The coronavirus outbreak has dealt a body blow to the live music industry around the world, and to museums, galleries and festivals. The Indian Music Experience museum in Bangalore is responding to the challenge with a range of innovative digital programming.
The Indian Music Experience (IME) is an interactive museum showcasing the richness and heritage of India’s music. An initiative of The Brigade Group, IME is also an institutional affiliate of the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles.
From offline to online
Held on May 18 each year, International Museum Day (IMD) is coordinated by the International Council of Museums (ICOM). The theme this year is Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. Themes in earlier years have been Sustainable Society, Social Harmony, Universal Heritage, Globalisation, Environment, and Indigenous Peoples.
Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, many museums around the world are shut, and are offering online viewings and other kinds of digital content. For example, IME is offering online walkthroughs and performances, music workshops for children, and panel discussions addressing the museum sector.
Children’s’ activities at IME include Songs from around the World, a storytelling and singing workshop. Industry panels have addressed the challenges and opportunities for museums in times of physical distancing, and programming for the ‘new normal’ when tactile experiences have to be designed with safety and hygiene in mind.
Through its Instagram account, IME shares short video walkthroughs, and interview-performance sessions called ‘Up, Close and Unplugged.’ They have featured musicians such as Shashank Subramanyam (flute) and Prasanna (guitar).
An online session on ‘Sound Healing with Tibetan Bowls’ was held on World Health Day, and a short video was presented on World Jazz Day, titled Bombay’s Jazz Age. Plans for this coming weekend include an online quiz on music.
“The big worry is that funding for the arts is under grave threat. Both artists and institutions are suffering, as whatever income we would earn earlier has completely disappeared,” said IME’s director Manasi Prasad, in an interview. She calls for more government, corporate and community support for musicians and museums in these tough times.
Manasi is also a vocalist with the all-women’s band Metronome Station. They released a special fusion track on Mother’s Day (May 10), called Janani. The song is a “tribute to all mothers as well as to the mothers inside all of us” (accessible on YouTube here).
Ravi Shankar @ 100 – exhibition and online video
In March this year, IME unveiled an exhibition titled Ravi Shankar @ 100, celebrating the life and legacy of sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar (1920-2012). On April 7 this year, he would have been 100 years old. Most of the exhibits were provided by the Ravi Shankar Foundation and his wife Sukanya Shankar’s personal collection.
The exhibition was launched on March 7, along with a panel discussion and a musical performance by Vishwa Mohan Bhatt on the mohanveena and Bickram Ghosh on tabla.
A movie on Pandit Ravi Shankar by Alan Kozlowski was also screened. Unfortunately, India went into nationwide lockdown a couple of weeks later, and the museum has been shut since then.
The photographs in this article were taken before the national lockdown, and are not in violation of any public safety guidelines. But an online video of the opening ceremony and the exhibition is accessible. The exhibition was planned to be open to the public for three months, and later taken to other cities – but all plans are on hold now.
Separately, Ravi Shankar’s daughter Anoushka Shankar released a tribute video titled Sandhya Raga on April 7, featuring performances of his students recorded individually. The BBC also released rare footage to mark his centenary.
An authoritative biography has been published as well coinciding with the anniversary, titled Indian Sun: The Life and Music of Ravi Shankar, by Oliver Craske. It charts his collaborations with and influences on musicians as varied as Yehudi Menuhin, Philip Glass, Zubin Mehta, Robby Krieger, and John Coltrane.
Pandit Ravi Shankar is widely regarded as a pioneer in putting Indian music on the global map. I was fortunate to hear Ravi Shankar and his daughter Anoushka Shankar together perform in Bengaluru during his last tour of India in 2012 (see my earlier write-up for World Music Central here).
“Ravi Shankar was India’s greatest musical ambassador and a true cultural icon,” according to Robert Santelli, Founding Executive Director of the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, which hosted an earlier exhibition on Ravi Shankar in 2015.
Until the post-lockdown scenario stabilises and public confidence to visit large indoor venues increases, IME will continue to celebrate #CultureInQuarantine through online engagement for its exhibitions and musical programming.
Author: Madanmohan Rao
Madanmohan Rao is an author and media consultant from Bangalore, and global correspondent for world music and jazz for World Music Central and Jazzuality. He has written over 15 books on media, management and culture, and is research director for YourStory Media. Madan was formerly World Music Editor at Rave magazine and RJ at WorldSpace, and can be followed on Twitter at @MadanRao.