Two musicians are celebrating the voices of women and those displaced from their homelands with a morning of music and poetry from the Subcontinent and Eurasia
(From left) Shalini Sekhar and Shruthi Veena Vishwanath
A few days ago, a video of a Ukrainian man saying a tearful goodbye to his daughter and partner before they headed off to a safe shelter surfaced on the Internet. Even as the world wept with him, this writer couldn’t help wondering what the father experienced while fixing his daughter’s hat, perhaps for the last time. While we keep him and thousands of such parents and kids in our prayers, Shalini Sekhar, a singer and accordion player from Auroville, tells us about a lullaby from conflict-ridden Afghanistan — Lalo lalo by Ustad Farida Mahwash, who’s exiled in the US. “It tells the baby, ‘When you grow up and inherit this nation, don’t do the same things to it,’” Sekhar reveals. Moving lullabies such as this — along with songs and poetry of home, belonging and the heart from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Greece, and Ukraine — will weave together a musical morning called The Road of the Wild Lily that Sekhar and musician Shruthi Veena Vishwanath are
putting together.
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Vishwanath works in the space of folk and mystic music from South Asia, while Sekhar specialises in music from Greece, Turkey, The Balkans and Latin America, among other parts of the world. The duo — The Wild Lilies — tells us that their piece, The Road of the Wild Lily, celebrates voices that need to be heard in these trying times — of women and of those who’ve been displaced from their homelands because of war, faith or politics. “The roots of this work have been in our consciousness for a long time because, as you can see in the world, authoritarian structures are rising and the rift between people is becoming stronger,” explains Vishwanath, while Sekhar adds, “A question that has confronted both of us is how do we respond to these times as artistes?” Like wild lilies that spread their fragrance wherever they bloom, the duo hopes to build a musical bridge between India — the space of Vishwanath’s core practice — and Eastern Europe, where a lot of Sekhar’s musical roots lie.
The online presentation will comprise songs in different languages “that are more allied than we know”, from borders that are “more blurred than we are told”, they tell us. Take for instance, Lalo lalo or Omar al-Batsh, a Syrian song of celebration from the 1940s and ’50s. “There’s also a musical conversation between us where I sing the part of Mortissa, from Greece in the 1920s, when there was a lot of forced displacement. Mortissa is the archetype of a fierce independent woman and she sings to celebrate,” explains Sekhar, while Vishwanath tells us about Soyrabai, a 15th century Dalit poet from the Varkari movement. “She questions the notion of purity and impurity, and the two women’s voices have this mad, cross-conversation about struggles and joys that are still so relevant,” Vishwanath adds. Tune in to this musical exchange of energies, and say a prayer for the world.
On: March 5, 9 am
Email: musicwithshruthi@gmail.com
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