Art and Soul of the City

TheSeer Team

With the premise of how festivals and culture keeps a society alive, the panel was mediated by Sadhana Rao. Sadhana is a research-led writer and curator in the Arts & Culture area. She has written on Travel, Socio-Economics, Literature, Film festivals & Music for leading newspapers and Journals such as The Hindu, The Economic Times, Deccan Chronicle, Tehelka, Housecalls, Shruti etc. The panelists included Jagadish Raja, Kamini Sawhney, Lucy Nelson, and Namita Devidayal. Jagdish Raja and his wife, Arundhati Raja are the founders of JAGRITI. Jagdish started his working life as an apprentice printer in London. He is a Graduate Member of the Communication Advertising and Marketing (CAM) Education Foundation, United Kingdom and an Associate of the Trinity College London (ATCL). Kamini Sawhney has recently joined the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP) in Bangalore as its Director. MAP is an upcoming museum that is set to open its door to the public in the latter half of 2020. Designed as a 44,000 square foot facility in the heart of the city, it will be spread across five floors and will house multiple galleries, an auditorium, a research library, a conservation lab, classrooms, a museum store and cafe. Lucy Nelson, is the Artistic Director of the Queensland Poetry Festival in Australia, previously, co-founder and Artistic Director of Noted Writers Festival. Lucy has written non-fiction for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Big Issue and her fiction has been awarded residencies and shortlisted for prizes in Australia and the UK. Namita Devidayal is the author of The Music Room, Aftertaste and The Sixth String of Vilayat Khan. She is a journalist with The Time of India and co-director of the Times Litfest in Mumbai. She is a trained classical singer. She graduated from Princeton University.

 

The discussion revolved around the aspects of art in a society and how culture impact brings the variations in the festivals and art forms celebrated. Jagdish touched based on his journey of creation of JAGRITI. He also relates to the fact that the perception of theatre has changed over time. And, every day brings more fractions of audience is getting attracted to theatre. Engaging audience was the next segment of discussion. Kamini mentioned that with taking art to the society, we should also try to bring the society to the heart of the art. Namita added that inculcating spaces for artists other than the work projected also plays a core role in bringing art and community together. Lucy spoke how artists from varied backgrounds should be approached and their perspective on developing more inclusive spaces for people of color and differently abled must be inculcated in our present art space. 

 

Discussion on how patronage can be an issue to build such inclusive spaces was also carried forth. Kamini gave statistics on how much government funding and corporate CSR actually goes to museums. The discussion wrapped up with the questions taken from audience and final insights on the efforts of creative industry making its next best moves.  

 

 

 

About the Author: A modest graphic designer and an amateur blogger – Liyana believes in weaving stories that come as a ‘solace on a late winter night’. She loves climbing mountains and can be seen spending hours looking at the night sky. She blogs at liyanashirin. She currently writes for TheSeer.

The 6th String of Vilayat Khan

TheSeer Team

As the second day of the 8th edition of the Bangalore Literature Festival dawned, exactly at 10.45, the visitors sitting by the Tughlaq stage were treated to the melodious sitar tones as the renowned author and journalist Namita Devidayal took over the stage to talk about her book – The Sixth String of Vilayat Khan. She was accompanied by Nandita Bose, well-known for her works like- If Walls Could Weep, Dewed, etc.

 

Namita opened the session with a brief reading of an account from her book where she paints a picture of the life of Ustad Vilayat Khan- the iconic sitarist better known as the trendsetting sitarist. She read out the opening account of her book which revolves around a music concert in Delhi in 1952 where Ustad Vilayat Khan happened to rub shoulders with Pandit Ravi Shankar. She quoted that Ustad Hafiz Ali, who was also present in the audience  had exclaimed “Maar Daala” (means “he killed”) , rightly explaining what a fine instrumentalist Ustad Vilayat Khan was.

 

Namita further discussed how the project came to her. It basically started with Vilayat Khan’s younger son, Hidayat who approached her to take up this work. It was also pointed out how elaborately people knew about Pandit Ravi Shankar but the least about this iconic sitarist, Vilayat Khan. 

 

Namita told the audience that she considered Khan as a complete rock star! Ustad Vilayat Khan was of the view that subtlety in music was of prime importance. Thus, she was completely smitten and took up writing about this man. Nandita added that throughout the book Vilayat Khan “is being looked at with so much love”.

 

Namita’s decision to write this book was also triggered by the painful life of Vilayat Khan. “Every tear of pain in my life, I have turned into a note.”, Vilayat Khan had said. Khan who liked sticking to learning with singers rather than sitar players tried to bring in the nuances of human voice to his sitar tunes, provided Namita. The most notable fact was that Khan transformed the conventional sitar to the modern day 6 strings sitar.

 

On being asked by Nandita to draw a comparison between Pandit Ravi Shankar and Ustad Vilayat Khan who were contemporaries as well as frenemies, Namita said, “It is gruesome to compare artists”. However, she did point out that while Pandit Ravi Shankar liked to experiment internationally with his music, Ustad Vilayat Khan experimented and created contemporary sound without fusion. 

 

The session concluded with another round of reading of an account by Namita from her book, with sitar tunes at the backdrop which lyrically summarised the book and expressed how Ustad Vilayat Khan was true to his certainties and always wanted to stick to what he believed in.

 

 

 

About the Author: Upasana Mahanta is an MA in English with Communication Studies student from CHRIST (Deemed To Be University) – Bengaluru, who firmly believes that there is nothing more exhilarating and liberating as poetry. She finds solace in writing poems and travel blogs and has amongst her laurels a 1st Prize in the English category of the All India Poetess Conference, Meghalaya Chapter’s Seventh Poetry Competition cum North East Poetry Festival. She currently writes for TheSeer.