Ragas in Sound and Movement

Flutist Ravi Kulur and Spilling Ink: Ragas in Sound and Movement

Saturday, July 13, 2019 at 7:30 PM – 9:30 PM National Museum of Asian Art, Meyer Auditorium, Smithsonian Associates, Washington, DC

Dancers Spilling Ink

Musicians Flutist - Ravi Kulur Vocalist - Nandakumar Unnikrishnan Percussionist - Kartik Vydhatri ~

In Ragas in Sound and Movement, textured performance painted embodied ragas across a rich canvas brushed with melody, verse, mood, essence, seasons and romance. Classical Indian flutist Ravi Kulur, who tours regularly with six-time Grammy nominee Anoushka Shankar, combined Indian classical music, dance, and poetry to explore the ragas (melodic modes) represented in four seventeenth-century ragamala paintings of Mughal and Rajput courts on view in the Freer. Joining him were the Bangalore-based vocalist Nandakumar Unnikrishnan and percussionist Kartik Vydhatri (on mridangam), along with dancers Vijay Palaparty and Nalini Prakash from Spilling Ink and poet Satya Palaparty.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Ragamala Paintings

Presented in collaboration with the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian art, made possible, in part, through a grant from the Smithsonian’s Year of Music.