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Journeys with Kabir
Concert and Film series celebrating the life and works of the poet Kabir
presented by South Asian Studies and the York Centre for Asian Research at York University
Monday and Tuesday, 16-17 March 2009 | Toronto
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Prahlad S. Tipanya
Kabir (1398-1448?) ranks among the world's greatest poets. In India, he is one of the most quoted authors and had an enormous influence on Indian philosophy and on Hindi poetry. He is spiritually significant to Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims alike.
Generous support provided by Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, Scotiabank, Office of the Vice-President Academic and Provost (York University), Faculty of Fine Arts (York University), Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics (York University) and Indian Council for Cultural Relations. Special Thanks to the Noor Centre.
Concert
Monday, 16 March 2008 at 7:30pm
Tribute Communities Recital Hall, Accolade East Building, York University (Note: new location)
In this unique concert event, award-winning Indian vocalist, Prahlad Singh Tipanya and party, from a village in Ujjain district, Madhya Pradesh, will perform traditional bhajans (devotional songs sung in the folk register) in honor of the poet-saint Kabir. Also known as nirgun poetry, Kabir songs are meant to evoke a deep level of experience by cutting off normal ways of thinking and by pushing the listener to a place consciousness that suspends with analytical categories. In the concert, Prahlad Singh Tipaniya, who is the lead singer, will play the tambour and khartal. Other members in the group play the harmonium, dholak, manjira and occasionally a violin. They include Ajay Tipanya, Devnarayan Sarolia, Ambaram Tipanya and Vijay Tipanya.
The concert will be introduced by Dr. Linda Hess, the tour organizer and filmmaker Shabnam Virmani.
These three documentary films journey through contemporary spaces touched by the music and poetry of the 15th century mystic weaver-poet of north India, Kabir. We meet a diverse array of people – an urban folklorist, a street fruit seller, a social activist, a Dalit folk singer, an American scholar, a neo-fascist cleric of a Kabir sect, Muslim singers from India and Pakistan– each encounter offering a moment of insight into the poetry and its contemporary meanings. We glimpse not one but many Kabirs. Sometimes he beckons, sometimes he baffles, but always he pushes us to self-interrogate, to question the boundaries of our identity, nation, ideology, caste and religion, making these journeys unrelentingly inward even as they venture outward.
Had-Anhad (Bounded-Boundless)
Journeys with Ram and Kabir
Screening: Monday, 16 March at 9:30am in Nat Taylor Cinema, York University (with short introductory lecture by filmmaker Shabnam Virmani)
Kabir was a 15th century north Indian mystic poet who consistently defied the boundaries between Hindu and Muslim, both in his own life and through his poems. His name and upbringing were Muslim but his poetry repeatedly invokes the widely revered Hindu name for God – Ram. Who is Kabir’s Ram? This film journeys through song and poem into the politics of religion, and finds a myriad answers on both sides of the border between India and Pakistan (106 minutes).
1st Prize (shared), One Billion Eyes Documentary Film Festival, 2008 (Chennai, India)
Screened at the Mahindra Indo-American Arts Council Film Festival, 2008 (New York, USA) and the World Performing Arts Festival, 2008 ( Lahore, Pakistan).
Kabira Khada Bazar Mein (In the Market Stands Kabir)
Journeys with Sacred & Secular Kabir
Screening: Tuesday, 17 March 17 at 10:30am in Nat Taylor Cinema, York University
Kabir sang his poems in the market place, his spirituality firmly grounded in the public square. 600 years after his time, this 15th century Indian mystic poet’s legacy can be found in both spaces – sacred and secular. This film interweaves the deification of Kabir by a religious sect with his secular appropriation by a social activist group. The story unfolds through the life of Prahlad Tipanya, a “low caste” singer whose participation in both domains, begins to raise difficult questions for him about ritual and organized religion (94 minutes).
Screened at the One Billion Eyes Documentary Film Festival, August 2008 (Chennai, India)
Koi Sunta Hai (Someone is Listening)
Journeys with Kumar and Kabir
Screening: Tuesday, 17 March 17 at 6:30pm in Nat Taylor Cinema, York University
This film interweaves the oral folk traditions of Kabir in central India with the intensely personal narrative of the late classical singer Pt. Kumar Gandharva, keeping the spiritual ideas of Kabir as the central binding thread. Journeying between folk and classical, between rural and urban expressions of Kabir, the film finds moments of both continuity and rupture between these disparate worlds (96 minutes).
Screened at the One Billion Eyes Documentary Film Festival, August 2008 (Chennai, India) and the World Performing Arts Festival, Nov 13-23, 2008 ( Lahore, Pakistan).
About the Filmmaker | SHABNAM VIRMANI
Shabnam Virmani is the Artist-in-Residence at Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore, India. The five-year Kabir project has seen the creation of four documentary films, which will be screened as part of the film series, two folk music life performance ideas as well as audio CDs of artists singing Kabir with accompanying books of poetry in translation and a graphic novel.
She has a Masters of Professional Studies (MPS) degree in Development Communication from Cornell University. She is co-founder of the Drishti Media Collective (1993), a non-profit group of media professionals working with video, theatre, audio, radio, television and other media to support, document and strengthen grassroots struggles for gender justice, human rights and development). Virmani has worked as journalist with The Times of India, Jaipur edition and has served as a visiting faculty and speaker in India.
Her other films include: BOL (Speak!) (2001), a series of eight short films on domestic violence; When Women Unite: The Story of an Uprising (1996), which investigates a rural women's uprising against state supply of liquor in Andhra Pradesh that sustained for three long years, eventually forcing the government to declare Prohibition; Tu Zinda Hai! (To Be Alive!) (1995), which profiles the women activists of Ekta Parishad, a mass-based organization working in the villages of Madhya Pradesh; Umati Umang ni Damri (Hopes Soaring High) (1994), which chronicles the story of women of two villages in Gujarat who came together to form a savings group; Ek Potlun Beek Nu (A Bundleful of Fear) (1992), a dramatized narrative of five village women and their struggle for gender justice.’
About the "Journeys with Kabir" Organizer | DR. LINDA HESS
Linda Hess is Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University. She specializes in Hinduism and has written extensively on the poetry of North India's great 15th and 16th-century "poet-saints," their ongoing popularity and influence, and modes of performing their works. Her research and teaching interests include poetry of religious experience, gender, performance and reception of religious texts and practices by people in different social and historical circumstances. She has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and books. Her The Bijak of Kabir (translations and essays) is among the finest of Kabir translations and commentaries in English language.
For more specific event series inquiries, please contact Professor Michael Nijhawan at nijhawan@yorku.ca.
For general inquiries, contact Alicia at ycar@yorku.ca.
Biography of Kabir
Poems of Kabir
Love songs of Kabir
Mystic songs of Kabir
Doha's of Kabir (two line poems)
Essay on Kabir | Kabir: The Man, The Myth, The Mystic, The Master and …More… by Maalok (2002)
Essay on Kabir | Santh Kabir by Dr. Nandini Sahu (2008)
Related publications
The Bijak of Kabir | Translated by Linda Hess
The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry | By Stephen Mitchell
Kabir: The Weaver's Songs, by Kabir | Translated by Vinay Dharwadker
Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West | Translated by Daniel Ladinsky
One Hundred Poems of Kabir | Translated by Rabindranath Tagore
Perfume of the Desert: Inspirations from the Sufi Wisdom | By Andrew Harvey, Eryk Hanut
Songs of Kabir: A 15th Century Sufi Literary Classic, by Kabir | Translated by Rabindranath Tagore
Songs of the Saints of India | Translated by John Stratton Hawley
Sri Guru Granth Sahib | Translated by Gurbachan S. Talib