Al-chemical Music

    http://epaper.navhindtimes.in/epaperarchive.aspx?pdate=2016-08-28  

 Alchemical Music           

Seated on a wooden bench in the Santa Monica Church at old Goa last week, I was ambushed. It was a subtle but steadfast ambush by the mellifluous notes rendered by the Goa University Choir concert “History of Tenderness”. A nascent ensemble, GU Choir, the first university choir in India,comprising of students from Goa University and members of the Goan community, is slowly evolving into a concert choir under the tutelage of maestro Santiago LusardiGirelli.

An aesthetic, cultural and musical revolution is at play in the landscape of Goa. Rooted in the theme ‘East Meets West’, an artistic laboratory, with Girelli at the helm of affairs, is augmenting the culture of global communities through its alchemical music. Green Goa is pitched tobecome Global Goa in word, line and page.

The musical register of Goa is old, with members of a family playing instruments and singing at homeduring late evenings, over glasses of wine and hors d’oeuvres. The Monte Festival, started in 2003, presents diverse cultural traditions ofWestern and Indian classical musicagainst the backdrop of the setting sunat the courtyard of Capela da NossaSenhora do Monte (Chapel of Our Lady of the Mount).Similarly, Rudolph Ludwig,a pianist and composer, and the executive director of KetevanGoa World Music festival, has continually invited Indian and Western world class musicians and dancers to perform at the Art Chamber in Calangute.  Sonia Shirsat has been constantly regaling Goan audiences with plaintive Fado numbers.Luis Dias, the physician-turned musician at the Mint House, has been inviting musicians from abroad to showcase house full concerts at different venues in Goa. Dias is also the director of Child’sPlay Foundation, a classical music program for street children on the lines of El-Sistema, Venezuela. In fact,Girelli first came to Goa to train these students and started the Camerata Child’s Play Foundation ensemble in 2012. Talking about his work with underprivileged children in Goa, Argentina and the Amazon,Girelli says that music changes lives. Children undergoing music training learn to look at life from a different perspective and are able to harness positive energy for better lives.

Girelli’s presence in Goa has been an upward arc for music in all its forms. What completely bowls over a music aficionado steeped in the adage ‘music is the language of the soul’, is Girelli’s philosophy.

Girelli’s concept of a university choir is not just a performance playfield but a fecund ground for exploration, innovation and realization of avantgardeideas. Girelliis creating symphonies between acoustically varied forms of music. He is breaking across boundaries of geography and  history to create bewildering fusion art such as  when his choir enunciates words ofKabir and Gandhi set to Gregorian Chant or and He opines that achoir is an artistic community that seeks perfection, and thatits main goal is to create a musical experience of beauty. Each member of the choir is a seeker. Beauty is regained and truth is distilled in hearts of those who come together to sing.when a melody of bhakti ragas resound seamlessly to Christian texts by S. Francis of Assisi and M. Luther King. The CarminaBuranaCodex fromthe XII Century or some J.S. Bach Cantatas fuse with Indian instruments like Tablas, Sitar, Bansuri and Tanpura. Native South American music from 10th and 11thcenturies merges with Indian music and traditional Goanmusic from the Portuguese period. The audience might be recovering from the previous medley when Japanese haikus will ring tosimilar intonations from Indian and Western music.

A holy syncretism of radically diverse genres of music from varied sources has the musical audience shifting from strangeness to a zone of comfort and bliss – threshold of a new home that promises harmony. Girelli says that it is in the intersections of musical diversities that new meanings are sought and sealed.

A sediment of different tongues lines the concerts’ singing vocabulary. Hindi, Konkani, Sanskrit, Portuguese, Swahili, Latin, Greek, German, Spanish, French, Latin, Italian, Quechua, Aymara and Nahuatl (indigenous Native American languages), Bozal (Spanish and Congolese with Portuguese influences), form a heady mix to enthral the audience at once. Music is captured in every possible mood, from a devotee’s hallucinations to romantic rapture and Sufi-inflected philosophical ruminations in line with Rumi’s “All religions. All this singing. One song. Peace be with you.” The Peacemakers by Karl Jenkins was beautifully rendered by the choir during the Monte Music festival (medley of languages and religious texts praying for peace in every human heart).

The ensemble evolved to another level with the advent of the Ketevan World Sacred Music Festival, the brainchild of the Artistic Director Santiago LusardiGirelli and Executive Director Rudolf Ludwig. The choir had wide exposure to many artists from across borders. Flutists, violinists, pianists, cellists, sitarists, fadistas, and choral ensembles collaborated to render the universal song of love and joy. For UtsavLal, the concert pianist, Ketevan was an incredible experience.He said,“It generated a great cross-communication of ideas, new projects between all the musicians and artists and I think this is what makes a festival stand out.”

Besides, the lecture series on music appreciation titled –‘Western music in dialogue with philosophy, history, literature and anthropology’, led by Girelli, has been a crowd-puller since its advent three years back. Aided by power point and live/recorded performances, the audience participates in the journey of music from the Gregorian chant to contemporary times.

Every new talent shifts the culturography of Goa. Goa’s appetite for multiculturalism and creativity and Girelli’s penchant for syncretic music has created a symbiosis. Goa is richer of both its unions - the arranged marriage which the Portuguese crafted four centuries ago, and the rather more recent affair with the global music community. We wish the ménage‘atrois to continue unbridled!
(Santiago LusardiGirelli is a Choir and Orchestra conductor, performer, composer and scholar of theological philosophical traditions of the East and Wes