A testament of how music is ultimately a single language that transcends many of the cultural boundaries imposed by other forms of communication. A true unification of styles, yet i sense there is lots of room for improvisation at the time of performance. This music deserves more attention.
Another reason that Swaminathan came to Harvard was Professor Vijay Iyer. She had first met the MacArthur “genius grant” winner when she was 8 years old and Iyer was collaborating on a project with her old teacher, Sivaraman. The two reconnected when Swaminathan was in college. After Iyer founded the Department of Music’s Program in Creative Practice in Critical Inquiry, Swaminathan became its first student.
“It’s been a unique opportunity to balance between research — the history and theory — and the actual practice. I can ask a question, do the reading, and then the answer can be found somewhere in the music. It’s a constant back and forth of experimentation and reading and trying new things. That’s been the process for me over the past six years.”
Iyer calls Swaminathan “a groundbreaking 21st-century composer-performer and thinker.” He says that one of the things that makes her music so exceptional is the way it reaches out from its south Indian foundation to engage with other forms, such as jazz and Black American experimental music, and to move beyond traditional categories.
“Rajna is creating a body of original, innovative, stirring work that extends and complicates the traditions she carries, imagining new possibilities for community, ethics, and collective creation,” he says. “From her unique vantage as a South Asian/American queer experimental composer-performer, Rajna is creating exquisitely imagined, beautifully executed music that transcends classification.”
With Swaminathan in the vanguard, the program has grown and shifted, embracing live performance and developing a rich culture of collaboration and improvisation that includes students at the College, GSAS, and faculty as well. Outside of Harvard, however, she has faced challenges. The mrudangam has traditionally been an instrument for men in Indian culture. Female virtuosos like Swaminathan are rare. Throughout her life, she’s had to deal with gendered expectations and assumptions about whether women had the strength and stamina to play the drum — and whether it is culturally appropriate for them to do so.
“In India, there are layers of ideas about gender and caste purity when you’re dealing with an instrument that is made in part of cowhide,” she says. “It’s a very deep and complicated story. Some people say that drumming has an association with healing traditions and as we’ve come into modern society, that power to heal through rhythm has been taken away from women.”
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