Traditions: Ohio Heritage Fellows; 202; Kanniks Kannikeswaran interview, part 4 of 7

Q: How does music get out of your head and out into the world?

KANNIKS: Most of the time, there’s a tune or a soundscape that is stuck in my head, uh, it’s and how do I get it out? Umm, it varies from occasion to occasion. Some times I don’t even get it out and many ideas just go away. Umm, most of the times when I want to get it out I write it on a sheet of paper, on a sheet of loose paper, it could be when I’m sitting on a bus or something like that. Umm, I just write it down using the Indian Solfegio (SP?), the Indian notation, umm, and then, when I visual the parts I write them down the same way. Umm, or I just pick up and MP3 recorder and just sing out the tune and record it or just sing it out and have my daughter sing along with it and then record it, or sit in front of the piano, play some accompaniment, sing and then record at the same time. It’s only when I get really ready to record it formally that I go to my studio and use the recording software for recording it.

Q: Can you talk a little bit about teaching her music and how you’ve taught her to appreciate music?

KANNIKS: Yes, uh, my daughter, umm, has been part of the music... all the musical works that I have done and, uh, whether she participated in it or whether she participated in it or whether she was just looking at it, she’s gotten quite a lot out of everything that we’ve done. I’m realizing that the same thing is happening with our younger daughter also. Umm, but the older one, she used to, uh, I used to teach her how to identify various Raga’s when she was 4 years old. At the age of 4 she could identify as many as 48 different Raga’s. And, I started teaching her how to sing at the age of 5 and then, uh, one thing let to another and, uh, she started learning formally for me and she has quite a repertoire of compositions now. And, uh, she also records demo tracks for me and so that itself is a powerful learning experience.

Q: Do you work together?

KANNIKS: We work together in many different contexts. She’s done a lot of my recordings, uh, she’s learnt a number of traditional compositions written by the, uh, 18th, 19th Century composer with the ______ from me in a traditional manner and she was also part of a huge recording project called Vis Mi Ar (SP?) where I archived the Indo-Celtic music or the Ind-Colonial music of the 1800’s.

Q: What is her role in the choir?

KANNIKS: Her role in the choir... Vidita’s role in the choir is very significant; it’s both in the background as well as in the foreground. She records all the rehearsal tracks, so she records the different harmony parts for the female parts, especially when you’re using many different sections, soprano 1, 2 alto 1 and 2, she records all the parts of _____, so that she’s the first one to get familiar with the music. And, then she’s accompanied the choir on the piano or on the keyboards and she’s also sung some lead vocal, vocals... she sung some lead vocals or what we call Allup which is kind of an improvised rendition on top of the arrangements.

Q: Tell me what is the name of the choir and what is Shanti referred to?

KANNIKS: Yes, it is a great... the choir that I work with here in Cincinnati is called, The Greater Cincinnati Indian Community Choir. The musical production that I wrote in 2004 is Shanti A Journey of Peace. Umm, it is an auditoria which conveys the message of universal peace using ancient Indian texts in Sanskrit set to many different Raga’s from all over India with the choral, uh, polyphony and orchestral accompaniment. And, the whole thing is accompanied by dancers from many different parts of India as well as with powerful multimedia visuals. Umm, we performed Shanti for the first time in 2004 in Cincinnati, umm, to an audience of, to a packed audience and 3 different shows of more than what 1,700. Then we performed it again in 2006 at the Aeronaut Center to an audience of more than... about 2,600. That was a very powerful experience and then I was invited by my friends to create the Shanti experience in Allentown, Pennsylvania, actually Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, so we performed Shanti with a local choir that we built from scratch in the Pennsylvania area. Then I was invited by friends to do the same process in Houston, so we built a community choir... Indian community choir of about 90 singers and collaborated with the United Nations international singers. Umm, that’s a choir in Houston with a total of 180 singers, umm, umm, performed Shanti in Houston in 2010. So, so far we’ve performed Shanti in 3 different cities and a few different shows and more than 900 people have participated in it. This includes both people of Indian origin as well as people not of Indian origin and more than 9,000 people have seen it. It’s more, it’s more than just a production, it’s a musical experience and it’s, uh, it’s a powerful, umm, experience where you learn the music and you experience the, the idea of, uh, what is being expressed in the compositions and, uh,...

Q: Talk about yourself as a music scholar and then expand on the indo-Celtic.

KANNIKS: Well, a lot of my work involves research on, uh; music of different cultures and how they relate to each other and even my work tends to explore commonalities across cultures. Umm, so in general humanity is huge and, uh, only the differences are obvious but the similarities are not obvious but when you start interacting with people you realize that there is so much more in common between us and somebody else whom we may perceive as the other. The same is true of many different musical traditions also, umm, so part of my research, umm, is centered around the music of this Indian composer Multisami _____ whom I regard as a visionary, literally a see-er. Umm, and there’s something that he did. He was rooted in the Indian orthodox Indian Raga tradition but there’s something that he did that is totally different from the orthodox Indian Raga tradition. This many lived in the between 1775 and 1835 and, uh, that was the time when India was being colonized by the British East India Company and he was exposed to the music played by the bands of the East India Company and, uh, he negotiated with these tunes but he did not shun them, this was not in his domain at all, uh, this music was totally different and some of these were tunes played in taverns or played for the bands to march to and all that but he listened to those tunes and he wrote lyrics in Sanskrit in the Indian classical idiom, the lyrics are in the classic idiom. But, he fitted those lyrics to, umm, these literally alien tunes that had landed on the India soil by the... that were brought in by colonizers. There result is a sparkling genre of music that is neither Indian nor western and it is both at the same time. This is what I refer to as, uh, the indo-colonial music of the 1800’s. There’s a total of 39 compositions. And, I started teaching these compositions to my daughter because these are great teaching tool and I started doing this back in 2000. I mean, about 5 or 6 of these were familiar to me even as a child and I had heard a number of these played by my grandmother and my great-grandfather. And, if I go through some of my grandmothers manuscripts, I see these... some of these tunes notated, although my grandmother or even my great-grandfather didn’t have an idea where they came from. All they knew was that these were western tunes that they could play on Indian instruments. Umm, now after I taught these to my daughter, I realized that these are a great teaching tool, so I wanted to record them in my daughter’s voice and I wanted to use the kind of accompaniment that the ____ might have listened to in the 1800’s. So I invited some of the Celtic musicians that I knew here in Cincinnati to collaborate and we started this recording project and in the process we started discovering the source of many of these tunes. It is so... it is mind blowing to see some of these people, uh, who had not heard these Indian compositions before, saying, hey, I know this too. Uh, this is what it is. Some of them are real, some of them were jigs and some of them were, umm, country dances and so on. Umm, so the recording experience was something in itself, then I presented a research paper on this topic in 2007 at the Music Academy in Madres _____ and I got an award for the best paper. Then, I was invited by the Music Academy to publish this paper in 2008.

Q: Give me an example.

KANNIKS: Yes, one of the, umm, examples... one of the compositions that stands out in these 39 is, uh, what’s called a gallopade. This is a dance tune that originated in the continental Europe and migrated to England. And, from England it migrated to India and from England it also migrated to the United States and became a part of the Appalachian repertoire. When it reached India, the gallopade transformed into a prayer in place of, uh, the divine, umm, evoked in the form of Kamalama (SP?) or the mother goddess. And, this is a composition that is not popularly sung at all and I presented this at a music academy in 2007 and released a recording in 2008. Now we hear many more people singing it, so it feels very gratifying that we brought something out to light into 2008 but what strikes me more is the fact, umm, that a single tune, umm, got a new lease of life in two different places. This is what I call a tale of... a musical tale of 3 continents. So, here’s a tune that came from England to the United States and it’s still played as part of the Appalachian repertoire. In fact, when I went to Philadelphia back in 2008, I saw... to the Freedom Mall, I saw a person sitting with a Hammer Dulcimer (SP?) playing, umm, tunes on the Hammer Dulcimer. He was in colonial attire, so I just went to him and asked him if he knew this tune and I was not very surprised when he said, yes. And, he started playing the tune and my family was just dumbfounded. So, this is a tune that my family had learned from me as an Indian composition and they see this total stranger in colonial attire playing this tune. Umm, then, umm, yeah, went to India ______ who was... who heard this tune wrote, umm, lyrics with alliteration, uh, true to the Sanskrit, uh, uh, tradition, none of the rules are violated at all but the tune is that of gallopade. So, here’s a tune that transformed in a totally different way in India and now it’s coming back to life. Umm, and that’s a tune that’s been part of the Appalachian repertoire all along and you still hear... you still hear country dances performed in England to this tune.