Anyone who’s seen anything of my social media lately will be aware of The Rose and the Bulbul by Kamal Kaan. Here’s the trailer for the London leg of the tour, recently released.
Did you see all the contributions to the story? Indian classical dance forms (that’s the wonderful kathak dancer Manuela Benini at the beginning). Contemporary dance. Theatre (obviously). Gorgeous gardens (I now only want to perform music whilst having herb-garden smells wafted towards me as my skirts brush the plants). And a lot of music. Fans of contemporary Pakistani folk and Sufi music might spot Arieb Azhar. The background music you can hear is my violin, of course. I’m playing a ‘water dance’ based on a fragment of a musical memory transformed. It helps to create a Mughal garden space, so that the Bulbul can share his heritage and the devotional practices he knows.
This piece as a whole has probably been one of my most stretching projects. I’m covering an extraordinary range of musical ground. I get to feature my duo with Arieb, accompanying his inspiring songs. I improvise on the ground bass Romanesca; teaching it to my colleagues, and hearing them jam vocally on it, has been a satisfying experience for this early-music nerd. I show how the same ground-bass can support sorrowful laments and songs of heartbreak as well as fast dances in 3/4. I’ve also worked with composer and singer Jataneel Banerjee, playing fragments back to him as he perfects them in real-time in a fascinating process, and together setting contemporary-dance compositions in contemporary Western-classical style. Everything, though, however set, has to be memorised. It’s as though all my musical selves are coming together, which is appropriate to the message of this piece.