Indian Summer Festival lures world-class talent
This has been a tough year for Sirish Rao, cofounder and artistic director of the Indian Summer Festival in Vancouver. He planned his “festival for the curious mind” in the midst of a pandemic while experiencing the shock and grief of losing people he loves in India to COVID-19.
Despite these obstacles, Rao has still managed to program 10 imaginative COVID-safe digital events for 2021, including two with in-person components, over an entire month, from June 17 to July 17. “This year’s theme is ‘shapeshifting’,” Rao told the Straight by phone. “It’s something that we’ve all had to do in the last year.”
Among the shapeshifters in this year’s lineup is sitar player and composer Anoushka Shankar. According to Rao, the seven-time Grammy Award nominee will not only perform music from her home on June 19 but will also share stories from her life. And what a life it’s been.
She’s the daughter of Indian sitar master Ravi Shankar, who was a friend of the Beatles, and assisted him on an album produced by George Harrison. Then Shankar went on in adulthood to enjoy spectacular success as a solo classical Indian musician, touring the world. Along the way, Shankar has lived on three continents and made music with her half-sister, Norah Jones, as well as with Sting, Lenny Kravitz, Herbie Hancock, and many others.
Shankar performed her first public concert, at her father’s 75th birthday celebration in New Delhi, with tabla superstar and composer Zakir Hussain, who is scheduled to perform at a June 26 Indian Summer event. It also features his longtime friends, legendary Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart and bansuri master Rakesh Chaurasia.
The June 26 show will open with an interview with Hussain, who performed on albums by Harrison, Van Morrison, and Earth Wind & Fire. In addition, Hussain starred in the Merchant Ivory film Heat and Dust and his tabla could be heard in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.
Now entering its 11th year, the Indian Summer Festival has blossomed magnificently since it was launched in 2011 with Rao sharing an SFU Woodward’s stage with Bollywood film star Tabu and author Yann Martel. They were at the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts to discuss an upcoming film, Life of Pi, which was based on Martel’s bestselling book about an Indian boy who survives a disaster at sea with wild animals.
Two years later, with Tabu playing the survivor’s mother, Life of Pi won seven Oscars, including best picture and best achievement in directing for Ang Lee.
As fondly as Rao recalls that event, he feels that some of Indian Summer’s greatest contributions have come from being a catalyst for unexpected things to occur in Vancouver.
“Festivals can act as beacons or like fireworks or moments of possibilities,” Rao told the Georgia Straight by phone. “I think we’ve been that.”
To cite one example, Rao mentioned the time that Rajasthan Josh, an energetic collection of Manganiyar musicians, performed years ago at Indian Summer at SFU Woodward’s. “There was so much electricity in the air because people hadn’t heard this sound before,” he said.
Afterward, they headed off to an afterparty at the East Is East restaurant, where owner Mustafa Reza invited them on-stage. “Suddenly Mayor Gregor Robertson was up there. And then Grimes was there and, you know, a whole bunch of people,” Rao recalled with a laugh. “The second concert broke out. We kind of knew something was happening.”
Rao pointed out that a performance by Rajasthan Josh musicians at another Indian Summer event was the spark for Vancouverbased DJ-producer-poet Ruby Singh’s Sufi hip-hop Jhalaak project. That led Singh on a musical odyssey to India culminating in a nine-song package featuring Chugge Khan, who formed Rajasthan Josh in 2009, along with rap interpretations of Sufi music.
A documentary about Jhalaak, which was made with assistance from composer and DJ Adham Shaikh, will premiere at Indian Summer on July 8. At this event, Singh will join local musician Khari Wendell McClelland and the Inuit throat-singing duo PIQSIQ in conversation.
Rao is also proud of how Indian Summer has nourished and provoked diaspora communities. He readily acknowledged that South Asia “is a very, very complex beast, and even within that, there are complex identities”. And that offers bountiful opportunities to present fresh literary voices, such as authors Kamila Shamsie and Mohsin Hamid, who will appear at this year’s festival on June 24 in conversation with Rao. The festival will also present two-time Dora Award wining playwright Anosh Irani’s new work, Transcendence, featuring Lois Anderson, Munish Sharma, and Laara Sadiq. In addition, the Naadaleela Ensemble and Mohamed Assani & Friends will close the festival with a digital performance from the Orpheum Theatre.
“I think that what we’ve been able to do is find a place that holds complexity but also is very welcoming,” Rao said.
Indian Summer Festival runs from June 17 to July 17.