Music Sparks Imagination

Fireflies of night,

Each has a story to tell,

Igniting the minds.

At the Fireflies Festival*, I accompanied a storyteller with my flute. Music along with storytelling is a unique style of presentation and is different from the traditional storytelling style.

Music is impactful - it's healing, haunting, hypnotic, heartwarming. It's a universal language to convey emotions.

And, according to the audience of last night, the pieces I played on my silver flute had tugged on their heartstrings.

Some had goosebumps. Others had tears. Most said they listened in amazement to the tunes and the effect it had on the storyline. A few were speechless.

It was wonderful to receive such emotionally-charged reactions and feedback from the crowd. The flute, the music - it had warmed their hearts and ignited their minds.

Picture Courtesy: Kapil S. Jagtap

* The Fireflies Storytelling Festival was recently hosted by the Storystation, an organization based in Pune, India. The aim of the festival was to gather storytellers from around India with different "telling styles" in different languages - a multi-lingual storytelling experience for mature audiences. It emphasized that storytelling isn't a concept girded to the age bracket of 4-10 - adults can enjoy it as much. The philosophy - each storyteller symbolized a "firefly" who sparked the imagination among the adults in the audience.

Comments

Pattachitra: An Art of India, An Art of Patience

India has an incredibly wide array of art forms and a big pool of talented artisans. North, South, East, or West; they each have an art style unique to the anthropological roots. In the eastern region of India, lies a coastal state of Odisha, formerly called Orissa. Odisha has a vibrant culture, defined by the exquisite temple complexes, intricate woven patterns of Ikkat, and the world famous sand artists. The art form Pattachitra can be seen in the religious centers of Puri, Bhubaneshwar, and Konark. Pattachitra literally translates to cloth (Patta) and picture (Chitra) in Sanskrit. Over the weekend, I attended a workshop at IISER where an artisan from Odisha, whose family specializes in Pattachitra, guided the participants to create their own work of Pattachitra. This art form is simple, yet demands concentration and patience of the artist, due to its detailed illustrations. Here are a few things I learned about the art form, Pattachitra, and how it taught ...

Heave, Sieve, Achieve!

From crisp mornings under the mango grove, to toiling in the afternoon heat, to engaging community meet practices - the past two weeks at DLRC's new sustainable campus have been a refreshing and wholesome experience. When this initiative was brought up, I was apprehensive about how we were to occupy ourselves while learning and helping on the farm. However, as the work progressed at the Farm, I learnt and discovered some things that go beyond the textbook such as values, friendships, and the importance of pure hard work. Our week started with filling and leveling the high school classroom - a big plot allotted for the students to work on. We were told to pack up the area with as many rocks and loose soil that we could dig. Faced with a mammoth task ahead, we students couldn't seem to figure how to finish the task efficiently. Then, a bright idea struck all of us - let's form a chain! Students from middle and high school organized themselves into a line, which stretche...

Q1) What is design?

What does this design depict? 5 Things About Design As an aspiring designer, I have my own outlook as to what design is. Each designer has their own style, their own brand of design work, which is derived from several influences around them. Here are a few of mine .... Design is to see beauty in everything. Every line, curve, shape, and color - design is all around us. Whether it's a picturesque sunset with peachy hues, a fluffy cloud pattern which resembles a dog, the spiral whorls on the bark of a tall oak tree, or the jagged surface of the face of a mountain. If one cannot appreciate the designs in nature, how can they create a piece of their own? Design is to draw inspiration from what's around you. Some of the most abstract thoughts and designs can be influenced by a simple object, person, or elements of nature. Salvador Dalli simply depicted melted clocks - an object we see so frequently and take for granted. Design is to pay atte...

SimplySiya

Search This Blog