A Musical Manifesto of 2020: A New Declaration of the Independence of the Mind
What is the context?
2019 marked the centenary of an extra-ordinary manifesto, “Declaration of the Independence of the Mind,” written by Romain Rolland post World War I, and signed by some of the luminaries of that time, like Einstein, Tagore, Bertrand Russell and many others, as a response to the demolition of intellectual life and freedom of the mind and the corruption of souls. Drawing upon the relevance of this declaration, which believes in the spirit of art as a force, a ‘form of truth’, one that ‘fortifies our mutual dignity’ and causes ‘constructive chaos’, THE MUSICAL MANIFESTO project re-created a new declaration of the independence of the mind; a six-track, multi-lingual musical manifesto of our times. It was an auditory, participatory experience that acted as a connector, a SUTRA-DHAAR, of some key ideas that form the crux of the work of famous playwright Girish Karnad, interweaving the multiple performance pieces in the Festival of Performances at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology facilitated and designed by Sudebi Thakurata. http://srishti.ac.in/srishtilive2019/a-musical-manifesto/
The idea was to question, trigger and inter-weave different aspects of duality, the paradoxes and juxtapositions of our times; understand our ‘fractured’ selves and celebrate the power of independent minds, drawing upon regional and global music, through the creation of new songs, hand made instruments, using material as a metaphor, creating poetry through spoken words, written and visual forms, tinkering with recording and remixing, creating soundscapes, playing with words, voice, sound, instruments, rhythm — and most importantly, ideas.
Why did we feel driven to continue this?
Come 2020, it feels like the word “freedom” needs to be re-interpreted, with the forced removal or disappearance of most of the so-called “freedom” we all took for granted, in a world which is driven by the fear and the aftermath of the pandemic . For most people our minds seem to be the only free entities, in the web of many prisons that are either created or exposed by Covid-19. When movement is restricted, our minds, despite being trapped in our bodies, are our only escape, when there are so many inescapable closed boundaries and borders.
Some of us felt there has not been a more necessary time to take another good look at our manifesto and the provocations that led to the design of it. It is time for our minds and “the mind of the world,” the internet, to work together. While our bodies and minds form paradoxes of their own, we continue our journey through provocations and new, exciting mediums.
What do we want to do?
Dualities and juxtapositions still remaining at the core, we will toy around with the notions of “Freedom” and the paradoxes of dualities and binaries. Eventually we plan to create a new musical manifesto by the end of this year using multiple media and material, curating the rich lived narratives that would come out of the many provocative and soul-stirring sessions we would facilitate in the next few months.
Through a series of evolving, reflective, critical, dialogic, lyrical and hopefully healing sessions, activities (which might include deep listening, sharing, storytelling, singing, journaling, art-making, photography, cooking, laughing etc.) both online and offline conversations, at a collective and individual level, we would use art as a way to come together as a community, discuss the ever-relevance of the “independence of mind” and remake a “Manifesto of our Times”. Our multi-lingual and multi-modal discussions and explorations will involve people from all over the world through material, medium and metaphors in a safe inclusive space.
What better day to start this 2020 version of the MUSICAL MANIFESTO in collaboration with THE ARCHIVAL CITY, and delve into the rich archives of our minds, but on the 159th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, who interestingly was also one of the signatories of the 1919 manifesto?
THE MUSICAL MANIFESTO 2020 EVENT 1:
MUSICAL POTLUCK
Freedom
by Rabindranath Tagore
Freedom from fear is the freedom
I claim for you my motherland!
Freedom from the burden of the ages, bending your head,
breaking your back, blinding your eyes to the beckoning
call of the future;
Freedom from the shackles of slumber wherewith
you fasten yourself in night’s stillness,
mistrusting the star that speaks of truth’s adventurous paths;
freedom from the anarchy of destiny
whole sails are weakly yielded to the blind uncertain winds,
and the helm to a hand ever rigid and cold as death.
Freedom from the insult of dwelling in a puppet’s world,
where movements are started through brainless wires,
repeated through mindless habits,
where figures wait with patience and obedience for the
master of show,
to be stirred into a mimicry of life.
Join us as we start this individual soul-searching, collective sense-making and hopefully healing lyrical journey, by revisiting Tagore and defining what freedom means to each one of us through music and poetry as the first online musical potluck on the 17th of May. If you want to be part of this virtual event or our future events, please email:
“Event 1” to us at thearchivalcity@gmail.com ,
and we will share the details of the online platform with you closer to date and also help you with bringing any ingredient to bring in some food for our collective souls.
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Core Design and Production Team:
Gayathri Menon
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gayathrigmenon/
Niladri Mukherjee
https://www.linkedin.com/in/niladri-mukherjee-844134166
Design, Concept and Creative Direction:
Sudebi Thakurata
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sudebi/