Ethan Chessin

Friday, March 6th 8:30am

The Choral Canon is Changing! Composers like Reena Esmail and Shruthi Rajasekar are writing wonderful music influenced by Hindustani (North Indian) and Carnatic (South Indian) traditions, and their music is increasingly popular with choirs of all ages. Our choir embarked on a year-long exploration of South Asian music through multiple lenses: we learned from choral composers as well as from local culture bearers, and we are eager to share what we learned with the NW-ACDA community while giving suggestions on how to replicate this project or similar ones. This session explores several possible paths into South Asian music: from the choral perspective, and from the Carnatic perspective. In order to understand and appropriately perform either traditional Carnatic music or choral compositions with Carnatic influences, musicians need to have a solid understanding of the foundations of Carnatic music and dance. We will introduce the art of konnakol (vocal percussion), swaras (improvisatory solfege), traditional songs appropriate for beginner musicians of all ages, and Bharatanatyam dance that incorporates all of the above. We will introduce a resource for finding choral music from all over India and South Asia, and look at examples of several pieces that incorporate traditional musical forms into the compositions. At the end of this session, participants will have resources and contacts necessary to plan a similar project, while also understanding a new framework for exploring music of any specific culture in a Western choral setting.