Ragamala

I went to a performance of Ragamala on Sunday, which meant I had to skip a meeting of my poetry writing group. But I had the ticket... Ragamala is an Asian Indian dance company and school based in Minneapolis. They do South Indian classical dance. The company's founder (who is from India) and her daughter studied with a famous teacher in India. But they add non-traditional elements. This time, the music was composed by an Indian-American jazz musician and played by a group of five musicians; the composer, who plays a fine alto sax, a guy on electric guitar, a guy on karnatic flute, and two women, one playing a traditional Indian drum and the other playing karnatic violin. (Karnatic refers to style of music. The violin looked like a perfectly ordinary violin, though the player got unexpected sounds out of it.) The dance and music was inspired by an 8th century Tamil woman poet. I liked it.