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Colors of Indian Music, Roohaniyat presents Navrang
May 20, 2023 @ 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
$25
Colors of Indian Music
Roohaniyat presents Navrang, a diverse vocal and instrumental performance of Indian music.
Presented as part of the WW Gives Back fundraising project to benefit West Windsor Arts.
Join us for a special reception with the artists at 5:00 p.m. before the show featuring light snacks, tea, and soft drinks.
The accomplished performers of Roohaniyat, a music and culture center, includes child prodigies such as Ishanbi and Rishabh as well as seasoned performers like Irfan Ali and Aratrika, who have won Indian national level music competitions. During this concert, they will present a small bouquet from the valley of flowers that is the music of India. It will be a well-curated and colorful bouquet of Hindustani, Carnatic, Folk, Quawaali and Sufi styles and render it in various languages like Hindi, Tamil, Bengali and Punjabi, accompanied by traditional Indian music instruments like tabla and harmonium. Navrang is a Hindi word that means colorful and beautiful.
You might have heard that Indian music is so diverse that there are special songs just for wedding ceremonies. That is not true. Indian music is in fact so diverse that there are special songs for different moments of the wedding process – there are specific songs for Mehndi (henna tattoo) ceremony, specific songs for Haldi (turmeric) ceremony of wedding, special songs to welcome the wedding party (baarat swagat), there are special songs to welcome the groom, special songs played during the exchange of vows (Phere) and yet more special songs for bidding farewell to the bride (vidaai songs). And as if all this diversity was not enough, Indian weddings also have an exclusive sangeet (singing) ceremony and there are special songs for this singing ceremony as well!
In a nation of more than a billion people, with several thousands of years of history, multiple dozens of languages, and several hundreds of dialects, the astonishing fact is not just how diverse the music is but that none of this music is ever written down in notes form!! There are no music sheets, there are no composers of classical Indian ragaas like their Beethoven and Mozart counterparts in western classical music. Even though there is special music for every festival, distinct music for every season, even different music for different time of the day, music for every stage of human life including songs to celebrate birth and songs to grieve death. Even with all this diversity and nuance, none of it is written down in notes form, it is all remembered, internalized, passed on from teacher to student by singing and is improvised at every recital, including impromptu improvisations right during the stage performance. Dozens of genres go extinct, and many more dozens of genres are born with every generation of performers.
Colors of Indian Music, Roohaniyat presents Navrang singers include:
Irfan Ali
Chaitra Arni
Aratrika
Chinmayi
Apoorva
Pradeep
Ram
Kaushik
Taruna
Venkat
Arjun
Ishaanbi
Rishabh
Sponsored by
WW Gives Back
100% of proceeds will support West Windsor Arts
