Kyle Kellams: Friday night, Ra-Ve Cultural Foundation in Bentonville will host its annual fundraiser, its biggest event of the year, at The Record in downtown Bentonville. There will be a dinner, a first-ever award ceremony. And because this is Ra-Ve: world-class music. Ra-Ve’s Sacred Winds concert will start the event at 4:30 Friday.
Srividya Venkatasubramanya: So the music concert is from 4:30 to 7. I know it's a Friday. Take it off early.
Kyle Kellams: You have permission?
Srividya Venkatasubramanya: Yes.
Kyle Kellams: Srividya Venkatasubramanya is the executive director of Ra-Ve Cultural Foundation, and she came by the Center for Public Radio to talk about Friday night's concert and awards presentation.
Srividya Venkatasubramanya: This year we are introducing a new award ceremony and we have five categories. And I don't remember the categories but they are all about, it's about people who are—we are trying to recognize people and organizations in the community who are supporting Indian music and dance, traditional music and dance. Right. So we're just trying to identify those people and try to get their name up there, because a lot of times they are never recognized. You know, they just keep doing the work and they're never recognized. And the whole point of Ra-Ve is to create a platform to celebrate Indian traditional music and dance and culture. And, you know, that's the whole point. So we are trying to create this platform this year. You know, we're adding to it by recognizing individuals and organizations who support Indian culture in the area.
Kyle Kellams: Headlining the night is the Sacred Winds concert—music and camaraderie
Srividya Venkatasubramanya: And getting people together to want to learn more about each other. That continues to be a challenge. You know, we still busy ourselves with I don't know what not. So we don't prioritize getting to know each other and therefore, because ultimately diversity has to be an authentic process. You know, it's not just just because I'm Indian, you are, you know, white, Caucasian or, you know, something like that. You know, that doesn't mean diversity. Diversity is because, you know when I talk about, my temples or Diwali or something, and you know what that means because you have bothered to learn that about me and vice versa. You know that when I know that you are celebrating Christmas or whatever you do, you know that I know why you do it, because I have bothered to learn that about you.
You know, so that interaction comes in India. It has happened over thousands of years. You know, we've been doing that work. You know, we've had people from all over the world come, and we ourselves are very curious people. You know, they are still unearthing a lot of trade coins and things like that. Indian coins, you know, found in Africa and found in South America. And I don't know where not, you know. So I guess we've been visiting each other and learning about each other throughout time. And today, we believe we are actually closer than ever before because you can literally take a flight today and go from here to India, which is halfway across the world, in 24 hours or less, right, depending on where you're going. And but we still seem to be more distant than ever, you know. So, so Ra-Ve's work ultimately is to bring people together, and we do it. What better way than to, you know, through music and dance and food, you know. Really? Duh. Right. Absolutely.
Kyle Kellams: Well, let's talk about the concert. The musicians.
Srividya Venkatasubramanya: Oh my gosh. So, Pandit Chatterjee, one of the stalwarts of tabla players in India, he's from Calcutta. And I was so excited I got to visit him in Calcutta last year when I had gone and I saw his, you know, the place where he continues to teach. It is his family house of many decades. And they continue to use that house to teach children and youngsters and of all ages and everything. And there are regular—he showed me this very beautiful Bengali house right next door. And he said, that's where we do a lot of performances and things like that. And I was like, oh my gosh, I wish I could come for one of those, so idyllic and beautiful and the continuation of that tradition.
He actually is, I think, a first generation in his family. But in Calcutta, he's surrounded by people who play the sitar or the flute or whichever instrument you want to talk about. Many of them are fifth generation, sixth generation, which means for the past that many decades, centuries, they have been practicing that, handing it down, witnessing it. And that is how Indian music is taught, because you cannot—how do you teach a raga that is alive? You can't. Like, you can take notations. As a student, you may start off with notations and things like that, but ultimately you learn from listening. You learn from watching and listening to the masters because they have dedicated their lives to those ragas.
Some people are even known by the name of the raga because they are said to be very famous for that particular raga. They sometimes will have that title of that raga with their name. And then that's the only way to learn Indian music, because there's so much of the soul in it. There's so much of your human interaction with that music. And it has to be your own. It cannot be borrowed from someone else.
Kyle Kellams: What I like is that in some way, when you are making it your own, but you're still being influenced by the masters who heard masters, who heard masters. So you might be slightly influenced by someone from a thousand years ago.
Srividya Venkatasubramanya: Of course, of course. Which is what is so beautiful about the music. Because even today, when you go and listen, when you go sit in a concert, it's so meditative because these ragas have been worked on over centuries by people and then handed down and handed down and handed down and fine-tuned. So it creates ultimately Hindustani music and Carnatic music. Ultimately, the ragas create a certain emotion in you, which brings you peace. Ultimately, you leave the concert energized, your soul is energized, and you mentally are at peace. That's the whole point of Indian music. It's not to get you all worked up and boiling. No, it's like a steady simmer, and it just washes over you and it calms you down. Which is why a lot of people think it's boring. But it's not boring. It's peaceful.
Kyle Kellams: Who will be on stage with him?
Srividya Venkatasubramanya: So he will have Jesse Bannister, who is a very—I believe, I don't know much about him, but I've learned about him through this concert. He's British and he's a saxophonist, very much a jazz saxophonist. But I believe he has been learning Hindustani music from some of the top Hindustani musicians for like some two or three decades or something like that. And I recently watched a small clip of his playing, and I was just blown, because I don't think I've ever seen—there used to be a person called Kadri Gopalnath who had brought the saxophone to Carnatic music, and I've heard that. I've never heard saxophone for Hindustani music. So I was just like, I am so excited. I need to watch this. I need to hear this, you know, and how it turns out.
And of course, Saumya Jyoti Ghosh is—he comes from parampara, that is, he comes from a tradition of flautists. And so I think this is his maiden visit to the U.S. tour-wise. But he's also excellent. I mean, yeah. So it's all going to be wind instruments and tabla. You just can't go wrong.
Kyle Kellams: I've been hosting this show for 36 years. One of the first stories I ever did was in Bentonville. Bentonville then is different than Bentonville now.
Srividya Venkatasubramanya: Oh my gosh. Yeah. You know, I've been in Bentonville for about half of that time, 17 years. So I'm sure Bentonville when you arrived is different than Bentonville now. Oh my gosh. Very much.
Kyle Kellams: And do you see Ra-Ve's role as trying to—not trying, but helping?
Srividya Venkatasubramanya: We are now becoming—we are getting so many emails and messages from the website nowadays, or from Facebook or something, saying, oh, we just moved to the area and we are so excited to see that we have a concert or something, right? Because these people are coming with the big move now for Walmart, like everyone's coming in. And these are people coming from, let's say, California or Dallas. And you know those cities have, I mean, those states and cities have some very big Indian populations. And they're used to concerts every weekend or something like that, I wish. But, you know, so they come here and they're like, oh my gosh, Bentonville. I mean, what is there? Do they even know what Indian concerts are? And they come and they're pleasantly surprised that we are doing all this work.
So, oh, absolutely. I think if Ra-Ve—you know, I always think, what if Ra-Ve were not there? You know, like if we were not there, then that's it. You know, it would just be status quo. You know, everybody would do what they can. And what you can as an Indian family is the low-hanging fruit, which is, oh, let me just play something, it's the latest Bollywood hit. Let me just play that. It's easily accessible. Let me just play that. Let me teach my kid a few dance moves based on that, and let's just be done. Because that's the easiest thing I can afford to do with everything else that I have to do here—going to work and taking care of the kids and trying to live a double life, trying to maintain my Indian traditions and modern American traditions of school and this and all the different holidays and everything. So trying to balance all that is quite hard.
And with Ra-Ve, my whole intention and the intention of my board and the wonderful people who have been joining the organization over the past seven years is to make it easier for these families to keep in touch with those traditions, to keep in touch with those roots.
Almost anybody who has come to our events—like we had once, we were at a Family Day event at Crystal Bridges. So there was a group of Indian families who had come from Little Rock. They were like, oh my gosh, and they were pointing to the dance because it was a traditional dance. I think it was Bharatanatyam, if I'm not wrong that day. And they were pointing it out to their kids and saying, you know, mom used to learn that when I was a young kid. And I was just—that's it. That's it. You know, just let's not forget where we come from.
Kyle Kellams: Finally, I want to think that on Friday night, someone's in the audience hearing these musicians, and maybe it influences them, and then that influences someone who hears them. You're just keeping it going.
Srividya Venkatasubramanya: Oh, absolutely. That's—and that's the whole. Without Ra-Ve, that opportunity doesn't exist because we are the only organization that is promoting this, because it takes a lot to promote it. It's not as easy as just posting something on Facebook. No.
Kyle Kellams: No, I imagine not.
Srividya Venkatasubramanya: No, it's a lot, many hours of going and sitting at tables in community events and talking to people and talking and including others in your events. Like, we are pretty—I think we are pretty well known now in Northwest Arkansas for doing these jam sessions between—we had Ozark music and South Indian folk music together once at one of our house concerts. We put—there is this beautiful Kerala dance form called Mohiniyattam. And we did that with the Pacific Ocean dance. And like, you would think that they would be so different, but they were actually so similar in so many ways. And both the topics, it just shows how connected we are as human beings all around the world. We're more similar than different.
You know, we're more similar than different. And that's it. You know, we keep showing that, you know, hey, that's quite similar to what I know. That's pretty important right now. I think so. I think so.
Kyle Kellams: Srividya Venkatasubramanya is the executive director of Ra-Ve Cultural Foundation. Ra-Ve's annual fundraiser this year, headlined by the Sacred Winds concert, is Friday at The Record in downtown Bentonville, with music beginning at 4:30. Remember, you're excused from work to go. Details at ra-veculturalfoundation.org. That's R-A-V cultural foundation.org.
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