Brooklyn Raga Massive Performs its Weekly Concert

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK —

Classical Indian music filled the auditorium as Brooklyn Raga Massive played in the Jalopy Theatre in Brooklyn on Thursday evening, August 22. The local artist collective has worked since 2012 to introduce Indian music and culture by blending different genres of music for a modern audience.

The Jalopy Theatre near Red Hook hosted BRM’s weekly concert series and jam session as nearly 100 people came to see the show. Each Thursday night, the non-profit artist collective performs or invites outside musicians. Then, BRM holds a late night open-invitation jam session where anyone with an instrument, including those in the audience, can play with BRM on stage.

This week’s show featured three BRM founding members. Abhik Mukherjee strummed the sitar, Jay Gandhi played bansuri and Sameer Gupta tapped the tabla for an evening of North Indian classical songs. Each artist’s instrument originates from classical Indian music. The sitar is a string instrument, the bansuri is a flute and the tabla is a pair of medium-sized drums. Amanda Welch who is a sitar player accompanied the band with the tanpura. The tanpura is a plucked string instrument producing a harmonic droning base sound for the other musicians and to create a relaxed ambience.

The four played tunes rooted in raga, the scaffolding of Indian classical music. Raga stems from ancient Vedic chants from Hinduism. Raga, similar to jazz, gives artists chances to solo and improvise. The music’s hypnotic sound is designed to calm listeners and set a dreamlike atmosphere. The word “raga” derives from the Sanskrit language and means “passion” or “color.”

The night concluded with a jam session where crowd members joined on stage BRM artists Pawan Benjamin on the bansuri and piano, Adam Maalouf on the hand drum and BRM founding member Neel Murgai who also played the hand drum.

Camera: Nikon D90. Nikon 18-55 mm zoom lens. Nikon 70-300 mm telephoto zoom lens.

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