IIAS Annual Lecture 2010 by William Dalrymple
28/06/2010 - 20:00
28 Juni 2010
20:00 - 22:00 hrs
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Nine Lives. In Search of the Sacred in Modern India. A theater experience with Readings, Music and Traditional Dance. Presenting: William Dalrymple (Author), Paban Das Baul & the Bauls of Bengal and Susheela Raman
Venue: Lutheran Church/UvA-Aula, Singel 411, Amsterdam
Background
Every year, the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) invites a special guest for its Annual Lecture. This year, world-famous author and historian William Dalrymple will hold a lecture on South Asia's diverse sacred traditions and how these manage to cling on in the new India. India is moving forward and transforming itself at the most incredible rate—the economy will overtake that of the US by 2050-- and Dalrymple's work examines the way these huge earthquakes have affected the great Indian traditions of mysticism, monasticism, music and dance. Dalrymple also deals with these questions in his most recent book Nine Lives In Search of the Sacred in Modern India. The lecture will also be the official launch of the Dutch translation of his book by Uitgeverij Atlas.
Location
The lecture will be held at the Old Lutheran Church which is located at a corner of the Spui. The Spui is a square in Amsterdam, famous for its bookshops and weekly bookmarket. Tram lines 1, 2, 4, 5, 9, 14, 16, 24 and 25 stop at or near the Spui. From Central Station it is best to take tram 1, 2 or 5.
The book & the show
Nine Lives explores nine very personal stories-- a Sufi, a possession dancer, a Buddhist monk, a Jain nun, a Tantric and so on, each telling their own story, aiming to show how faith and ritual are clinging on in the face of India's commercial boom. Each life represents a different religious path, while revealing the perhaps surprising persistence of faith and ritual. William's travels for the book have led him to meet some extraordinary individuals. In Kerala, for instance, he met Hari Das, a well builder and part-time prison warden for ten months of the year, who polices the violent running war between the convicts and gangsters of the two rival political parties, the far-right RSS and the hard-left Communist Party of India. But during the Theyyam dancing season, between January and March, Hari has a rather different job. Though he comes from an untouchable dalit background, he nevertheless is transformed into an omnipotent deity for two months a year, and as such is worshipped as a God. Then, at the end of March, he goes back to prison.
On another trip, to Pakistan, travelling in the deserts of Sindh William came across the Shah Jo Raag Fakirs. These fakirs live together in a Sufi brotherhood and are custodians of one of the greatest and most unusual Sufi traditions in South Asia. Every day they sing the verses of the greatest poet in the Sindhi language, the eighteenth century Sufi master, Shah Abdul Latif of Bhit Shah who died in 1752.
In Bengal William spent a month travelling with the Bauls. Throughout their five hundred year history, these wandering mistrells have refused to conform to the conventions of caste-conscious Bengali society. Subversive and seductive, wild and abandoned, they have preserved a series of esoteric spiritual teachings on breath, sex, asceticism, philosophy and mystical devotion. They have also amassed a treasury of beautifully melancholic and often enigmatic teaching songs which help map out their path to inner vision. Travelling from village to village, owning nothing but a multi-coloured patchwork robe, they sit in tea shops and under roadside banyan trees, in the compartments of trains and at village bus stops, busking their ballads about love and mysticism, divine madness and universal brotherhood to gatherings of ordinary Bengali farmers and villagers.
The idea of bringing all these different traditions together, and putting them on stage with readings about the lives of the performers, came during last year’s Jaipur Literature Festival, now the largest such event in Asia. Last year, one of the most remarkable events was an evening mixing Baul sacred music with Tamil thevaram hymns as sung by the celebrated London-born Tamil vocalist, Susheela Raman. The Thevaram songs which Susheela sings are taken from the seven volumes of devotional hymns written by the south Indian saints, first performed over a thousand years ago in Tanjore and the other great temples of Tamil Nadu. Until recently their words were the common property of all Tamils; now however the tradition is slowly beginning to die out.
William Dalrymple is a writer. He wrote his first book, In Xanadu: A Quest (1989), at 22 years of age, and in 1989, moved to Delhi to research City of Djinns: a year in Delhi (1993), which went on to win the 1994 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. His next book From the Holy Mountain: a Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium (1997) was followed by The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters (1998). White Mughals (2002), the book which marked Dalrymple's shift from travel writing to history, won the 2003 Woolfson Prize for History, and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award. In 2006, William Dalrymple published The Last Mughal: the Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857. The Last Mughal won the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize and the Crossword Prize for Non-Fiction. His most recent book, Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India was published by Bloomsbury last October, to great acclaim, and went straight to number one in the Indian bestseller list.
Paban Das Baul & the Bauls of Bengal
- Paban Das Baul (vocals + dubki (tamborine) + khamak (plucking drum))
- Mimlu Sen (vocals /translations of texts + cymbals)
The music of the Bauls, refers to a particular type of folk song of sung by Bauls. It carries influences of Hindu bhakti movements as well as the suphi, a form of Sufi song mediated by many thousand miles of cultural intermixing, exemplified by the songs of Kabir, for instance. Their music represents a long heritage of preaching mysticism through songs in Bengal, like Shahebdhoni or Bolahadi sects. The Bauls use a number of musical instruments to embellish their compositions. The "ektara" is a one-stringed drone instrument, and by far the most common instrument used by a Baul singer. It is the carved from the epicarp of a gourd, and made of bamboo and goatskin. Other commonly used musical instruments include the dotara, a multi-stringed instrument made of the wood; the dugi, a small hand-held earthen drum; percussion instruments like dhol and khol; small cymbals called "kartal" and "mandira" and the bamboo flute.
Susheela Raman and Sam Mills
With her bewitching voice, Tamil Londoner Susheela is one of the most interesting musicians to emerge amongst the South Asian Diaspora, equally at home with South Indian Classical as with Jimi Hendrix and Fela Kuti, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Aretha Franklin. As a composer, arranger and interpreter she has forged her own unique, inclusive sound and has already gained immense critical and popular acclaim for her records. She has made four albums: Salt Rain (2001), Love Trap (2003), Music for Crocodiles (2005) and 33 1/3 (2007).The dreamy seductive Salt Rain went gold in France and was shortlisted for the UK Mercury Prize. The sublime and intense Love Trap features many Indian devotional songs and, amongst other great musicians, the legendary afro beat maestro Tony Allen on drums. Music for Crocodiles is another musical feast, featuring musicians from South India and was partly recorded in Chennai (Madras). Susheela’s most beautiful journey yet, 33 1/3 is a collection of characteristically soulful, distinctive and exciting re-interpretations of songs by (amongst others) Velvet Underground, Dylan, Captain Beefheart, Can and Joy Division. Recorded with long term collaborators Sam Mills, Vincent Segal and Aref Durvesh, the album has a very live feeling with stripped-down instrumentation and multi-layered vocals. Accompanying Susheela & Sam will be musician – Aref Durvesh
Do register in advance by sending an email to: michiel.baas@uva.nl