GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath shares many stories of positivity and local heroes in the show’s “Joy Beat” segment. We ask listeners for nominations, but sometimes we instead receive a question: What brings Arun joy? So this week, he shares a story of joy from his community in Lexington.
He spoke with Rajesh Godbole, founder of Shadaj, a local nonprofit that promotes Indian classical music and brings people together through concerts and events, including a 12-hour annual festival. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.
Arun Rath: I want to talk a bit about what a typical Shadaj concert is like, because for [Indian Americans] here, it’s very special. Tell us about your philosophy for putting on these shows.
Rajesh Godbole: As you know, Indian classical music is a shared learning and listening experience. It’s an improvisational form of music, much like jazz. The quality of music really depends upon the ecosystem, the surroundings and the quality of the audience, all put together — the interaction, close proximity with the audience, and the interaction with the artist. As improvisations are happening, certain phrases are elaborated, and the response that the audience gives inspires the artist.
Chamber music is what this form of music really thrives in; it’s not really meant for large auditoriums. And that’s how we started Shadaj.
We host several concerts each year. Great artists from India come to perform, and the setup is pretty small. It’s about 150, maximum 200 people that you can cram into that small space. That energy makes the experience different, both for the artist as well as the audience. As you are appreciating a phrase, you are looking at your fellow audience members, the artist is looking at you, he understands whether you are liking it or not, and that inspires him further, too. It’s something that one needs to experience — the experience that often is lost in large conferences or large auditoriums.
Rath: It is an incredible experience. I can just share with people that to see this — it’s a whole different level to the music, because you really do make eye contact not just with the musicians, but with the people next to you. It’s unbelievable.
Godbole: Yes, that spontaneous applause is something that one really needs to experience. The one thing that we do besides the chamber music concerts is often, a day before, we have a music appreciation session, where the audience gets to interact with the musician and understand a little bit about the thought process behind making music and how that artist is approaching [their] music.
Rath: Tell us about the development of Shadaj. First off, when did you become inspired? And tell us how we got to where we are now, where it is a pretty huge event.
Godbole: Oh, yeah. The inspiration, as I said, was to make sure that we are able to reproduce that experience for the audience — the listening experience — and for the artists. The experience of performing motivated us to start Shadaj. Eventually, we also added open mic sessions to promote the local musicians. We have a lot of aspiring musicians.
At some point, we realized that we can’t be so closed about the way we present this music, because we live in a society where you can’t be living on an island. There are more people here who can appreciate this music, and this is a great way to connect communities through music. We started doing community outreach concerts, and from that, we decided, why not just put a structure to it and make one large music event each year? And that’s how Shadaj Music Festival started.
Rath: Tell us about this year’s festival.
Godbole: So, this year’s festival is at Lexington High School. It’s a full-day festival, from 10 to 10, but if it seems overwhelming for somebody, they can come attend the artists that they are most interested in. But we encourage people to come in [for the] whole day, and immerse [themselves] in that experience because it is not just music. You get to socialize with people, you get to talk to the artists and be part of that ecosystem.
There are four main artists performing. Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande, a highly celebrated vocalist of Indian classical style; two-time Grammy Award winner Rakesh Chaurasia, a flutist; Pratik Shrivastava, a young maestro who plays sarod, a string instrument; and the festival will be concluded by none other than Pandit Ajoy Chakrabarty, a highly celebrated classical vocalist, and he’s traveling to the U.S. after a long break, so there’s a lot of anticipation.
Rath: I’ve got to tell people [who are] outside of the Indian classical music world, that’s a big deal.
Godbole: Yes. These artists are of great stature. I mean, we are just fortunate to be able to listen to them in such close quarters.
Rath: I’m curious, over the time you’ve been doing these concerts now and everything with Shadaj, what have you heard back from the local community?
Godbole: They love it. Last year, we did our 10th year, and we asked the audience, “What do you think? Should we do this every year, or is this enough, and we should just go back to our chamber music format?” And everybody — including the artists — said, “No, you must continue!” They loved it so much that they wanted to do this more and more.
If you’d like to make a nomination for the Joy Beat, leave us a voicemail at (617)-300-BEAT [2328].