India’s artists, in pace with their country’s rapid modernization, have adopted many contemporary techniques. Yet past traditions remain strong. Familiar themes and modern modes of expression interplay with fruitful creative tension. Abstract and surrealist artists incorporate images of legendary gods and heroes in their work, and musicians create exciting new sounds in collaboration with Western jazz and classical performers. Literature and cinema with rural village scenes compete with others featuring urban landscapes, Indian-American cultural fusion, and the seductive joys of Bollywood. The result: unique new delights for the eye, the ear, and the spirit.
Moderator: Raka Ray (Sarah Kailath Chair in Indian Studies, Chair of the Center for South Asia Studies, and Associate Professor of Sociology and South and Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley)
Friday, February 27, 2009
7:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Special Pre-program Performance:
Indian Classical Musicians Joanna Mack and Tim Witter
Joanna Mack began her pursuit of Classical North Indian Music in 1997. While studying Neuroscience at UCSD, she attended a Classical Indian Music class with sitar virtuoso Kartik Seshadri, a senior disciple of Pandit Ravi Shankar of the Maihar Gharana. She had been involved in Western music since childhood but was immediately drawn to Indian music. She abandoned her plan for medical school and devoted herself to Indian Classical Music. Kartikji recommended her to Pandit Deepak Choudhuri, another senior disciple of Pandit Ravi Shankar. That year, Joanna traveled to India where she studied under him through 2005. Joanna then returned to the United States, promising Deepakji that she would continue her studies and pass on the values and ideas of the Maihar Gharana. She teaches private and group classes and performs in a variety of venues. She continues her studies with classes under Ustad Ali Akbar Khan at the Ali Akbar College of Musicand is under the guidance of Maestro Kartik Seshadri.
Tim Witter began his tabla training with Ustad Alla Rakha in 1980. He has studied since 1985 with Pandit Swapan Chauduri, the resident tabla teacher at the Ali Akbar College of Music. He has made numerous trips to India for study and performance, and in 1994-1995 completed a research/performance grant awarded to him by the American Institute of Indian Studies. Tim has taught at the Ali Akbar College of Music in Basel, Switzerland and has performed throughout Europe. Currently he is a staff teacher at the Ali Akbar College of Music in San Rafael, California as well as being an active performer and composer in Bay Area Indian classical and contemporary music scenes. In addition to studying tabla, Tim has lived in Madras, India and studied South Indian drumming from T.H. Subash Chandran. Tim was a co-recipient of the 1997 Isadora Duncan Award for Best Original Music for a New Dance Piece for his work in creating the score for “Sacred Text.”
8:00 pm – 10:15 pm
India Rising: the Soft Power of an Ancient Land in the 21st century
Keynote Lecture by Shashi Tharoor, Chairman, Afras Ventures
Many thinkers and writers in recent years have spoken of India’s geo-strategic advantages, its economic dynamism, political stability, proven military capabilities, its nuclear, space and missile programmes, and the country’s growing pool of young and skilled manpower as assuring India “great power” status as a “world leader” in the new century. Dr Shashi Tharoor, author and former UN Under-Secretary-General, argues that it these not these elements that represent India’s greatest potential as it seeks to play its role in our globalizing world. Instead, he focuses on the “soft power” of India, its attributes and limitations and the challenges it faces, as he outlines India’s true place in Asia and the world and what it could mean for the country’s future in the 21st century.
Indian Art: Tradition Meets Modernity
Santhi Kavuri-Bauer (Assistant Professor, Art History, San Francisco State University)
This illustrated lecture will trace the development of modern art in India starting with the adaptation of the academic style by Raja Ravi Varma in the 1880s through the period of creative tension among those seeking to reconcile Western styles with traditional subject matter and practice, including Abindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose, Amrita Sher Gil. After Independence, artists like M.F. Hussain, Jamini Roy and F.N. Souza began to explore more abstract and personal themes. Professor Kavuri-Bauer concludes by focusing on several contemporary artists, who combine traditional symbols, forms and processes with modern media techniques, such as digital photography, and address the important social issues facing India today.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
10 am to noon and 1:30 to 4 pm
Sacred Games: A Reading
Vikram Chandra (Senior Lecturer, UC Berkeley)
One of modern India’s greatest novelists will read from and describe his best known work, the epicSacred Games, a Victorian-Indian-gangster-spy-family saga, placing his work into the broad context of Indian literature today.
Indian Music: Traditions and Transitions
Dard Neuman (Kamil and Talat Hasan Endowed Chair in Classical Indian Music, UC Santa Cruz) lectures on Indian music and demonstrates the sitar, with rare recordings.
Special Performance:
Indian Classical Musicians Joanna Mack and Tim Witter
Joanna Mack began her pursuit of Classical North Indian Music in 1997. While studying Neuroscience at UCSD, she attended a Classical Indian Music class with sitar virtuoso Kartik Seshadri, a senior disciple of Pandit Ravi Shankar of the Maihar Gharana. She had been involved in Western music since childhood but was immediately drawn to Indian music. She abandoned her plan for medical school and devoted herself to Indian Classical Music. Kartikji recommended her to Pandit Deepak Choudhuri, another senior disciple of Pandit Ravi Shankar. That year, Joanna traveled to India where she studied under him through 2005. Joanna then returned to the United States, promising Deepakji that she would continue her studies and pass on the values and ideas of the Maihar Gharana. She teaches private and group classes and performs in a variety of venues. She continues her studies with classes under Ustad Ali Akbar Khan at the Ali Akbar College of Musicand is under the guidance of Maestro Kartik Seshadri.
Tim Witter began his tabla training with Ustad Alla Rakha in 1980. He has studied since 1985 with Pandit Swapan Chauduri, the resident tabla teacher at the Ali Akbar College of Music. He has made numerous trips to India for study and performance, and in 1994-1995 completed a research/performance grant awarded to him by the American Institute of Indian Studies. Tim has taught at the Ali Akbar College of Music in Basel, Switzerland and has performed throughout Europe. Currently he is a staff teacher at the Ali Akbar College of Music in San Rafael, California as well as being an active performer and composer in Bay Area Indian classical and contemporary music scenes. In addition to studying tabla, Tim has lived in Madras, India and studied South Indian drumming from T.H. Subash Chandran. Tim was a co-recipient of the 1997 Isadora Duncan Award for Best Original Music for a New Dance Piece for his work in creating the score for “Sacred Text.”
Mirrors of Tradition and Modernity:
Cinema of Satyajit Ray, Independent Cinema and Bollywood
Dilip Basu (Founding Director, Archives and Study Center on Satyajit Ray, University of California Santa Cruz, and Associate Professor of History).
This lecture with film clips will argue that the cinema of Satyajit Ray and his cohorts in post-independent India remain quintessentially modern; popular cinema, both past and present, use the modern cinematic medium to the fullest while following the traditional Indian dramaturgy in form and content.
Reality Television and the New India
Raka Ray
The Indian Idol phenomenon, in which the women and the rich men were voted off first in support of upward mobility for the poor Nepalese boy who eventually wins, in a sense causes the upward mobility of his whole community, generating pride within the regionally underserved.
Panel Discussion
Led by Moderator Raka Ray.
Presenters
Dilip Basu, , UC Santa Cruz
Vikram Chandra, UC Berkeley
Santhi Kavuri-Bauer, Art History, San Francisco State University
Dard Neuman, Musicology, UC Santa Cruz
Raka Ray, History, UC Berkeley
Shashi Thoroor, diplomacy, New York, India