Since 2017, the Bangalore Broadway Company, a vocal ensemble, has been dedicated to exploring diverse folk music traditions from around the world. Their repertoire includes Eastern European, African, Afro-Cuban, Russian, Indian, Ladino folk and more. They focus on vocals and harmony and explore and rearrange music with unique harmonic structures and rhythm patterns. They aim to showcase different forms of music while continually exploring vocal music. We get chatty with Sowmya Raghavan, the founder of Bangalore Broadway Company (BBC), who also sings alto in the group, to find out more about their upcoming performance.
“BBC has gone through a little bit of an iteration from what it previously used to be. We were a much larger group, with around 30 people on stage performing Broadway music. But now we’ve gotten into a very beautiful space, which explores a lot more world folk music. Our upcoming performance is a one-hour show that is curated with very niche music that focuses on a lot of folk music from across the world. We’re going to be singing in multiple languages. We’re going to be doing folk music from Russia, some Bulgarian pieces, some Afro-Cuban music, Spanish-Latino folk which is a mix of Spanish and Hebrew music, Japanese folk and a lot more,” begins Sowmya.
When asked if they have included Indian folk music, the vocalist reveals, “We are doing a Tamil song. It’s from a movie, but the style of the song is very folk. Generally, within our repertoire, we do a lot of Tamil music here and there. In our upcoming shows, we will be introducing a Bengali piece too.”
The company includes Anisha Chandy (soprano); Deepa Jacob (mezzo soprano); Ketki Herlekar (soprano); Nora Alexy (contra alto); Siddharth Suresh (arrangements & keyboard); and Sowmya Raghavan (director & alto). “Being a woman in the space of music and creative arts, there is a lot of scope for women to put forth the kind of music that they want to. Pick a project that is close to your heart and just work towards it step by step by step,” she says, signing off.
Entry free. March 10, 11.30 am. At BIC, Domlur.
Email: alwin@newindianexpress.com
X: @al_ben_so
