Music workshop: Breath-Sound- Embodiment-Music, By Vidya Rao (Registration Closed)

This will be a 5 day workshop. I will focus on the creation of musical sound via the journey of breath and vocalisation. The workshop will enable us to understand the movement of breath and sound within the body, and further to the creation of increasingly complex musical sound. I suggest my workshop could be thus

DAY 1
— the trajectory of breath—sound– musical sound—expression(of thoughts/feelings/ideas) and experiencing these in the body;
— sound (just sound, no words) as visualised (a visualising exercise)

DAY 2
— locating sound in the body and outside the body
— using sound to heal the body-mind—our own and that of others

DAY 3
—Learning some mantras —I will choose these (maybe one or two only) and inform you shortly.

DAY 4
—Learning a slightly more musically complex stuti

DAY 5
—Last day for going over what we have learned and feedback.

Limited Seats to 15 participants.

About Teacher:

Vidya Rao is a performer of thumri-dadra and ghazal. For many years the disciple of the legendary singer, the late Vidushi Naina Devi, she continued
her study of this form under the late Vidushi Shanti Hiranand and the late Vidushi Girija Devi. Her initial training in khayal was under the late Prof.
B.N. Datta and thereafter under Pandit Mani Prasad.

She studied Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics and has worked as a Research Associate with the Administrative Staff of India (Hyderabad)
and the Centre for Women’s Development Studies (Delhi). She has been Editor, Social Sciences with Orient Blackswan Publishers (Delhi), where
she now continues to work as an Editorial Consultant.

An award-winning artist, Vidya Rao has performed at national and international forums to appreciative audiences. She has lectured at many
forums and has conducted workshops and lecture demonstrations. She has composed and sung for the theatre, film, and dance, and has also
recorded several CDs.

Her repertoire ranges over thumri-dadra, ghazal, and allied forms, the songs of medieval Sufi and bhakti poets, verses from Hindu and Buddhist texts
and the Islamic forms of naat, soz, nauha etc.

She has also researched and written extensively on music and the performing arts. Her research and writing work has focused on gender and
musical form, and her work has been published in academic journals and as chapters in books. Her book ‘Heart to Heart: Remembering Nainaji’ is
a memoir of life with her guru Naina Devi.

Vidya Rao was the recipient of a Fellowship from the Ford Foundation, and a Senior Fellowship from the Department of Culture, GOI. She has been
Visiting Professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Advanced
The study, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. In 2012-2013, she was a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Nantes, France. In 2014 she was Artist in
Residence at Smith College and the Five Colleges Inc. She has been adviser to the Kabir Project, has recorded a CD for them and also translated the poetry included in the booklets brought out by the project.

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