Rāginī: Women’s Raga Massive Festival is a two day virtual festival hosted by Brooklyn Raga Massive celebrating the contemporary presence of women in South Asian Classical arts. The festival will feature Kiran Ahluwalia(voice), Roopa Panesar(sitar), Debasmita Bhattacharya(sarod), Roshni Samlal(tabla), Kamaljeet Ahluwalia(santoor) and Melvis Santa(voice). The festival will also feature visual artists from the South Asian diaspora. Rāginī: Women’s Raga Massive Festival streams globally and tickets are donation-based.
Lineup:
March 20
- Kiran Ahluwalia, voice | Rez Abbasi, guitar
- Debasmita Bhattacharya, sarod | Sandip Ghosh, tabla
- Melvis Santa, voice | Osmany Paredes, piano - Rafael Monteagudo, percussion -Carlos Mena, bass
- Featuring the work of: Sharmistha Ray and Bishakh Som
March 27
- Roshni Samlal, tabla | Arun Ramamurthy, violin
- Kamaljeet Ahluwalia, santoor | Jas Ahluwalia, tabla
- Roopa Panesar, sitar
- Featuring the work of: Sharmistha Ray, Bishakh Som and Tinki Sinha
The 5th Annual Women’s Raga Massive festival will present the work of 5 accomplished female practitioners within the field of South Asian classical music. From traditional instrumentation and percussion solos, to folk and Sufi song traditions, our festival spotlights the diversity of sound and achievement of these women, as creatrixes within lineages and offers a glimpse into their musical world. The festival is inspired by the principle of the melodic feminine “Rāginī” as an aspect of 16th century musical theory movement which gave feminine persona, poetic meditation and visual embodiment to melodic scales. The festival also takes as inspiration, the gathering of the “woman’s sangeet” - a safe place and artistically revelatory platform for women to gather in camaraderie and thriving joy in one another’s expression-social creation against the backdrop of danger or the unknown.
Brooklyn Raga Massive
Brooklyn Raga Massive is a collective of forward thinking musicians rooted in and inspired by Indian classical music. Hailed as the “leaders of the Raga Renaissance” by the New Yorker, BRM creates original composed music by BRM member musicians and represented ensembles, presents over 70 concerts annually with an ongoing weekly concert and raga jam session series and specialty concerts and co-presents an annual 24 hour Ragas Live Festival. BRM features both traditional Indian classical performances as well as cross-cultural Raga inspired music. In particular, the culturally inclusive nature of BRM has not only built a strong community, but has become an incubator of new music collaborations with sounds indigenous to Brooklyn.