Music Workshop Led by Vidya Rao

A single workshop. This will run from 9 am to 12 noon with a break for tea

Understanding the music of the mystics
The act of listening deeply is as important, perhaps even more important, than the act of physically singing a song.
When we speak of the music of the mystics what we generally think of is the words of the poetry and the philosophical meanings of the poetry.
Meaning however is also created through musical genre, context (of performance) and by the performing body.
This workshop will examine how musical genre, embodied presence(s) and performing contexts can change/reframe/make deeply complex in unimaginable ways, the essential meaning of a given ‘song’.

About Vidya Rao
Vidya Rao is a singer and a writer. Her writing work is mainly on music and the performing arts.

She brings her experience and her long years of work as a researcher, writer, and also, importantly, as a book editor to this Manuscript Intensive workshop.

She has worked for nearly 40 years as an editor—dealing with text editing, commissioning, and book development—with Orient Blackswan (previously Orient Longman), creating a significant list in the social sciences, culture studies, and women’s studies.

She has written and published extensively—a memoir of life with her guru Vidushi Naina Devi (Harper Collins, 2011); several essays that have been published in academic journals and as chapters in the book, and is currently working on a new book on a relatively less-known form of women’s music. Her work is included in reading lists in several university departments, internationally, of music, culture, and women’s studies.

Apart from her work as an editor/publisher, she has worked in research institutes (the Administrative Staff College of India, and the Centre for Women’s Development Studies), and has conducted independent research with grants from the Ford Foundation, the Department of Culture (GOI), Institute d’etudes avancees, France, and the Sangam House-ISRO Residency.

She has been, among other things, a Visiting Professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics (JNU), a Visiting Fellow at the School of Cultural Texts and Resources, (Jadavpur University), a Fellow (Artist-Scholar) at the Institute d’etudes avancees, (Nantes, France), Artist in Residence at the Smith College and the Five Colleges Inc., etc. She has guided several M Phil and PhD students in India and outside India and has also served as an external examiner for their M Phil and PhD dissertations.

Please note- “attendance in all sessions is mandatory.”
For queries, registration & accommodation, please email: info@deerpark.in

Date

May 30 2025 - Jun 01 2025

Time

9:00 am - 12:00 pm

Location

Deer Park Institute, Bir
Deer Park Institute