Women’s Raga Massive

Women’s Raga Massive presents the concert that culminates their annual festival, Out of the Woods, at the Rubin Museum of Art, in a collective expression of local female performers within the Indian classical music world. This year’s iteration of the festival reflects on the subtle and violent, the named and often invisible currents that are at play with the role of gender in music within the South Asian musical world. The narratives are multiple, alternating between ecstatic song and lament. Out of the Woods seeks to create a creative clearing in which these stories can be freely told.

The show begins with an improvised round robin”“style meeting of musical voices and weaves together the multiplicity of their stories and unique creative work. This will be followed by our featured artists who will present a performative introspection on the engendered concerns of their lives as female musicians within a typically patriarchal tradition.

Featured artists:

Roshni Samlal, tabla

Rajna Swaminathan, mrudangam

Roopa Mahadevan, voice

Deepal Sanghvi Chodhari, santoor

The event will feature a visual collaboration with artist Nitin Mukul. Mukul has upcoming projects at the ICA Philadelphia and Middlebury College. His video installations have appeared at Pioneer Works, Lincoln Center, Aicon Gallery, and the India Art Fair.

About Women’s Raga Massive

Women’s Raga Massive (WRM), an offshoot of the Brooklyn Raga Massive, is primarily concerned with exploring and making visible the diverse creative work of female-identified artists in a musical world where those voices are a minority. The music collective identifies with the boldness of the experimental music movement, using the Indian classical music tradition as a framework to improvise and bring in influences from the diverse cultures of Brooklyn.