Indian musicians visit Memorial

Forty-three Indian musicians in glowing cubes are set to enchant Memorial Hall tonight as a part of Carolina Performing Arts’ season.

“The Manganiyar Seduction,” a show created by the Indian director Roysten Abel, blends the mystery of Indian classical music with the seductive image of Amsterdam’s red-light district.

Having had mesmerized audiences from Vienna to Malaysia, this will be the first performance in Chapel Hill, a stop right after a two-day performance in the White Light Festival of New York’s Lincoln Center.

“This is just one of those pieces that everyone who’s seen it thinks that it’s fun, theatrical and dazzling,” said Joe Florence, CPA’s marketing director. “The New York Times reviewer said that he had to try his best not to get up and dance — when The New York Times says that you know that it’s going to be fun.”

The musicians will each be playing or singing in individual cubes stacked on top of each other. Throughout the show, the cubes will light up, eventually getting to a point where all 36 cubes are lit, creating a phenomenal sensation of sound, color and light.

“Overall in our season, we want to present art experiences,” Florence said. “Sometimes it’s through accessible performances, sometimes niche performances and sometimes there are these ones right in the middle, where you trust us that we’re going to give you a great experience even though you’ve never heard of it — this is one of those.”

Marnie Karmelita, CPA’s director of programming, attended the group’s performance in Australia. She invited the group here to provide the Chapel Hill audience with a different musical experience.

“I thought it was an incredible performance. They’re really astounding, and it’s just an amazing insight into some of the sacred music of their culture,” she said. “It’s important for us to hear the best from others around the world in Chapel Hill.”

Abel encountered these Manganiyar traditional musicians in a Delhi slum when he was looking for folk musicians. The Manganiyars are a nomadic tribe from northwest India who have been entertaining kings for generations with their mystical songs. Two of them followed Abel and serenaded him from dawn to dusk, seducing him with music. Drawing from this transformative experience, Abel made this musical piece.

“This piece is interestingly done. It’s almost like they’re putting pixels together and making one picture out of it. Sometimes pixels form three dimensions, so they are also changing and showing different pictures,” said Afroz Taj, an Asian studies professor. “All these different pictures are being presented in one canvas so that’s unity, that’s peace — that’s how I’m taking it.”

Taj, a fellow of CPA’s Curatorial Fellowship, will introduce the group and plan the question and answer session for this performance.

Taj said he believes that the objective of their performance is to promote peace and unity in diversity, which he thinks is important in as diverse a country as India. The Manganiyars themselves draw from two religions and inhabit the border of India and Pakistan, so the message of peace and harmony is vital.

“In this performance they are not seeing each other — they are in their compartments, in their own worlds,” he said. “They are complete by themselves, but they will be more complete if they combine with other worlds and together they make a huge picture.”

arts@dailytarheel.com