Songs of the earth

A still from the episode that displays indigenous seed varieties

It was in January this year, at the Seed Festival in Kannur, Kerala, that percussionist Sumana Chandrashekar first heard a Malayalam poem as part of an audio installation. It stayed with her and returned during the lockdown; the words, the rhythm making more sense. Among the very few female percussionists in the country and fewer ghatam players, Chandrashekar has always wanted to use her practice for the purpose of healing and social change.

It led her to create Whispering seeds (translated from Vithukal Manthrikkunu in Malayalam by MP Pratheesh), a single podcast episode where the poem is recited in Malayalam followed by an English translation, and layered with music from her handpan. The visuals are from the Seed Festival, a gathering of agricultural and arts activists, where Chandrashekar was invited to perform. "The lockdown has been spiritually transformative for me. It's made me question, like a lot of others, how much I care about the earth and what really is essential," says Chandrashekar, who is full of new ideas.

Sumana with a handpan

"It was an impulsive expression at first. But after releasing the episode I've got a lot of encouragement. I want to work towards bringing poetry and music together in the following episodes. It could be around a single theme and feature poems in many languages. I also want to aim for better production quality and voice, but that will require access to a studio," she says. Besides poetry in different languages, Chandrashekar has also been collecting lockdown poetry that often gets posted as snippets on Facebook. "It's an interesting documentation of the times we are living in," she says, hoping to render them as listening experiences.

From her first episode, she received comments that the piece had a healing quality and a meditative tone. She has also been excited about listening experiences, and feels it is the right time to create some. "The world suddenly went quiet and made us realise how fine our listening sensibilities are without the daily din," she says.

Log on to Sumana Chandrashekar on YouTube

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