The Rāginī Festival: Parv Kaur and Eternal Taal + Mitali Khargonkar + Sakthi Folk Arts Centre

The Rāginī Festival kicks off with a trifecta of percussionists taking their rightful place as torchbearers and innovators of long standing South Asian drumming traditions. Parv Kaur, bandleader of Eternal Taal, brings us an energetic performance of the UK's first all female team of dancers and dhol drummers who have been taking Bhangra music all over the world, gracing stages from Glastonbury to the BBC. Fifth generation tabla player Mitali Khargonkar joins in from Mumbai to share her unique take on Indian classical repertoire. We close out the evening with a special performance from the Sakthi Folks Arts Centre featuring young Dalit women who have reclaimed the degraded parai frame drum and dance tradition as a source of empowerment, confidence, and resistance against gender, class, and caste oppression. This edition of the Rāginī Festival celebrates the power of reclamation - a powerful stance each of these artists takes in their joy and celebration of the drum.

Featured Artists

Eternal Taal is a Birmingham based Entertainments team which specializes in Female Dhol Drummers and Bhangra Dancers, established in 1999. Eternal Taal are the first group in the UK to be taught by UK’s first female dhol drummer, Parv Kaur.  Dhol playing is a very male dominated instrument but Parv wanted to establish a Female oriented group to perform at all types of events. Eternal Taal offers weekly Dhol Drumming and Bhangra Dance Classes to young talented students. These classes consist of workshops and presentations about the history, background and nature of Bhangra Indian music.  Those students who show great ambition and passion perform at many High profile events. These are some of the events Eternal Taal have performed at; Glastonbury Festival, House of Commons 2010, Graham Norton show LG ARENA, Bollywood, BBC, West End and many more. www.eternaltaal.com/

Born into a musical family and having received her first rhythmic lesson from her father, Shri Vilas Khargonkar, Mitali Khargonkar belongs to the  great tradition of Ustad Jahaangeer Kha Saheb. She is the fifth generation of her family initiated into the tradition, her grandfather Lt Pt Sharad Khargonkar having been a presidential awardee for tabla. In addition to being a prolific tabla soloist, Mitali is also a popular accompanist.  As a graded artist of Akashwani, she has received many government scholarships and awards for tabla playing and has served as faculty at the Government Music college, Indore.

Sakthi Folk Arts Centre:
The Sakthi Folk Arts Centre in Dindigul, Tamil Nadu, was started in the early 1990's by progressive, Indian, Catholic nuns who decided to use the Tamil folk arts to develop self-esteem and economic skills in young poor Dalit women (former outcastes or untouchables).

Because of the intersections between casteism and patriarchalism in Tamil Nadu - as throughout South Asia - the young women served by the Sakthi Folk Arts Center experience discrimination on the grounds of their caste identity, their gender, and their economic and educational status. The nuns decided to take a different approach to gender-based empowerment and, ultimately, communal divestment from both casteism and patriarchalism: They started the Sakthi Folk Arts Centre using paraiattam – a traditionally male-dominated folk drumming and dance form based around the parai frame drum - as a means of then both culturally reclaiming paraiattam and economically empowering the women of Dindigul. http://www.sakthifolk.org/