Priyadarshini singer where is the party

It was also the kind of life I knew because I grew up like that, but now living in New York has been so hard. I know so many of the kids, and they make that bond with you, and they want to see you, and I miss them. They miss me too. This time when I was there, I just got back last week. The building might fall apart anytime, and yet these kids are so invested in their education. Priya Darshini: Right. I mean, it is a privilege, education is a privilege. Can you bring me this book? You read all of it?

Is the school open? Are there kids inside? It makes it so worth it. Rosemary Pritzker: Often students in schools in underdeveloped areas, face challenges that are so basic. This is the case in many developing countries throughout the world. Priya Darshini: A lot of the girls would drop out after fifth or sixth grade when they would get there, period because all these kids walk like 8 to 10 kilometers, and this is a jungle like nothing is around.

They walk 8 to 10 kilometers. We just constructed toilets. Something as simple as that, all the girls started coming back to school. The wealthiest people who have everything. The economic disparity is so much, you have everything. Monsanto has arrived, so the small farmer is out. Also large scale production. How can they beat that? What if they die?

I love that they have these big dreams. What do your parents do, the farmers? What do your parents want you to do? What would you actually like to do? Rosemary Pritzker: Did you have any heroes or mentors besides your parents when you were growing up? Priya Darshini: So many. My grandmother was one of my biggest heroes.

I have her name actually. She was an incredible artist. She used to perform like two-hour performances on stage from when she was six or seven years old. She would do all of that. She is amazing. She was also again very generous. She worked at hospitals and dedicated her time helping people. She was one of my biggest inspirations. She is one of my biggest inspirations.

Outside of that, I think inspiration from … I think everybody has something to give me, I feel. I meet so many people. The world is full of amazing inspiring people. Rosemary Pritzker: Not everybody chooses it as their profession, and dedicates themselves that much. Priya Darshini: I think that came from my grandmother. She quit performing professionally when she was very young.

After she had kids and I think right after she got married she quit. The society made it very difficult. Women were not looked at with a lot of respect if you were actually a performer, and dancing on stage. But when my grandmother was dancing, Bharatanatyam was almost about to die. That conservatism came from the British, that came also from the missionaries that were in India around that time.

Only in or s when they started trying to break through that. My grandmother was a professional artist in those times. That was a difficult time to navigate. I always dreamt of being a musician, and a performer. Priya Darshini: I have that too. I definitely have that. Especially now is a time when people are now beginning to see why that is a very special thing to have, to be able to do different things.

You have to have the ability to have talent and skills, and cross-disciplines. Are you able to find a common thread between all the things you really like and are passionate about? I love doing that through food, through music, through culture in general, and just seeing the lines between cultures melting away.

They get mixed …. I hear more other languages than I hear English, every single time. I mean, which is why New York feels like home to me as well because India has so many languages and just traveling from one state to another would feel like going to a whole different country. Yeah, and I sing with so many different bands. One of the reasons I moved to New York was to, again, learn and study all these different forms in music that exist out there and learn from it, and take inspiration from it, and bring that into what I do.

I mean, that has been one of my favorite venues in New York for a really long time. Priya and I discussed how incredibly talented Bill Bragin is at curating music. I think Bill Bragin has brought a lot of wonderful stuff to New York. We love you. A really beautiful composer. He writes beautiful melodies. Priya Darshini: Yeah, very. I play middle eastern music. I play Oud. I speak maybe seven or eight of those. Fluently maybe four. Priya Darshini: Conversationally seven or eight and it comes back when I start speaking with someone.

A lot of the others I can just … I actually write out so the Hebrew script that I sing with the Epichorus, I write out in the Devanagari script.

I use diuretics, and a combination of the Latin and the Devanagari script to be able to pronounce any language.

Priya Darshini: Definitely. I mean, words are heavy. Also, again, lyrics are so poetic, these words express emotion even just by the sound of it which is why I love language. Certain words can be harsh and certain words can be soft. It depends on how you want to listen to a song I guess. You see language is just a tool for communication. Yes, words are heavy, poetry is beautiful. You can express so much with very little.

Language is an art form. Also, sometimes you can communicate without any words. Rosemary Pritzker: I really feel like music is actually a form of magic. Honestly, I really feel that way. Rosemary Pritzker: I mean, with the magnitude to which it is able to move people. Priya Darshini: I think intention plays a very big part in music. A lot of my study has been in Indian classical music and that study has taught me about how every single note that comes out of you has to be intentional.

It has to have purpose. Even the silence has purpose so that has to be intentional. It has to be very intentional. You want to close your eyes and just be in the moment. Priya Darshini: It is. I need to fix that. What is that like? Playing is so beautiful. I was bare feet. That helped me stayed grounded. I also like that. There was no stage. I could feel what was coming back to me. That was it. That was human connection. Rosemary Pritzker: Speaking of human connection, so tell me about Max.

How did you guys meet? Priya Darshini: This is really funny. Max was actually studying in India. This was around or He got a grant to study in India with Pandit Shivkumar Sharma so he was there living in Bombay for two years, but when he was living there I was actually living in Nashville Tennessee.

I was there and I was going back and forth. I also had a job in London so I just keep going back and forth. One of the times that I was visiting Bombay, I met Max at this party. There might be a jam session. Sounds interesting. We chatted then and then there was this instant connection. Then I left. I went back to Nashville. I forgotten about that. This could be a beautiful friendship. He left, we stayed in touch. We would talk every day on Skype. Again, it was all about very deep introspections of life and just wanting to be a better person, and trying to find the tools to call ourselves out on our bullshit.

I just want to know what this is. If this turns out to be just the most incredible friendship, I would be so happy with that. He showed up in Bombay and we spent … Actually, we traveled to a couple of national parks. I love wildlife, and all my holidays are typically national parks or just jungles, wildlife, mountains. I took him into a wildlife sanctuaries and national parks in India. It was beautiful. He came back. We had a two-and-a-half year long distance relationship, and then eventually I moved.

No more long distance relationship if this has to work. We have to be in the same city. I was like okay. I mean, that dulcimer, it sounds so sweet.

He really is like that. All of that. We got married two years ago. I mean, first of all, how many people in the US and most parts of the world get to hear traditional Indian singing, much less a hammered dulcimer which is such an obscure instrument, and the two together is like just mesmerizingly beautiful.

Priya Darshini: Thank you. He has done that. He lived in synagogue for six or seven years. He moved to Bombay to study his music, so he really practices immersion which to me is very important.

It just made sense. I love stories, I love knowing … I love history, I love knowing something came to be. They did that with good intention. My parents did this, my grandparents did this, their parents did this. We all have different set of challenges of course. We have completely different lives, completely different journeys. Rosemary Pritzker: I want to give the listeners a taste of a couple of the sings that you sing the other night, but I love if you could explain a little bit about them starting particularly with … There is a love song that you sang towards the end that is just so sweet.

My feelings feel empty. I could translate line by line, but you know. Urdu, influenced Hindi. I got to sing this to remember the lines.

I love that song. Again, talking about language. A lot of people came up to me and told me about that. I did tell them it was a love song. Priya Darshini: I love Azlat that I did the other night. That was actually written by Zach Fredman.

Oh my god, what a beautiful composition. It just takes me back. I would translate it for you, but I would be better if Zach does that. Do you want to just tell us just a little bit about how you got into that?

Priya Darshini: Sure. I was always into sports since I was a kid. Thank god because it saved me so many ways. So, I started focusing on that instead. I then found the perfect guru, who has strengthened me so much that even today I can sing for hours without any discomfort. But as has been established, Priya is anything but ordinary. Priya counts her among the greatest inspirations while growing up, even as she credits her parents for creating an environment for myriad musical experiences.

I wanted to explore other cultures and so I started listening to other styles. I was hungry to travel the world and listen to music. In the process I discovered jazz, dove deeper into learning it before turning my eyes or voice in this case to Hindustani classical. Eventually when I moved to America, my world fully opened up.

The deeper she went in, the more her world opened up. Drawing from her multicultural artistic and life experiences, the album holds eight songs and a rearrangement that span a spectrum of musical disciplines, genres and styles.

Working with such virtuosos has been both gratifying and awe-inspiring. And every collaboration with husband Max has been a way to learn more about him through music. Is home a construct? It is a place? All these questions found expression in Periphery , an album that I recommend people listen to with their headphones on. It gets its name from those who bear mixed learning lineages yet constantly feel at the periphery of everything.

For Priya, this is a default state of being. Where the periphery is not an inability to give in to the epicentre; instead, it is a consistent state of finding that being at the periphery gives her the benefit of perspective due to the necessary distance. My cultural experiences were already quite different from those of my friends.

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