Pulpy Shilpy: Electronic Music & The Rebirth Of Hope
Image: Still of BMR film by Petra Hermanova
A cracked version of Ableton changed the game for Gowri Jayakumar. She was studying guitar and bass at the Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music in Chennai, India, back in 2012. She got the DAW so she could record herself — Jayakumar has been for over a decade, and remains, a popular singer-songwriter, often armed with an acoustic guitar and her voice. But then she found herself experimenting with the platform: “I was just making sounds,” she says. “Everything was muddy; it was shit.” A new path, however, had opened up.
Creating Social Spaces That Celebrate & Honour Togetherness: Fieldlines
Final Fieldlines performance on day 3 of Magnetic Fields Festival 2019 / Image credit – Avirat Sundra
In his exploration of Panchatattva (five elements) — fire, earth, sky, wind and water, and its concepts within a socio-cultural and folkloric context, Komal Kothari wondered how the interpretation of these elements (albeit not from a philosophical or metaphysical perspective) varied amongst folk musicians of Rajasthan. “Throughout my research, I focused on what people had to say about the elements and not what has been written about them in Sanskrit treatises,” he said in conversation to Rustom Barucha as they discussed the significance of water and drought in fables and folklore in ‘Rajasthan: An Oral History’. “On getting to know some singers of devotional music from the Bavari Tribe, I asked one of the musicians: ‘What is akash (the sky)? How do you explain it? And, he said: ‘Have you ever seen a ghara (earthen pot)? Move your hand inside it but don’t touch its periphery. That is akash: A space with no boundaries.”
