Solange Knowles and T.M. Krishna, sonic worlds apart but singing in harmony
the parallels between disruption to Indian and European Classical arts
in 2022 I thought I had bought tickets to Play Time, a 16 minute ballet scored by Solange Knowles, sister of Beyoncé. I have studied Knowles’s work since 2016 when she released A Seat at the Table. from her visuals to her subsequent album, When I Get Home, to adore Solange is to adore someone who intentionally scales down, leans into craft, and positions herself as a soothsayer.
the joke was on me as I flew to New York, sat front row in the most luxurious of ballet theaters, and patiently watched multiple performances before realizing I had purchased the wrong ticket. during intermission I leaned over to the well-dressed, elderly lady next to me and asked fearfully, ‘when is Solange’s piece?’
she looked at me blankly, ‘my dear this is Russian ballet.’
the lady and I ended up chatting through intermission about the New York ballet. ‘we need more young people like you in the audience. you sat so still and watched so attentively.’ I laughed and told her I was trained in Indian Classical dance and appreciated ballet as an art form; it was the music I couldn’t get behind. ‘no percussion’, I told her solemnly.
‘what do you enjoy about ballet?’ I asked.
‘well, it makes me feel happy,’ she smiled knowingly, nodding. ‘you sit and watch and allow emotion to come over you. that is why we watch ballet.’
I imagined the scores of wealthy, white seventy-year-olds around me feeling emotional to Stravinsky. then I thought back to Oregon and the Indian Classical music concerts we would go to as a family every Friday or Saturday evening, usually at some church. the community would file in and sit quietly in a dimly lit pew as an artist wailed on for hours and hours under the crucifix. mostly Carnatic and some Hindustani music was the backdrop of my life; in the car, on our home stereo, and in churches occupied by music-loving Hindus.
and then it hit me, sitting there in a velvet chair under a golden dome in the David H. Koch Theater — Classical music, whether it’s Indian or European, is for the elite in a society. I just never thought of my Indian community as a community of elites. we were Oregonians; Costco jeans wearing, Red Robin eating, bike to work and hike on the weekends Oregonians.
but there was a reason we were all in Oregon — economic and cultural structures that enabled the first wave of Indian immigration seeking opportunity. most people in our community were upper caste, and while we did not at all resemble the crowd around me in that theater, which surely vacationed in the Hamptons and developed a mouth sore if they drank out of any glass that was not Baccarat, we too were inside our own walled garden; a garden lifted and placed on the American west coast.
a famous Carnatic musician known as T.M. Krishna publicly talks about the garden and many in the Carnatic music community don’t like it. ironically they believe he is unnecessarily politicizing an art form yet they oppose his questioning of who can participate it, where it can be performed, and why it cannot be in conversation with subaltern Indian art forms. he is, as they say, using Carnatic music as a tool for social reform and trying to change ‘high culture’ from within. Krishna was awarded the prestigious Sangita Kalanidhi by the Madras Music Academy, a decision which was both lauded and highly contested.
the strength of Krishna’s activism comes from the respect he has earned among musical peers. I see both Solange and Beyoncé as having taken similar paths — their activism followed mastery of their craft. while Krishna and the Knowles sisters live sonic worlds apart, their cultural disruption strikes the same tone. after all, the raison d'etre of Beyoncé’s latest album, Cowboy Carter, was cultural exclusion.
Solange’s Play Time, a jazz score for the New York Ballet stage, is an aesthetic deviation for the art form, but Knowles has done this again and again. she brought the pain and joy of Black womanhood to institutions of ‘high culture’ — the Guggenheim, Sydney Opera House, the Getty, and the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Germany. cultural projects like Play Time and Solange’s creative studio Saint Heron are a radical departure from the cultural systems of the West.
in the The Fire Next Time American giant James Baldwin explains to his nephew how oppressive societies have ways of making the oppressed feel subhuman. Solange, whose work I believe is a continuation of Baldwin, is creating a kind of Black modernism that sees divinity and innovation in Black expression. in doing so she subverts the idea that elevated craft is the divine outcome of aristocracy.
Solange describes her studio, Saint Heron, as “creating an embodiment of living testaments to the glory of expression, and how that recharges and reaffirms the reverence we hold for our own cultural and artistic worth” (ArtNet interview).
when asked about her art practice, Solange Knowles talks about world building.
‘I am building worlds for young Black girls to discover someday,’ she says. when she is on stage in lieu of a Russian composer, Gucci Mane, Metro Boomin, Tyler the Creator, Playboi Carti, and Pharrell are on stage. and when they are on stage, I am in the audience.
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