In Concert: Brooklyn Raga Massive

About the Performance

The initiating night of Brooklyn Raga Massive’s Ragini Festival 2024 launches with an homage to South Asian traditional strings, both fretted and fretless- the sarod and the sitar.

Titled: Jawari: Raga on Sitar and Sarod, this show takes its name from the soundboard of both instruments, its the tone of “overtone-rich buzzing”, born from the precise tension that the Jawari or “saddle which gives life to the sound” produces.

Both emerging from classical traditions of the Maihar gharana and Etawah gharana, our artists will present traditional ‘raga’ performances, marked by melodic improvisation, systemic melodic patterning, percussive virtuosity— culminating in a synesthetic experience of “that which colors the mind.”

Opening Act: Camila Celin - Sarod, Roshni Samlal- Tabla

Featured Act: Seema Gulati- Sitar, Tabla artist- tbd

Seema Gulati is a rising star in the world of sitar. Her sensitive musicality and virtuosic performances have wowed audiences and peers alike. Seema’s performances are built on her ability to communicate her classical artform with a natural empathy and understanding of cross-cultural audiences.

Born in Hamilton, Ontario in the industrial heartland of Canada and of Indian origin, Seema grew up exposed to both adversity and diversity.

Seema turned to Indian Classical Music late compared to her peers, but fueled by her steely determination, she convinced the world-renowned sitar maestro, Ustad Shahid Parvez Khan, to take her under his wings. Under his guidance and with rigorous training for the past 15+ years, Seema has developed into a world-class musician.

Now based out of Phoenix, Arizona, Seema performs regularly and is the lead instructor and director at the Shahid Parvez Khan Academy of Music.

Camila Celin began playing guitar at age nine. For several years, she has been doing intensive studies in the Indian sarod, in Kolkata with sarod player Sougata Roy Choudhury and in New York with sitar maestro Pandit Krishna Bhatt. In 2009 she was nominated for a Grammy for best world music album in collaboration with slide guitar maestro Debashish Bhattacharya.

Roshni Samlal is a New York-based Trinidadian tabla player who has studied within the Farrukhabad, Benares and Punjab gharanas or schools of Indian classical percussion. She is a prolific local teacher and performer, both in traditional tabla solo and classical accompanist contexts as well as a variety of jazz and chamber ensembles.

About Ragini Festival

This year’s festival, titled Acoustic Fulcrums finds its axis at the center of two worlds, yet many lineages, featuring both the linear legacies of South Asian classical music and the denser rhizomes of culture that emanated with indentured migration to the Caribbean and South America to form its own hybrid biomes of classical and folk arts. Ragini Festival navigates the intertangled worlds between island, ocean and continent to attune to these forked paths. This diasporic curatorial project is a collaboration between lead curator/producer/tabla player/DJ Roshni Samlal and the Brooklyn Raga Massive collective.