Review: BROOKLYN RAGA MASSIVE Deepens at Rubin Museum Theater

Opening in Chelsea in 2004, the Rubin Museum of Art has since enlightened worldly art lovers and enriched the masses with a sense of the sacred in the heart of New York.

Truly part of the spiritual landscape of the Big Apple, the Rubin Museum is a treasure trove of Nepalese and Tibetan art from the last millennium, and is also touched by the graces of ingenious artisans from across Asia and the world.

Masks of the storytellers steeped in now obsolete traditions of theater in Japan stand beside the costumed magic of Mongolian shamanism. The wings of the thunderbird from the indigenous Coast Salish peoples from the northwest coast are outstretched above the heavenly mandalas of Buddhist painting.

Every Wednesday, world musicians delight the acoustical soundscape with rich tapestries of sonic glory from around the world, and India especially.

Two days before Brooklyn Raga Massive made a most welcome appearance at the Rubin Museum Theater below the candlelit café, Anjana Roy, a sitar player from Delhi sparked a most incandescent three hours of harmonic effulgence. Together with percussionist Polash Gomes on tabla, she sat proudly before the lush cosmic backdrop, furnished with a thousand year old sandstone sculpture of Ganesha from Madhya Pradesh and an 800 year old semiprecious stone inlayed copper stupa from Tibet.

The tradition of women sitar players is profoundly important. One generation from the greatest sitar player known to the West, Ravi Shankar, Anoushka Shankar has delighted New York audiences at Carnegie Hall since she was in her teens. Like Shankar, Anjana Roy is a strong embodiment of the empowering stance of Indian women in the performing arts despite an overwhelming culture of misogynistic patriarchy and male-dominated abuses that women constantly face in the region.

Then there were twenty. Brooklyn Raga Massive broke the record for most musicians onstage at the Rubin Museum Theater. A full house streamed through popcorn-fuming entranceways bedecked with the anatomical medical charts of ancient Buddhist healers.

To perform Terry Riley's proto-minimalist masterpiece, "In C" Brooklyn Raga Massive had everyone from the five boroughs to the steppes of Central Asia swaying to the repetitive harmonies and circulating rhythms that coursed and interwove like the animate pulse of a human body.

An hour passed. Nearly overwhelmed by a newfound consciousness of the inner momentum that is life at work, "In C" released timeless secrets of creation in the forty hands of Brooklyn Raga Massive. As one, they are a personification of the many-armed Avalokite?vara, practically god-like through unprecedented musical versatility.

They began with the signature sound of a raga opening with the enchanting lilts and gentle haunts of ancient echoes. Experimental modern composition then seeped in, gradually reverberating throughout the subterranean chamber with a gaining intensity.

The super group features co-founder Camila Celin on sarod, recently nominated for a world music Grammy, among two other women, a violinist and virtuoso of the recorder. Every musician in the truly massive band enfolded and invigorated an incredulous web of arrangements and improvisations.

"In C" cascaded off into the nebulous resounding of Indian tradition led by Hindustani vocals from the inimitable talent of Samarth Nagarkar and Carnatic violin from Arun Ramamurthy. The musicians then all re-assembled under the spiraling museum stairway to jam and dance on jazz standards and world fusion, inspiring art gawkers and wine guzzlers to fly from satori to nirvana up and down five floors of priceless, freely open collections of sacred art.

Photo: Courtesy of Brooklyn Raga Massive

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