A Multi-Media Program Celebrating the Arts and Culture of East Indians of the Diaspora in Guyana, Trinidad, Suriname and the U.S.
Monday, April 17 to Friday, June 30, 2000
Indo-Caribbean Heritage is a series of fortnightly Tuesday family programs from April to June 2000 highlighting the history, arts, and customs of Indo-Caribbean (East Indian) communities in the New York metropolitan and Tri-state area. The multi-media program presents exhibitions of photographs, artifacts and traditional health and nutrition practices, music and dance recitals, lectures and slide shows, video documentaries, poetry in performance, visual art design and decoration, and ceremonial and processional drum music.
Presented in collaboration with
THE RAJKUMARI CULTURAL CENTER
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EXHIBITIONS
On Exhibit Monday, April 10 to Friday, June 30, 2000
Opening Reception
Place: Gallery, Caribbean Cultural Center
Date: Tuesday, April 18, 2000
Time: 6:30 to 8:30 P.M.
Fragments of Memory: The Making of Indo-Caribbean Heritage
Karna Singh, a fifth generation East Indian born in Guyana, traces the odyssey of his elders from India to the Caribbean region and their intimate connection with the origin of several unique Indo-Caribbean traditions during the 20th century. The elaborate narrative collage, specially designed by Singh for this program, uses rare photographic, written and oral sources that include The Jung Bahadur Singh Collection of forty-eight black-and-white originals donated by the presenter to the National Trust of Guyana in 1976. It is Singh’s view that both his personal and communal heritage are a dynamic ‘making’ that blends memory, creativity, and life.
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Wise Earth Ayurveda: Sadhana of Food, Breath & Sound
In collaboration with the Wise Earth School of Ayurveda and the Mother Om Mission
Wise Earth Ayurveda is a unique thought and practice founded by the distinguished Guyanese Vedic monk, teacher and author, Brahmacharini Maya Tiwari, and based on ancient Vedic knowledge. The conceptual design and arrangement of the exhibit is guided by traditional spiritual, botanical, and nutritional systems taught to Caribbean disciples of Bri. Maya Tiwari. According to Bri. Maya
Wise Earth Ayurveda Sadhana is one of the most significant tools for self-healing. This practice of sadhana consists of wholesome activities of food, breath and sound. Just as we cannot separate body, mind and spirit, neither can we separate food, breath and sound from each other. Integrally connected, they provide a path of practice that brings us in harmony with the universal rhythms and helps us to cultivate abundant health.
Ayurveda is an ancient holistic system of healing which springs from the visions of Vedic rishis. The greatest physicians, physicists, and theologians of all times, the rishis, saw the universe’s spiritual anatomy and demonstrated how its principles are deeply rooted in nature’s intelligence and therefore in the integration of body, mind and spirit.
Tan Sangeet and Nautch of Trinidad: Indo-Caribbean Music and Dance
Tuesday, April 25, 2000
7:00 to 8:30 P.M.
Sampat Dino Boodram, famous singer and musician, performs the unique Indo-Caribbean musical genre, called Tan Sangeet in Guyana and Trinidad and Baithak Gana in Suriname. He accompanies himself on the harmonium with Errol Balkissoon and Raymond Seetal Sampat playing dholak (drum) and dhantal (a metal rod). Like the vocal and instrumental music, the dances, known as Nautch and performed by ‘Nautch Queen’ Denyse Baboolal, also derive from fragmentary forms of North Indian semi-classical, folk and devotional traditions. These highly soloistic and dynamic art expressions acquired a unique Caribbean flavor in the diasporic culture.
Traditional Music and Dance of the Madrasi People of Guyana
In collaboration with the New York-New Jersey Madrasi Society
Tuesday, June 6, 2000
7:00 to 8:30 P.M.
Chinappa Virasawmi, singer and custodian, leads the musical group of the New York- New Jersey Madrasi Society and Indo-Caribbean choreographers and dancers, Pritha Singh, Teshrie and Ramona Kalicharan, in traditional presentations of sacred invocation and thanksgiving and stories from the Indian epic, Mahabharadam. The art forms are expressions of the dynamic spiritual and cultural heritage of the small Madrasi community in Guyana, whose ancestral roots are in the Tamil region of southern India. He is accompanied on the drum by his son, Danny Virasawmi, with Errol and Savitri Virasawmi and Haresh Apanna as supporting singers.
Documentaries: Hail Mother Kali and Tan-Singing of Trinidad and Guyana
Tuesday, May 23, 2000
6:30 to 8:30 P.M.
Hail Mother Kali: A Tribute to the Traditions and Healing Arts Brought to Guyana by Indentured Madrasi Laborers was made in 1998 by Stephanos Stephanides, a Greek Cypriot and linguist. It documents Big Puja, the annual invocation and worship of the Hindu medicine and cure goddess in Guyana. Peter Manuel, American ethnomusicologist, traces the history and aesthetics of East Indian musical culture in Tan-Singing of Trinidad and Guyana: Indo-Caribbean “Local-Classical Music” released in February 2000
Indo-Caribbean Panorama: Lecture and Slide Show
Tuesday, May 2, 2000
6:30 to 8:30 P.M.
Karna Singh introduces the series with Indo-Caribbean Panorama, a lecture and slide show with a special cultural geography of Richmond Hill district in Queens, New York, the largest Indo-Caribbean neighborhood and cultural Mecca in the U.S. Slides are drawn from the works of outstanding contemporary photographers, Kumar Mahabir, Isa Albareda, Stephanos Stephanides, Nala Singham and Veretta Cobler, and of unknown masters from the early 20th century.
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Indo-Caribbean Literature: Polemics and Poetics
Tuesday, May 9, 2000
6:30 to 8:30 P.M.
A galaxy of Caribbean literary and theatrical stars active in New York presents a rich feast of spoken words in performance from prose and poetry by and about Indo-Caribbeans. Claud Leandro, Mahadeo Shivraj, Taij Kumarie Moteelall, Nirmala Singh, and Pritha Singh offer up selections from their own works and those of others, several in Caribbean English Creole vernaculars and New York rap styles. Polemical readings are from Derek Walcott’s The Antilles: Fragments of Epic History and Rajkumari Singh’s I am a Coolie.
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Padma Mandala: Designing and Decorating Ceremony
Design and decoration of lotus sand-painting and ceremonial canopy
Tuesday, June 20, 2000
6:30 to 8:30 P.M.
Karna Singh guides the making of padma mandala, the lotus circle, with colored sand, and its ceremonial canopy. He is assisted by his brother, Shiva Singh, as chanter, Ramnarine Sasenarine as drummer, and other mandala-makers. Color, shape and sound wake the mind to free creative play. The fully unfolded blossom is offered water, flowers, fruit, and incense, then smudged and erased, marking the natural passage of the life cycle. The dissolved mandala is finally immersed in water, its dark creative source. The canopy is made of bamboo with cloth, paper, and mica ornamentation. The ritual space is also decorated with coconut flowers, flags and strings of aromatic leaves. This colorful ceremony offers a rich experience of the diverse natural and elemental forms making up Indo-Caribbean aesthetics and culture.
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