Feeling music
Performance by Vidya Shah
Place: Berlin
Date: 7th and 10th October 2008
How does one feel an aural experience? How does the aural connect with a visual in eliciting another level of felt experience? With reference to a spatial context, it is interesting to note how and whether this experience can be measured and objectively perceived. The visual and the aural are on different planes yet experientially and at the affect level they connect. They both evoke emotions that could be subjective, prompted or even provocative.
In the context of Indian music the drone or the Tanpura that is played at the beginning of a performance before the vocal or the performing instrument begins, fills the performance space before the artist actually begins his or her quest for an experience that can well take us into a new and very different set of responses, perhaps another realm of existence.
The theme of the performance by Vidya Shah will be Shringar one of the nine essences that permeate all aspects of Indian Art. Shringar is about love, in all aspects from the romance to the erotic to the mystic union with the divine. But its earthly or physical manifestations are the ones we all recognize or that which becomes perceivable. We all know it as love in all its colors making it once beautiful for the beloved, the breathless anticipation of a meeting, the yearning, the separation, the ecstasies, these feelings are human and they are universal. In India they have also been captured in paintings and in songs as we bring in this interactive experience through the concert. The performance shares these aspects through the forms of Hindustani or North Indian Music and as a reminder of the organic nature of all Indian art. The visual representation of these moods will be through paintings and photographs from both contemporary and historical collections of Indian painters and photographers.
The concert is an effort to understand the tapestry of emotions that can be elicited, evoked, discussed and dissipated through this audio-visual experience.
2 comments:
Hi vidya. All the best wishes for your forthcoming concert.
love and the agony of not being able to meet one's love (viraha) are something that has been a recurrent theme in indian classical music. sometimes it is expressed as love for and the separation from God. that is spiritual love. at others it is more material and concerns the love between men and women. in the music surrounding the love of krishna and radha it is a mixture of both spiritual and material love. in the end it all comes out beautifully if the singer immerses herself in the rendition as i presume vidya must have done.
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