MANGAL
In English, the word mangal refers to an assemblage of mangroves, trees that form in a rhizome, making it difficult to tell where one individual tree ends and another begins. In Sanskrit, mangal describes harmonious or sacred timing. Mangal brings this imagery of entanglement and serendipity to envision a collective space of encounter, transformation, and expansion.
Mangal was born as part of my doctoral research at Harvard University, in dialogue with key collaborators who challenged me to consider the exclusionary forces that informed my musical practice and the role of the body as a profound site of memory, connection, and transformative potential beyond inherited boundaries and expectations specific to a genre or medium. The tendency of intellectual and art worlds to fragment into scenes affords some specificity, but it also risks aesthetic, ethical, and political insularity. Mangal was designed as a space for recuperation, unbridled experimentation, and imagination of alternative possibilities.
A series of collaborative sessions I held in summer of 2019 served as an incubator for this project, gathering artists from vastly different backgrounds to create and coexist in a studio space together in Brooklyn, NY. I have explored a similar methodology for performances in Seattle, Portland, and Toronto, working on open format compositions in dialogue with local artists. The latest Mangal residency took place at Seattle's Chapel Performance Space in June 2022, and was generously supported by seed grant funding from the Ocean Memory Project, an interdisciplinary and international network of artists and researchers.
The list of artists who have been a part of Mangal in its various iterations include:
Ganavya Doraiswamy (vocal), Anya Yermakova (movement), Utsav Lal (piano), María Grand (tenor saxophone), Anjna Swaminathan (violin), Zahyr Lauren (visual artist), Aakash Mittal (alto sax), Carlos Snaider (guitar), Ha-Yang Kim (cello), Linda May Han Oh (bass), Imani Uzuri (voice), Joel Ross (vibraphone), Neil Welch (tenor and bass saxophones), Caroline Davis (alto sax), Anne Bourne (cello, voice), Germaine Liu (percussion), Justin Gray (bass, bass veena), Miles Okazaki (guitar), Joshuah Campbell (voice), Jasmine Wilson (vocal), Tatyana Tenenbaum (vocal, movement), Fay Victor (vocal), Kelsey Mines (bass), Samantha Boshnack (trumpet), Max ZT (hammered dulcimer), Janani Balasubramanian (writer, game designer), Joey Chang (piano), Ana Carmela Ramirez (vocal, viola), Ria Modak (classical guitar), Zafer Tawil (oud), Lisa Hoppe (bass), Kavita Shah (vocal), Kwami Coleman (piano, percussion), DJ Rekha (electronics), Pawan Benjamin (tenor sax, bansuri), David Bloom (conductor)
Mangal was born as part of my doctoral research at Harvard University, in dialogue with key collaborators who challenged me to consider the exclusionary forces that informed my musical practice and the role of the body as a profound site of memory, connection, and transformative potential beyond inherited boundaries and expectations specific to a genre or medium. The tendency of intellectual and art worlds to fragment into scenes affords some specificity, but it also risks aesthetic, ethical, and political insularity. Mangal was designed as a space for recuperation, unbridled experimentation, and imagination of alternative possibilities.
A series of collaborative sessions I held in summer of 2019 served as an incubator for this project, gathering artists from vastly different backgrounds to create and coexist in a studio space together in Brooklyn, NY. I have explored a similar methodology for performances in Seattle, Portland, and Toronto, working on open format compositions in dialogue with local artists. The latest Mangal residency took place at Seattle's Chapel Performance Space in June 2022, and was generously supported by seed grant funding from the Ocean Memory Project, an interdisciplinary and international network of artists and researchers.
The list of artists who have been a part of Mangal in its various iterations include:
Ganavya Doraiswamy (vocal), Anya Yermakova (movement), Utsav Lal (piano), María Grand (tenor saxophone), Anjna Swaminathan (violin), Zahyr Lauren (visual artist), Aakash Mittal (alto sax), Carlos Snaider (guitar), Ha-Yang Kim (cello), Linda May Han Oh (bass), Imani Uzuri (voice), Joel Ross (vibraphone), Neil Welch (tenor and bass saxophones), Caroline Davis (alto sax), Anne Bourne (cello, voice), Germaine Liu (percussion), Justin Gray (bass, bass veena), Miles Okazaki (guitar), Joshuah Campbell (voice), Jasmine Wilson (vocal), Tatyana Tenenbaum (vocal, movement), Fay Victor (vocal), Kelsey Mines (bass), Samantha Boshnack (trumpet), Max ZT (hammered dulcimer), Janani Balasubramanian (writer, game designer), Joey Chang (piano), Ana Carmela Ramirez (vocal, viola), Ria Modak (classical guitar), Zafer Tawil (oud), Lisa Hoppe (bass), Kavita Shah (vocal), Kwami Coleman (piano, percussion), DJ Rekha (electronics), Pawan Benjamin (tenor sax, bansuri), David Bloom (conductor)