draupadi Vastra Haran episode at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) on 30 January. That the theme is topical in the context of acts of violence against women is only incidental.

Kathak comes from the Sanskrit katha or story, says Das, who founded the Chitresh Das Dance Company and Chhandam School of Kathak in San Francisco, US, in 1980. The school has centres in Mumbai, Kolkata, Canada and many US cities. “Also called Natwari Nritya, from the dance of Krishna in raas-leela of Braj, Kathak through tayyari (preparation), layakari (the mathematics of rhythm), khubsoorti (beauty) and nazakat (delicateness), expresses the joys of life. While Krishna was the Kathaka, sutradhar or narrator, in the Mahabharat, Luv and Kush, in the Ramayan, were the first Kathak dancers,” he says.

Ahead of the Dynamic Feet Dynamic Rhythm performance at the NCPA, the dance guru will be with students and enthusiasts of dance and music at a talk, titled “Dynamics of Rhythm”, on 25 January. Das will enumerate the techniques he deploys in his collaborations with other artistes, and dwell upon laya (rhythm) and layakari and how this benefits, for instance, pianists, guitarists and drummers.

On Thursday, the doyen will entice Mumbai audiences with his jugalbandi with three generations of the Vinayakram family: the 69-year-old Vinayakram on ghatam, an instrument popularized by the Padma Shri awardee; his son N. Ramakrishnan on mridangam; and grandson S. Swaminathan on kanjira.

Das says they will improvise on stage—the audiences might even get to see Kathak Yoga, a style devised by him, where he plays the tabla placed on a table while performing footwork wearing heavy ghungroos, simultaneously singing a bhajan or mouthing bol.

Grammy Award-winning percussionist Ghatam player Vikku Vinayakram

The jugalbandi will see the coalescing of Hindustani and Carnatic classical forms, a commingling of the cultures of north and south India, and of two kinds of rhythm: feet tapping on the floor and fingers tapping on the gha tam. Such is Das’ proficiency that at the 2012 Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra Award Festival in Bhubaneswar, he created the sound of a passing train with just his rhythmic footsteps.

Vinayakram and Das will meet for the first time two-three days before the concert and rehearse, or, rather, improvise. As Das says, “Upaj, or improvisation, is integral to, and the most important aspect of, the Indian classical tradition.” Upaj: Improvise is also the name of a documentary on Das’ touring collaboration with the Emmy award-winning African-American tap dancer Jason Samuels Smith—it premiered on the American Public Broadcasting Service’s World channel on Monday.

Das, who says he is “always with India, 24×7”, performs on and off in the country. Last year, he performed with the Spanish flamenco dancer Antonio Hidalgo at the NCPA. “To keep the Indian culture alive is crucial,” says Das. The guru will share the stage with 70 of his Chhandam students in the 2-hour event on Thursday. For the main event, Das and Vinayakram will be joined by Biplab Bhattacharya and Satyaprakash Misra on tabla, Jayanta Banerjee on sitar and Debashis Sarkar on vocals. “I’ll be happy if my speed matches that of the youngest Vinayakram on stage,” says Das.

The talk “Dynamics of Rhythm” will be held at 6pm on Saturday, at The True School of Music, 107, Sun Mill Compound, Lower Parel, Mumbai. For registration, call 022-66243200, or visit http://www.trueschool.in. Dynamic Feet Dynamic Rhythm will be staged at 7pm on 30 January, at the Tata Theatre, NCPA, Nariman Point, Mumbai. Tickets, Rs.300, Rs.500, Rs.700 and Rs.1,000, available at the venue and on in.bookmyshow.com

A dance tribute

Pt Durgalal Festival celebrates its 24th year

Dancing bells: Kathak dancer Uma Dogra (centre) with her disciples.

“He was truly the prince of Kathak,” says Mumbai-based Kathak danseuse Pandita Uma Dogra, 57, of her late guru Pandit Durga Lal, in whose memory she has been organizing the Pt Durgalal Festival for over two decades.

In its 24th edition, the festival, presented annually by Dogra’s Mumbai-based Sam Ved Society for Performing Arts, will feature solo acts by Madhavi Mudgal (Odissi) and Rajendra Gangani (Kathak), in a 3-hour show on 7 February in Mumbai, and Dogra and her group in a 2-hour performance on 9 February in Thane.

Dogra and seven of her shagird (disciples) will present a repertoire of traditional Kathak. She has created two compositions based on two tala: Taal Pancham Sawari in 15 beats; and her special creation Taal Durga in 13 beats. “I will only be doing abhinaya, while my young dancers will present the technical work of the Jaipur gharana,” says Dogra, who also organizes the Raindrops Festival of Indian Classical Dances, every July, for upcoming young dancers.

She credits her late guru with having breathed life into Jaipur gharana. “There was a time in the 1950s-60s when only the Lucknow gharana was on a big high, baki koi gharana nahin thha in the public space. There were only gurus, not performers. Durgalalji ne kabr se nikala, zinda kiya Jaipur gharane ko,” says the seniormost ganda-bandh shagird, the disciple who is picked to pass on the legacy.

Odissi dancer Madhavi Mudgal. Photo: Ajay Lal

Durga Lal, who was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Puraskar in 1984, died in 1990 after a scintillating performance in Lucknow at the peak of his career, he was just 42. He had taught at cultural institutions in the Capital like the Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra, Sangeet Natak Akademi’s Kathak Kendra and Gandharva Mahavidyalaya.

Mudgal, initially learnt Kathak from Durga Lal at Gandharva Mahavidyalaya which was started by her father the late Hindustani vocalist Pandit Vinaychandra Maudgalya, but later took to Odissi. One of the seniormost performing disciples of Mohapatra, she will be presenting the traditional Odissi repertoire, perhaps an abhinaya in a composition in Braj bhasa. “It’s a great way to remember the genuine artiste, who at 42 was a star, known and loved by all,” says Mudgal.

Rajendra Gangani

The festival will see Kathak dancer Gangani—also of the Jaipur gharana and related to Durga Lal’s guru Sunder Prasad—sharing the stage with Mudgal for the first time. He will be performing the eighth century spiritual leader Adi Shankaracharya’s composition Panchakshara: Na-Ma-Shi-Va-Ya, but in ragas Yaman, Bhoopali and Shankara, and on talas (rhythm or beat) Chautal and Roopak, ending with Teentaal. Add to that some pieces in jugalbandi with tabla, and some with bol, a tatkar or footwork presentation, a couple of tukde and tode (compositions) of Jaipur gharana, an invocation piece Ganesh Paran, and then an abhinaya on a Meerabai bhajan.

Kathak danseuse Uma Dogra

As Dogra says, from the feedback she has received over the years from artistes and viewers alike, the festival is the most talked about in the country. Top doyens of Hindustani classical dance and music have graced the festival with their performances: Kathak dancers Uma Sharma, Sitara Devi, Shovana Narayan and maestro Pandit Birju Maharaj; Odissi dancers Sonal Mansingh and Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra; classical flautist Hariprasad Chaurasia, vocalists Pandit Jasraj, Ustad Rashid Khan and Pandit Rajan and Sajan Mishra.

Shouldn’t a festival for a Kathak legend only feature Kathak? “Not necessarily,” says Dogra, “For instance, last year’s festival featured Bharatanatyam (by Rama Vaidyanathan) and Odissi (by Sujata Mohapatra).”

Dogra adds: “I don’t want to restrict the scope of this festival, the aim of which is to recognize and respect all forms of× Indian classical dance.”

Pt Durgalal Festival will be held at 6.45pm on 7 February, at the Nehru Centre, Worli, Mumbai. Tickets, Rs.100, Rs.200, Rs.300 and Rs.500.

Kailash Vajpeyi | ‘Poetry brings people together like no other concern’

The eminent Hindi poet on how poetry addresses issues perennial to the human condition

Hindi poet Kailash Vajpeyi

Eminent Hindi poet Kailash Vajpeyi’s poetic journey started four decades ago with ruminations on death, detachment and all things dark. A definitive anger and protest reflected in his first three collections: Sankrant, Dehant Se Hatkar and Teesra Andhera. During his college days at Lucknow University in Uttar Pradesh, he became interested in Vedic literature, the Bhakti movement of saint Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and the writings of Sanskrit poet Jayadeva, but the drift towards a philosophical engagement came when he was making a documentary on the spiritual guru Sri Aurobindo in Puducherry. Vajpeyi, who will be participating in the three-day Union ministry of external affairs and Sahitya Akademi event, Waves—The Indian Ocean Rim Association (Iora) Festival of Poetry, starting Saturday in Delhi, won the Sahitya Akademi Puruskar in 2009 for his collection of poems Hawa Mein Hastakshar. Today he says he is happy that at least in Kolkata he has seen youngsters who are interested in, and are reading, contemporary poetry. Edited excerpts from an email interview:

How would you define your poetry? What themes preoccupy you?

My first three collections had protest as the main theme and when I made a documentary on  Aurobindo, my research opened up new avenues of interest and my next collection, Maha Swapn ka Madhyantar, was a kind of dialogue between the conscious mind and supra-mind. The myths that are an integral part of Indian tradition and culture have found a place in my poetry, including the Sufi thought, in a collection named Sufinama.

Was it a conscious decision to write in Hindi?

Hindi is my mother tongue and my first attempts at poetry writing were indeed in Hindi, and it has been the language I write in mostly. My early poetry was mostly lyrical.

Do you also write/publish in English?

Yes I write in English as well, but mostly prose, though much of my poetry has been translated into English.

Poets are custodians of a race memory. Is your poetry a documentation of the times or the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling” as Wordsworth put it?

I, like most poets, am indeed a custodian of my race and its memory which, of necessity, has to have as its component also “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling” for it to be able to communicate meaningfully across time with many generations.

What did you want to voice through your poems ‘History’ and ‘Karl Marx’?

Both these poems are from my third collection of poems, called Teesra Andhera. I was very agitated at that time about the all-round deterioration in social and political life of India. I then believed in dialectical materialism, which has since been ousted by crony capitalism.

What do you think of the ‘Waves’ festival? Will you be sharing the stage with these poets for the first time?

Before I say something about the current festival, which is the first of its kind in India, I must tell you about two international poetry festivals I was fortunate enough to attend. One was in Colombia, Latin America, and the other in Seoul, South Korea. In these festivals I was introduced to the Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, and Robert Pinsky, the poet laureate of America.

I discovered during my interaction with the poets attending those festivals that though Hindi poetry had left the Geet format behind, lyrical or rhymed poetry continued to be the norm among many poets from Africa and some countries of Europe.

I am looking forward to my interactions with poets from 16 other countries as not much is known, or available, about poets or poetry of those countries in India.

It would be exciting to discover if consumerism, ecological and environmental problems confronting mankind, etc., preoccupy poets from these countries as well. Though much information is available about the West nothing much is known about this part of the world.

Do you feel poetry can unite these countries in the Indian Ocean Rim?

Poetry brings people together as no other concern can. Since poetry speaks not about ephemeral or local concerns but addresses issues which are perennial about the human condition anywhere in the world. It concerns itself about the eternal truths and not the passing frauds and compromises that preoccupy most of our lives.

Hear the poet at 4pm on 1 March at Waves: The Indian Ocean Rim Association Festival of Poetry, at the Triveni Kala Sangam, 205, Tansen Marg, Delhi.

Making waves with poesy

Poets from Indian Ocean rim countries will present works on shared themes

Poet K. Satchidanandan

If poetry, to recall Wordsworth, is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings…emotions recollected in tranquility”, and poets—the custodians of a race memory, archaeologists excavating mines of fine language, historians documenting “what oft was thought” and philosophers theorizing truisms, then come witness how a race of poets is writing new chapters in history with their craft at this first-of-its-kind festival in Delhi. Waves: The Indian Ocean Rim Association Festival of Poetry, from 1-3 March, is being curated by Sahitya Akademi under the aegis of the Union ministry of external affairs (MEA).

The poets hail from 17 of the 20 countries connected by the× Ocean, including Australia, Singapore, Bangladesh, Oman and Mozambique, which make up the international body Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA), established in 1997.

“Bilateral/multilateral cooperation talks have always been political, economic or business-centric. Culture, especially literature gets lost,” says K. Sreenivasrao, secretary, Sahitya Akademi, Delhi. He says, “In 2011, for a period of two years, India was elected the chair of IORA. The MEA then suggested a literary promotion among the countries, so the Akademi took up the onus of organizing this festival.”

The festival will see inaugural readings by Thailand’s Saksiri Meesomsueb and India’s Keki N. Daruwalla; writer Nabaneeta Dev Sen will chair the first session, featuring Indonesia’s Sitok Srengenge, Yemen’s Mohammed Abdullah Mohammed Al-Mahgari, and India’s Nida Fazli. The second session will feature poets like Australia’s Rekha Rajvanshi and India’s Prabodh Parikh (Gujarati), Kailash Vajpeyi (Hindi) and Chandrakant Patil (Marathi).

A session on Day 2 will see readings by Malaysia’s Mohammad Haji Saleh, Mozambique’s Sangare Okapi and India’s Jayanta Mahapatra. But the highlight will be the panel discussion “Poetry: The New Challenges” chaired by eminent Malayalam poet K. Satchidanandan. The final day will see readings by Bangladesh’s Nirmalendu Goon, Sri Lanka’s Parvathi Arasanayagam and Tanzania’s Eliah S. Mwaifuge.

An anthology of poems edited by Satchidanandan, Songs from the Seashore, comprising works of these poets: 20 from 16 countries, and 30 representing 24 Indian languages, will be released on Saturday. Satchidanandan says three countries, Kenya, Comoros and Madagascar, will not be participating as they stated having “no proficiency in poetry”.

He feels these countries are united by themes: questions of relationship, sufferings of marginalized people, nature, maintaining independence/freedom in the face of fundamentalism as reflected in the poetry of× Bangladesh or the philosophical detachment towards life as in the poems from× Iran and UAE.

Satchidanandan, who will also recite from his poem Stammer, on the problem of communication in our times, will dwell upon the decline of regional languages and the hegemony of English in poetry. It becomes necessary in the context of the number of dying Indian languages, which is 250 in the last 50 years according to the last People’s Linguistic Survey of India.

While death has been a thematic undercurrent in Kailash Vajpeyi’s poetry, which has journeyed from protest writing, conversations between “conscious and supra-mind” to myths integral to Indian traditions, like his last work Dooba Sa Undooba Tara (2010), on the Mahabharat’s character Ashwatthama, a tormented intellectual condemned to live; Parikh’s poetry (in Gujarati, translated in English by art critic and poet Ranjit Hoskote) on friendship and an enquiry into the self that he has been writing for

Poet Prabodh Parikh

Vajpeyi, who will be reciting a forthcoming poem Choice at the festival, says: “Current Indian poetry is extensively engaged with consumerism, ecological and environmental problems confronting mankind. The so-called ‘development’ and ‘progress’ has caused more alienation than communication and it would be exciting to discover if it preoccupies the poets from these countries as well.”

While Satchidanandan through his poetry will voice the concerns of individuals increasingly becoming selfish and showing less concern towards ones’ neighbours, in his panel discussion the focus will be on poetry’s challenges: the trend of conversational language in poetry; effects of modernism in styles and structures; and giving poetic form to violence such as war, terrorism, ecological and patriarchal violence and globalization which compels one to forget one’s past and imposes one type of culture (American) on the developing world.

If it were to him, Parikh would change the title of the discussion from “new” to “continuing” challenges of poetry. While dwelling upon poetry as performance, he says unlike the oral traditions where poetry was a community activity and thus had a sense of immediacy, in the written tradition there’s only mediation between two individuals (the poet and the reader); and while people can still recite the poems of Mirza Ghalib, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Kabir, Meerabai or Tulsidas’ Ramcharitmanas, a poet today will need to stand his own and know that he might not be read.

“That people are not reading a lot doesn’t mean that not much is being written,” concedes Parikh, quoting his favourite poet, the late Palestinian Mahmoud Darwish: A nation is lost when it has no poetry. Alongside Indian poets like Sitakanta Mahapatra, Jayanta Mahapatra and Arundhati Subramaniyam, Parikh will be on the lookout for the politically-charged poetry from Iran, UAE and perhaps for a poet whose style is similar to Darwish’s.

Waves: The Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) Festival of Poetry is on 11am-6pm (Saturday) and 10am-4pm (Sunday and Monday), 1-3 March, at Triveni Auditorium, Tansen Marg, New Delhi.

 

Feminine strokes

A photo exhibition by Tara Books showcases the journey of artworks by women, from households to galleries, ‘bazaars’ and books

Meena tribe women of Rajasthan soak rags in white flour paste, and then squeeze it to make ‘mandna’ art patterns on the floor. Photo: Madan Meena.

The art that women make every day, as part of their lives, is difficult to define. Chennai-based indie feminist publisher Tara Books aims to showcase just this in a photography exhibition, Floor to Book: Women’s Everyday Art Traditions, starting on Saturday, International Women’s Day, in Chennai.

“The women who make such art seldom see it as art. Neither do those who write about art imagine that household spaces are congenial to the making of ‘art’ as we understand it in the modern sense,” says V. Geetha, editorial director of Tara Books. For over a decade, the organization has been exploring the trajectory of indigenous art forms and their women practitioners from rural areas and tribal communities, bringing such work to the forefront through illustrations in its books.

Sarla Devi making ‘aripana’. This finger art is made by Brahmin and Kayastha women in Bihar on special occasions like marriage and religious ceremonies. Photo: Andrea Anastasio.

This exhibition’s three sections—Everyday Art; Transitions; and The Book—towns and cities every day in Tamil Nadu; aripana from Bihar, done by Brahmin and Kayastha women during marriage and religious ceremonies; Bihar’s khobar wall art, done exclusively inside the bridal chamber; digna, drawn inside and outside homes in Madhya Pradesh’s Adivasi Gond region to mark the harvest season and other festivities; and mandna from Rajasthan, done by Meena women during the harvest season, before Diwali and Teej; Warli women in Maharashtra make warli art on walls during harvest season and weddings.

Most folk and tribal art is acknowledged to have emerged from such everyday art, says the exhibition brochure. Women, the custodians and torch-bearers of this tradition, beautify their homes—thresholds, floors, walls, alcoves, prayer spaces—as part of housework, which involves physical labour and commitment. It is one of the many things they do as a daily routine.

Meena women draw images of nature and nurture—baby animals and birds with their mothers on the walls of their houses, during harvest season; before Diwali and Teej. Photo: Madan Meena.

Meena women make a wet paste of white flour at home, which they then use to make ‘mandna’ art on walls and floor. Photo: Madan Meena.

“We want to make a case for seeing women’s creative labour within the household as holding out possibilities for those women who wish to transcend their given roles, as mothers, wives, and for whom the making of art can hold out a moment of epiphany, happiness and self-fulfilment,” says Geetha, who has curated the exhibition along with her colleague and author Gita Wolf. While gods are invoked in aripana imagery, dignas stick to geometric and abstract designs, and kolams to dots and lines; most other imagery and motifs are part of the collective repertoire that women access by watching and learning from other women. Warli and khobar imagery has to do with fertility; Meena women draw images of nurture, baby animals and birds with their mothers.

In Tamil Nadu, women create ‘kolam’, drawing an intricate maze of lines around dots that are arranged in complex sequences. Photo: Sunita Vatuk.

Selvi making a ‘kolam’ using coarse rice powder. Sometimes stencils in the form of rollers are used, which are filled with rice powder, to make patterns on the floor, Photo: Andrea Anastasio.

The art is passed on from mother to daughter. Geetha says: “Not all women who draw within household spaces enjoy doing so. Some do it out of a sense of duty, inseparable from the daily chores, and it is expected of them. For instance, to be able to make kolams marks you out as an ‘ideal feminine’ woman.”

Gond wall art is in the form of simple mud murals, with images of trees, animals, birds and human figures—all of which are part of Gond folklore. Photo: Bhajju Shyam.

However, wherever these forms of art have moved beyond the household, and on to paper, canvas or cloth, that is, when they are made for commercial purposes, men have joined in. “In some cases, as with the art of the Warli people, male artists have adapted traditional ways of craftsmanship to develop extraordinarily beautiful styles. With the Gonds, women as well as men paint on canvas and paper, and likewise with the public art form called Mithila art, which has its beginnings in aripana and khobar,” says Geetha, adding, “While men have turned these traditions to greater commercial and aesthetic advantage, women artists, especially from the Mithila and Gond traditions, are well-known to the oustide world.”

“In bazaars, the art is adapted to fit on to pieces of paper, canvas, textile and objects that are sold to middle-class consumers looking for ‘ethnic’ products. Our work at Tara Books has been with the book form, which becomes a curatorial space where women speak, in relation to a story, or reflect on the world. Drawing From the City by Teju Behan, Following My Paintbrush by Dulari Devi and Hope Is a Girl Selling Fruit by Amrita Das are good examples of what we have done with these art forms.” Another recent example is Samhita Arni’s 2011 graphic novel Sita’s Ramayana, illustrated with Moyna Chitrakar’s patua scroll art (part of Bengal’s folk performance tradition, where the artist sings out a story holding a long painted scroll as illustration).

Floor to Book: Women’s Everyday Art Traditions opens at 6pm on 8 March and will be on, 10am-7.30pm (Sundays closed), till 31 July, at Book Building, 9, CGE Colony, Thiruvanmiyur, Chennai (24426696).

Desaj | Indigenously yours

Sangeet Natak Akademi’s annual folk festival starts on Saturday in Delhi

Guru Rewben Mashangva will present Hao hill music from Manipur.

“All music is folk music; I ain’t never heard no horse sing a song”. This observation of the American jazz legend Louis Armstrong’s extends to all folk art forms, or art forms of the common people which, as Cecil Sharp, the founding father of folklore revival in England in the early 20th century, observed, “is wholly free from the taint of manufacture, the canker of artificiality”. Folk art forms encapsulate cultural   ethos and idiosyncrasies of a race, a community, a nation. It is in order to recognize, acknowledge and celebrate the folk “performance art” forms of our country that the Union ministry of culture’s Sangeet Natak Akademi has institutionalized an annual festival, Desaj: Festival of Tribal and Folk Performing Arts of India, in the Capital.

Scheduled to start from Saturday, Desaj, which means indigenous or of the country, got its name from the Akademi’s folk event Desaj: Diverse Expressions of the Nation, for the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games. The Akademi has been organizing Desaj since 2012, under its fairly recent folk and tribal section, and in collaboration with the National Book Trust as a parallel event for the New Delhi World Book Fair. The idea was to revive the Akademi’s Lok Utsav of 1980s.

Zeroing in on the artistes is not easy. Sajitha Madathil, the deputy secretary of the Akademi’s folk and tribal arts section, says it was tough researching for tribal art forms. “It was difficult to find much data online, for instance, about the art forms of the Gond community of Andhra Pradesh,” she says, adding: “The newly formed folk and tribal wing was found to address this issue by conducting surveys, tracing and mapping the communities, documenting their art forms (written, audio, video and still photography) to develop a database and build an archive of artistes and art forms; and alongside provide a national platform for these artistes to perform.”

Desaj will be inaugurated on Saturday at 4.30pm by eminent Bharatanatyam dancer and Akademi’s chairperson Leela Samson, NBT chairman A. Sethumadhavan, and musician Sonam Tshering Lepcha.

At least six folk/tribal forms will be performed each day: Madhya Pradesh’s rai dance on Day 1 and swang dance-drama on Day 2; Langa and Manganiyar songs from Jodhpur on Day 1; Jharkhand’s baha and sarpha dance on Day 2; Bihar’s Hirni Birni Ki Katha and Hyderabad’s Gond tribal dance on Day 3; Mayurbhanj chhau on Days 3 and 4; Manipur’s dhol cholom on Day 4; and Chhattisgarhi folk songs on Day 3 by Nageen Tanvir, daughter of the late theatre veteran Habib Tanvir, founder of Bhopal’s Naya Theatre company.

Chavittunatakam, a dance-drama from Kerala.

Madathil says about 21 forms will be showcased from around 13 states, and especially mentions two Day 4 events: Patna’s Muharram Rathor’s ballad Alha, which will be performed for the first time outside of Bihar, and the finale event, the dance-drama chavittunatakam, which she says, “not many will have heard of, since people only know about Kathakali, Mohiniattam or kalaripayattu, but this folk dance-drama is popular among the Syrian Christians in Kerala and traces its roots to the state’s Portuguese settlements.”

Fakiri singer Nurul Islam Khan from Nadia, West Bengal.

Madathil gushes about Nurul Islam Khan, 45, and group from Nadia’s Gorbhanga village in West Bengal, who will be singing fakiri songs on Day 3. Like Bauls, fakirs are wandering minstrels, singing the same themes, segregated only by religion. They use instruments like dotara, dhol, khartal, ektara and harmonium to sing the songs of the 18th century baul mystic Lalon Fokir and darbari songs of Khwaja Baba. Khan, who performed at the Indian Council for Cultural Relations’ 4th International Sufi Festival in Delhi on Monday, says in Bengali: “Gaan hocche antar-er khorak; gaan-er bhaab, shur, taal, shobai bojhe, shobai sroddha diye amader gaan shone (Music is soul’s food. Everybody understands the emotions and tunes of songs, even if the language is alien; our songs are heard with reverence).”

Along with folk, the aim is also to provide a stage to contemporary tribal artistes. Like the 54-year-old Guru Rewben Mashangva from Choithar, Ukhrul district of Manipur, who will perform on Days 1 and 2. Mashangva has appeared with indie folk rock musician Raghu Dixit in season 1 of MTV’s The Dewarists and presented his style of Manipur’s hill music, Hao music, on the themes of peace and harmony. “I have devised a new sound, taking from the traditional Tangkhul Naga folk songs and composing with modern-style variations, using instruments like guitars, bamboo flutes, cowbells and shakers. I try to make music that’s interesting for youngsters,” says Mashangva who, later on 23 February, will be performing at the Sounds of Freedom concert at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.

The 86-year-old Tshering Lepcha and his group from Kalimpong, West Bengal, will present Sikkim’s Lepcha dance and music on Days 3 and 4. Tshering Lepcha, who was awarded the Padma Shri in 2007 and Rabindra Ratna Award in 2012, says his music incorporates 12 Lepcha ragas, has rivers, weather and nature for its themes and uses indigenous bamboo instruments: tungduk, tuntungtulit and nambryoktulit (a variant of mandolin).

Like most folk artistes, Lepcha is hopeful of festivals like these and speaks of preserving one’s culture (folk music in his context):“Sangeet toh hamari sanskriti hai, isko bachake rakhna hai. Yeh utsav anekta mein ekta ka roop hai, iss-se badi baat hamare liye aur nahin (Music is our culture, we must preserve it. This festival showcases unity in diversity and is a big thing for us).”

Desaj: Festival of Tribal and Folk Performing Arts of India will show from 4.30pm onwards, on 15-18 February, at Lal Chowk Theatre, Pragati Maidan, New Delhi. Entry through Gate No.2 on purchase of gate tickets.

Halla Bol | Of the people, by the people

Citu workers devise the programme for ‘Halla Bol’, in memory of Safdar Hashmi

A Jhandapur Heritage Walk led by Mokoyashree Hashmi (left) on 1 January.

“Our richest cultural traditions are couched in areas of utmost poverty: the villages,” late theatre veteran Habib Tanvir had said. And from villages will come the “worker-performers” who will present acts for the festival Halla Bol: Remembering Safdar Hashmi, from 21-23 February, in Sahibabad’s Jhandapur to commemorate 25 years of Hashmi’s death.

It was while performing a street play, Halla Bol, on 1 January 1989, in Jhandapur, that the Communist playwright-actor-director-activist was fatally attacked by political goons, he died the next day. The play, a reworked version of an earlier play Chakka Jam by Jana Natya Manch (Janam), was based on the November 1988 industrial strike in Delhi led by Centre of Indian Trade Unions (Citu). And it is street plays, or what Safdar called “small theatre”, that his group Janam, born out of Indian People’s Theatre Association (Ipta) in 1973, continues to take to the people.

Like Janam, the song squad Parcham was an offspring of Ipta, says music director Kajal Ghosh who set to tune many of the children’s poems penned by Safdar and gave music for Janam’s plays. Ipta, he says, was under the Communist Party of India across the country, only in West Bengal, and perhaps Tripura, it was with the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M). So, conflict of interests arose. Festival coordinator, theatre actor-director Sudhanva Deshpande says, “Young people who were radical were thrown out of Ipta”. Janam’s journey with street theatre started with Machine (1978)—a play on capitalism where the worker is victorious at the end—which became a roaring hit among the trade unions. “We are a cultural organization engaged in drawing on the trials and tribulations of working (class) people, which forms the larger context of our plays,” says Safdar’s wife and Janam’s president Moloyashree.

Safdar Shahadat Divas being celebrated in Jhandapur on 1 January.

Every year Janam organizes the Halla Bol festival on 1 January. This year’s festival is more than a day—it started in October, when Janam organized a seminar Mazdoor Andolan Mein Sanskriti ki Bhumika among trade unionists in Ghaziabad. From November-January, they did a number of collaborative projects—plays in schools, a mela, puppet and magic shows, graffiti art, wall painting, storytelling workshops, the annual Kala Karyashala for children, a short film Safdar Lives, a Jhandapur industrial heritage walk on 1 January and a public meeting, 25th Safdar Shahadat Divas, addressed by Safdar’s college-mate and CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury, who spoke of the danger that communal politics represents for the working class. Janam plans to organize seminars and events throughout the year, starting with this weekend’s festival.

What’s unique about this festival is that it has been curated by Citu workers, Janam has mainly supported logistically and in planning. “The moment we proposed the idea to them, they jumped with joy. They have taken ownership of the whole idea, figuring out the performers, mostly from their own villages, and the art forms, half of which I’ve never even seen,” says Deshpande, who had penned a scene in the 1989 eponymous play.

On Day 1, Gangaram and party will present alha (folk ballad). They are from Hardoi in UP, the village of one of the organizers from Citu, Brijesh Singh, who in a video on the festival’s Facebook page says: “The khet-kisaan (farmers) work hard in the fields during the day and get together by the night to sing and play.” This will be followed with dholha songs by Girvar and party, ragini songs by Suresh Pal and party from UP’s Shamli. What’s more is a shaadi ka band (Ashok Band from Ghaziabad, UP) presenting progressive songs like Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind, Paul Robeson’s Old Man River and Faiz’s poem Darbar-e-Watan, and Halla Bol, songs sung in an album released in 2012 by Parcham.

Qawwali singers from Ghaziabad’s Loni (Alauddin and party, and Bazmi and party) will sing their compositions on Safdar on Day 2. UP’s Ballia’s Shambhunath Yadav and party and Sargam will end the evening with birha songs.

The morning of the final day will witness art forms from Delhi’s Kathputli Colony: nat kartab by Shekhar and Mukesh, and jaadu ka khel (magic show) by madari Ishamuddin and party. In the afternoon, get set to witness the French brass band Imperial Kikiristan perform, followed by saphera-pharva by Munnalal and party, and nautanki by Master Salim Bhai’s The Great Nautanki Party from UP’s Balrampur.

Another organization, Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (Sahmat)—an artists collective formed in April 1989—has also lined-up commemorative events as it turns 25. Sahmat, formed by photographer Ram Rahman, theatre actor-director M.K. Raina, artist Vivan Sundaram, late theatre veterans Bhisham Sahni, Tanvir and many others (about 100-200 people), has taken the movement on a national scale, says Rahman, adding: “It has sought to be the voice for wider arts community to retain the secular and progressive space and democratizing high art practice by taking it to the masses.”

Last year, Sahmat released the book, The Sahmat Collective: Art and Activism in India Since 1989. This year, they conducted an annual memorial with an art and photography exhibition at Vitthalbhai Patel House on 1 January. They will be conducting agitprop symposia under their Sahmat Avaaz Do art project; a group art exhibition of 36 artists, Forms of Activism, curated by Vivan Sundaram will open at the Lalit Kala Akademi on Monday; and on National Street Theatre Day (Safdar’s birthday, 12 April), they will organize an event for the students of Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia university.

Moloyashree says, “What happened then was not just an attack on freedom of speech, but on the right to survive. Today, alternative thought spaces—intellectual, artistic, and physical—are shrinking. One must fight against this kind of censorship.”

Halla Bol is 3pm onwards, every day from 21-23 February (and an 11am show on Sunday), at Pete Seegar Manch, Dr Ambedkar Park, Jhandapur, Sahibabad, UP. For details, visit https://www.facebook.com/pages/Halla-Bol-Festival/488968634540412; Forms of Activism is on from 24 February-1 March at Rabindra Bhavan, Lalit Kala Akademi, Delhi.