Kaapi LILA is a monthly gathering of like-minded friends, over coffee. At each Kaapi LILA, we discuss a work in progress presented by its visualiser/s. It is a platform for discoveries, explorations and reflections among culture-makers from across borders. Through these intense conversations, we hope to energise the climate of creation in the city and beyond.
You can find below information about our last Kaapi LILA events.
Kaapi LILA with…
TM Krishna
Thursday 5 November 2015
7:00-9:00 pm
Bungalow No. 6, President’s Estate
Gurudwara Rakab Ganj Road,
New Delhi
Music has moved from art to industry, from practice to performance, from a lifetime experience to what can only be called a factory shift. No space for it, only spots. You sing not to soar but to fit in. Old strangleholds, old monopolies, old manipulations have not gone away but have in fact found a new life in new tools for a big ticket control of the musician’s personal journey.
Where is the music ?
Thodur Madabusi Krishna’s renown as ‘TMK’ comes from his stature as a vocalist in the Karnatik tradition. While his musicality eludes standard analyses, Krishna’s pen is sharp, his words direct. He thinks on and writes about issues affecting the human condition and about matters musical. He has co-authored Voices Within: Carnatic Music – Passing on an Inheritance, a book dedicated to the greats of Karnatik music. The more recent A Southern Music: The Karnatik Story, is a first-of-its-kind work on the Karnatic tradition.
Kaapi LILA with…
Shahabaz Aman
Sunday 27 September 2015
5:00-7:00 pm
14 Sultanpur Estate
Mandi Road, Mehrauli
New Delhi
Shahabaz says: Our life’s milieu is the greatest radio company. It tunes us into different songs at different times. The eighties that saw the expatriate young uncle land with cassettes and player from Sony and Thompson! Talat, Mohammed Rafi, Mukesh, Manna Dey, Noorjahan, Shamshad Beegum , Suraiya, Lataji, Anmol Ghadi, Andaaz, they all came and filled our attic music clubs. The harmonium, tabla and shahi baaja, and Saigal and Baburaj… But, it is the alluring Talat who traps us — a tempering act made for the virgin earthen pot. From there one goes to the veritable Mehdi Hassan. The next lap is into the Qawwalis: Nusrat, Sabri Brothers, Abida. And one’s mind turns to the poetry of the mystics, and thus arrive Rumi, Rabia, Shahabaz Qalander, and Mahmoud Darwish. Today, Vaidyar, Mundapra, Mogral, and above all, Icha Mastan, amaze one no end. The gypsy migration of the ishals back into their own roots… Salutes.
Shahabaz Aman is a musician and thinker. He seamlessly moves between the walled studio spaces where he sings and makes music for Malayalam cinema, and the expansive Ghazal evenings across India and abroad. His albums show the same philosophical strain that illumines his book, curiously titled, Om Allah! Shahabaz’s own practice of Sufi music does not stay within the frame of Islamic conventions, but becomes an intense, rather rebellious, seeking for beauty across boundaries. His non-conforming Soul of Anamika uses a collage of sounds of varying effects, thus creating a unique experience and understanding of music itself. His latest musical quest named after the number of an old jeep, KEF 1126 , presents a remarkable MALAYALAM SUFI ROUTE where dream at once mixes with the here-and-now, and the then-and-there.
Kaapi LILA with…
Pepita Seth
Sunday 23 August 2015
5:00-7:00 pm
Nasheman
Lajpat Nagar
New Delhi
Novelist. Photographer. Quester. How does it feel to wear these hats at once? How do these different fields interact and enrich one another? In a freewheeling conversation, Pepita Seth discusses her life that has moved from the English countryside to the Malabar coast, where she has the freedom to enter the Theyyam aniyaras to catch a nap during an overnight ritual – a rare privilege considering the barriers of gender, nation and many more. She tells us how she moved from the world of motion pictures to the word world. And how the presence of shakti has intervened in charting her course across continents.
Pepita Seth began her career in the cutting rooms, editing British and American documentaries and feature films. In 1970, the chance discovery of her soldier great-grandfather’s 1857 diary inspired her to make her first visit to India. Driven by her passion and respect for the culture and traditions of Kerala, Pepita began to photograph and write about the rituals of Kerala’s Hindus. In 1981, she received official permission to enter Kerala’s temples–including Guruvayur Temple. Exhibitions of her photographs have been held in India and in Britain and the United States. Her novel, The Spirit Land, was published in 1994 and the following year she began to focus on the Theyyam rituals of Malabar. In 2001, she began her research on Guruvayur Temple, and Heaven on Earth was published in 2009. Since then, she has been working on a major book on Theyyam. She was awarded the Padma Shri in 2012. Her latest work, The Edge of Another World, a novel, is to be launched in August 2015.
Kaapi LILA with…
EP Unny
Sunday 26 July 2015
5:00-7:00 pm
Nasheman
Lajpat Nagar
New Delhi
A day in the life of a cartoonist. The life of a daily cartoonist. No one knows its implications better than Unny. For the past 15 years, he has not taken even a single day’s break from cartooning. What does this mean? How does one keep up the drive? What does this constant observation of the world around do to a cartoonist, his mind, his craft? And, how much does this vigil count in our times when any alternative expression is looked at with suspicion? EP Unny would let us have a glimpse of his fine-balanced way of life as a cartoonist over, yes, kaapi. The conversation must go on, and so must the art of cartooning.
EP Unny is a celebrated Indian political cartoonist. After an education in sciences, he published his first cartoon in Shankar’s Weekly, in 1973. Four years later, he becomes professional, first with the Hindu, before working with The Economic Times, and finally The Indian Express Group, where he is currently Chief Political Cartoonist. He is the author of several graphic shorts in Malayalam, of the travel book Spices and Souls – A doodler’s journey through Kerala (DC Books, 2001) and of Santa and The Scribes – The Making Of Fort Kochi(Niyogi Books, 2014).
Kaapi LILA with…
Navtej Johar
Sunday 20 June 2015
5:00-7:00 pm
Nasheman
Lajpat Nagar
New Delhi
The body is real! Matter matters! Matter and Spirit are contiguously connected! Spirit is not an alien! The essential condition of my body is comforting and pleasurable! Keeping these ideas in mind, Navtej Johar leads a session in asana, alignment of joints, pulling and tugging of muscles, breath work with sound and arithmetic, chanting and minduflness.
Navtej Johar is a Bharatanatyam dancer, choreographer plus a yoga exponent whose work freely traverses between the traditional and the contemporary. He is a recipient of the Sangeet Nataka Akademi Award for Contemporary Dance in 2014. Trained in Bharatanatyam at Kalakshetra, Chennai and with Leela Samson at the Shri Ram Bhartiya Kala Kendra, New Delhi, he studied yoga at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram, Chennai, and pursued critical studies at the Department of Performance Studies, New York University. Johar’s choreographic work draws on plural vocabularies of yoga, bharatanatyam and physical theatre, and revolves around issues of eroticism, identity and boundaries — class, gender, and cultural. He has a number of very successful productions to his name, a few of them being dialogic collaborations with artists and other choreographers, and has performed at prestigious venues all over the world. Also a serious scholar in the field of somatic work and dance, his research work has been supported by a number of fellowships. Currently a fellow at the International Research Center, “Interweaving Performance Cultures,” at Freie University, Berlin, he also teaches Dance Studies at the Ashoka University. He is the founder of Studio Abhyas, New Delhi, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to yoga, dance-theatre, urban activism and the care of stray animals.
Kaapi LILA with…
Ashish Dha
Sunday 24 May 2015
5:00-7:00 pm
Nasheman
Lajpat Nagar
New Delhi
Ashish performs excerpts from some of his diverse musical explorations, including piano-based ‘meditations in raags’, whistling and overtone singing in Hindustani classical, and Just Intonation music using the laptop as a musical instrument. He also shares and explores certain ideas with the audience, such as a ‘Hindustani 2.0’ version of Indian classical music, and live musical computer programming using open-source language ChucK, accessible to all.
Ashish Dha is a researcher, practitioner and student of Hindustani classical music. Having learnt khayaal gaayaki through school and college, he has recently restarted his training under Ustad F. Wasifuddin Dagar. He also has extensive experience with the technical aspects of music and sound, including as a composer, performing musician, sound designer, recording engineer and musical programmer. After gaining an MFA in Sound Design from the California Institute of the Arts, he is back in New Delhi, where he runs ‘Naadaalaya’, a sound and music studio-cum-training center, and intends to release his debut music album sometime soon.
Kaapi LILA with…
Gitanjali Kolanad
Sunday 26 April 2015
5:00-7:00 pm
Nasheman
Lajpat Nagar
New Delhi
Gitanjali Kolanad demonstrates how the creative impulse is an embodied response, a call to creative action. Inspiration, after all, means, first, to take a breath. Kalaripayat is the form she will explore with participants, but the principles she implements to make it useful for purposes other than fighting are widely applicable.
Gitanjali Kolanad has been immersed in the practice, performance and teaching of Kalaripayat for more than thirty years, and Bharata Natyam, for over forty years. Presently, she is creating a programme at Shiv Nadar University to effectively teach performance in the Indian context, at the Undergraduate and Graduate levels.
Kaapi LILA with…
Heike Fiedler
in collaboration with
Sunday 29 March 2015
5:00-7:00 pm
Nasheman
Lajpat Nagar
New Delhi
Heike’s presentation “my room is my residency” questions the duality of inside and outside, the notion of category. And, not strange to performance at all, the concepts of public and artist, too. At Kaapi LILA 2, we enter this room, waiting for us to create, and be created, to become part of the work in progress.
Heike Fiedler is active in the field of performance writing, the place where art and literature meet. She may mix different languages in her texts. Her audiovisual, transmedial poetry readings are unique events, developed over 15 years. Heike also realises workshops, intervenes in public space, works on installations and collaborates with other poets, artists and musicians. She is presently on a Pro Helvetia Swiss Arts Council Residency in India.
Heike’s website: realtimepoem.com
Partners
Pro Helvetia
Menschenversand
Ch Litterature
Lexikon
Vice Versa Litterature
Music
Kaapi LILA with…
Mirjam Spoolder
Sunday 22 February 2015
5:00-7:00 pm
Nasheman
Lajpat Nagar
New Delhi
At the first Kaapi LILA, fabric sculptor and performer Mirjam Spoolder (Swiss Artist in Residency supported by Pro Helvetia, New Delhi) takes us through her intriguing artistic journey. She has found an innovative technique to combine fashion, dance-theatre, sculpture and photography.