Avi Kishna Transcript
Episode Podcast and Video with Show notes
Avi Kishna:
I love to learn a lot, but I think the best way to learn is to do and to do with a lot of good people as well. So every artist that I know that's at the top, A class level or a better level or higher experience level than I am, I love to work with you. Let me work with you because that's how I learn. You are my guru at that time. Shailesh, for example, the dancer we've been talking about at that time, those moments that we interacted, we had our jam sessions at that time. He was my guru. I might've been the same to him. I will never see myself like that. But because that's where you learn, that's where you feel, that's where you explore,hat's where you feel, that's where you enjoy. That's where you feel the pain of not doing it right, or not coming to that emotion or not that.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians, with Leah Roseman. This podcast strives to inspire you through the personal stories of a diversity of musicians worldwide with in-depth conversations and great music that reveal the depth and breadth to a life in music, Avi Kishna is a Dutch sarod player based in Amsterdam of Indo-Surinamese heritage. You get to know the sarod as an instrument, and here Avi's perspectives on Dutch society and his interesting collaborations. Among his mentors is his inspiring father, Ramdew Kishna, a multi-talented musician, director and painter who played a pivotal role in shaping Avi's musical journey, along with his guru Koustuv Ray. As a young man, Avi embarked on a successful career in sales and marketing, but during this time, he pushed music aside and I found it deeply touching to hear how he was able to come back to music with the wisdom of having left such an important part of himself behind. You'll hear about Avi's project, working with schools in Amsterdam to help provide music programs in underserved communities, and this episode features some of his sarod music. Like all my episodes, you can watch this on my YouTube channel or listen to the podcast on all the podcast platforms, and I've also linked the transcript to my website, Leahroseman.com. Finally, before we jump into the episode, did you know that this podcast is in Season Four and that I send out a weekly email newsletter where you can get access to Sneak Peeks of upcoming guests and be inspired by highlights from the archive? Have a look at the description of this episode where you'll find all the links, including the support link to buy this independent podcaster a coffee. Now to Avi Kishna and and his sarod. Thanks so much for joining me here today, Avi.
Avi Kishna:
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.
Leah Roseman:
Just before
Avi Kishna:
All the way from Amsterdam. Yeah,
Leah Roseman:
Actually, I interviewed someone in Utrecht yesterday for the second time, and he was interested to hear about you, Marc van Vugt.
Avi Kishna:
Okay, well the interest goes both ways now. I'm curious who it is.
Leah Roseman:
He's a jazz guitarist and composer Marc van Vugt, and I interviewed him last, actually two years ago, and his wife Ineke Vandoorn, and they do lots of cool projects, so he just has a new album coming out. So that episode will be going out before yours.
Avi Kishna:
Nice, nice.
Leah Roseman:
So you have your sarod there, so I was hoping we could start with the instrument before we get into some other stuff.
Avi Kishna:
Sure. Shall I pick it up?
Leah Roseman:
Thank you.
Avi Kishna:
Yeah. So would you like me to just play a little bit or explain about the instrument, because I don't think it's such a common instrument for a lot of people.
Leah Roseman:
It's up to you if you want to play first or explain.
Avi Kishna:
Yeah, well my guru always used to say, if you want to let people know about your music, just play instead of talk a lot. Okay. Lemme see. There's nothing really I prepared. As you know, Indian classical music is mostly in the moment. (music) Well just as an introduction to the sound.
Leah Roseman:
Beautiful.
Avi Kishna:
I could play some more in a bit if you want. That's one of my cats. So about the sarod, maybe I can tell a little bit about the sarod for those who don't know, it's Indian classical instrument, but it comes from, it has its origins in the Persian rebab. One of stories is tradesman or soldiers, their routes came from Persia, like current Iran or Afghanistan and moved through India and the Indian artists showed interest in the music, because it's quite similar, and it adapted from the rebab to the sarod in a way that they changed the strings from cat gut to steel strings. They removed the frets, or I dunno how you call it, frets, right? And put a steel plate on it to make it possible to emulate the voice or the typical movements in Indian classical music a little bit more. And it became a little bit longer, stretched. It placed, it's perfect with a goat skin and it's not really environmental friendly. Teak wood, one of the strongest wood types artun, it has 23 strings. This variation because you got two main styles of sarods. This style has 23 strings, which like 15 tarab resonating strings and three as I called chikari or as I call it, rhythmical strings. And then five melodic strings where you move within. So that's pretty much the whole thing about the sarod. As I said, we have two main types of sarods. You have another version which has 24 or five or seven strings, so it has more to do with the scaling and the tuning, so we get more bass or different, but pretty much we play in the same way.
Leah Roseman:
For those people interested, one of my previous guests played the rebab Philip Griffin in Australia, and I find it interesting also in terms of the sitar, because the sitar, most of the bending of the notes are done vertically, but with the sarod it's more like a violin. It's just back and forth.
Avi Kishna:
That's the thing which attracted me when I got introduced to the sarod at first, because I used to play cello, or I used to study cello, for a couple of years where you use the gliding and the glissandos in that same way too. So that attracted me and I tried to practice a little bit of sitar, and that's quite a heavy instrument. There's a lot of impact on the pulling and the sound as well. This is a little bit more round, deeper sound, maybe more compared to more closer to the veena, if you may know, which has a more bass, more rounder, more lower, is more in the lower region. So that's one of the things that affected me. But unfortunately I couldn't continue to play cello because you have to play on your nails.
Leah Roseman:
I was going to ask about that. It's very unusual.
Avi Kishna:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, our ancestors, they chose for a lot of unusual ways of playing. This is on the nails, so I got a lot of groove on my nails all the time, and I've been playing this from childhood. So yeah, going through elementary school, high school, you have to explain all the guys and girls why you have long nails. So there was this thing, but then again, in sarangi, another instrument we stringed instrument, bow instrument, they play on the top of their nails. So that's like the, I dunno how you call it in English, how translate into English, but where your nails end and your skin starts, that's the place. So that's quite painful. So that's the whole torture itself before you even can start playing in a normal way. And sitar, as you know, it's on the top of your tip of your fingers.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I was just thinking, I interviewed a gadulka player, Hristina Beleva, and I think they kind of play on the top as I remember as well. And as a violinist, I find that so weird. If you could just show us the difference. I know if you play with your finger, it's going to sound very different than with your nail.
Avi Kishna:
Yeah. You play on your nails and this sounds pretty much like this.(music) And if I do the same on the tip of my fingers is like (music) I can't even glide, I would've to use a lot of oil to, that's like it dampens the sound. So it is a gimmick you can use within in your playing whatever it suits. But same goes for like you play with on your right hand. We don't use regular platform, but this is what you mainly use is like a coconut cutting. So of course I'm in Amsterdam, so I'm using artificial stuff. So this cutting board plastic, which I made and I think it sounds a little bit, yeah, slight difference on the sound.
Leah Roseman:
So you were born in Suriname. When did you immigrate to the Netherlands?
Avi Kishna:
Yeah, so my parents are the first born generation in Suriname. So I'm the second born generation in Suriname. I was a baby infant, 12 months, 14 months old when my parents decided to shift to Netherlands. I dunno if you know about how the relationship matches between the Netherlands and Suriname, but it's a colonial thing. So yeah, we moved to Amsterdam and pretty much have been here ever since. So I feel more Amsterdam than I feel Surinamese or,
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I was curious about that because Suriname got its independence from the Netherlands shortly before you were born, right? In the late seventies,
Avi Kishna:
Yeah. Which was the main reason that my parents started to move because politically there were a lot of things happening going on there that didn't have the security for parents with two kids growing up just like I was just there. So my parents decided it was better to come here. The language was the same because as a Dutch colony in surname at that time, the main language was Dutch. So the adaptation into the Netherlands was in that sense easier. So yeah, this is pretty much where I got all most of my musical influence from as well.
Leah Roseman:
You still have family in Suriname?
Avi Kishna:
Yes, we do still have family in not really connected as much though, but my parents do, obviously the generation that's still there. And I even got some relatives in India, which is my, not necessarily blood connection, but direct connection with India. But most of my family moved to the Netherlands pretty much at the same time or after my parents came in there as well. So
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I was interested to learn about it because it's about 30% Indo-Surinamese and it's a very interesting mix of cultures there. And I hadn't even heard of this South American country, living in Canada until my daughter moved to the Netherlands.
Avi Kishna:
Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Leah Roseman:
And then she was experiencing the food. In fact, when she visited, she brought back this beautiful chutney and hot sauces from the Surinamese store in Rotterdam.
Avi Kishna:
It, it's a whole different thing. It's very much similar to a lot of other Caribbean countries, but then again, because it has so many influences of the Indonesian, which we call Javanese or even the African heritage is there and the local native people are there, and a lot of Indian people are there, which are the Hindustanis, so-called Hindustanis, which mostly the biggest group of Indian Surinamese people over there have their roots in either northern part of India or mainly one region is the most dense part of where they came from, where we came from. But that's a mix of all the cultures. You smell it, you taste it, and you hear it in every way. And even the community developed in a whole different way as well here in the Netherlands again. So it's really interesting to dive into that if you want to know more about the whole migration, immigration. For us, it's now been 150 years of Hindustani Indian migration from India, Suriname to the Netherlands. So that's a lot of generations.
Leah Roseman:
I was also interested to learn about Indian music, like South Asian music in the Netherlands, and I was doing some research on your guru and also, so you studied in Rotterdam, so it used to be called Codarts, the Rotterdam Conservator.
Avi Kishna:
It's still there. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
So now called Codarts, because I was looking in 1987, they established this Indian music department, but the World Music now is focusing on Turkish and Latin American. There's been a switch. Do you think that reflects interest or migration or is the South Asian music being taught more in different schools?
Avi Kishna:
Well, there are many layers to that, so I can only go into a couple of those layers. Indeed, the Indian Classical music has had, quite how you say that? It had quite a lot of things were going on at a certain moment, especially from the sixties, seventies until late nineties. There was a big, big community within the Indian classical artists and followers even. We didn't have the Instagram or social media followers, but actual physical followers who were either studying or just admirers of the music and a lot of platforms too, a lot of places. And we could play and perform and share our experiences. And there were a couple of, because it's a small country, it's a really close community, and if there aren't the right torch bearers per se as to say who don't take the lead in continuing it, then it fades away. And that's kind of happened now in the last couple of recent years.
And that you see, and that has its effect on Codarts where the whole faculty actually, yeah, it's even difficult to say it actually died down. It's non-existent, almost like a handful of students only left or eager enough or interested enough or motivated enough to go into that music. So it's partially of the people who were there and maybe didn't, how do you say that, share their experience enough to the next generation to pick it up, or the people who were in charge couldn't get enough people interested or motivated enough in this line of music, which is an unique thing as itself because this always has been a niche, especially in this country. So yeah, unfortunately it is not almost non-existent, and now it's just a couple of islands of musicians who are trying to keep it alive. Fortunately, so they are there and we are trying to either keep the name of our gurus or ancestors or lineage or the music itself alive as much as we can.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I wanted to ask you about some of your collaborations. And there's beautiful, I assuming it's improvisation with the dancer, Shailesh Bahoran. Yeah,
Avi Kishna:
Yeah. Working with Shailesh is like, I started working with him a couple of years ago. I had the opportunity through a mutual friend to work together, and that was a whole new dimension, a whole new universe that opened up to me, the experience of someone physically expressing on the spot, and not only expressing, but actually connecting with what you were trying to express on the spot to experience that. That really opened up my eyes into a whole new dimension of not just playing, but how do you say that? Yeah, getting into the emotion of playing what comes out of that. It's a whole different approach almost while we still as musicians, we can only do so much, but to combine it with what you see happening in front of you at the moment and the energy that it gives you back. Yes, it's a wonderful experience.
So I've been fortunate enough to work with this. To me, he's a boss. He's my younger brother, but he just won the Swan, that's the big prize here in the Netherlands, I don't know, maybe even, or in the dance world, dancing. So he's a theater maker and he's someone who grew up and develops himself on the streets with his break dance, hip hop, popping, locking. And the funny thing is, he's a Hindustani Indian guy, so the only thing that people associate us with in dancing is some Bhangra and stuff, and that's about it. So for him to going in completely into something different that's out of his culture or out of our culture, a cultural upbringing I should say, and going into that. So it's quite a unique thing. So I'm fortunate enough, I've been working with him and he is with company IRC. They're releasing or premiering a new piece called Creole, which also goes into the story of our heritage, like the sese mixing all the ethnicities coming together in one country, like what impact and effect does it has on culture and or on artistical expression even, or on artistical dialogues, which you have with different ethnicities, different vibes, different approaches. So they're premiering that, and again, fortunate enough to I was able to, or I collaborated on making the music for that theater piece as well. So very honored. My music is touring with that guy through the Netherlands the next couple of months.
Leah Roseman:
Very cool. Will you be playing live?
Avi Kishna:
No, this one is recorded. I have been doing that live a lot because that's the best way for me to experience the whole thing. But this is nice that at least your music lives on anyway. And yeah, we did a small tour a couple of years ago called Shakti, but a little bit on the topic of non-duality. Very interesting. And that was a live setting. So vocalist, Raj Mohan, and myself were doing the live music, so he was singing Indian classically bit fusion or on blend, and I try to do the same on my ser.
Leah Roseman:
Well, I'll be linking one of those videos to the show notes so people can check it out. And you have a collaboration with a handpan player, Deniz Kavafoglu, and there's a beautiful track While She Sleeps. I was wondering if we could include that or part of it.
Avi Kishna:
Sure. Funny thing is that's the, although I work with Deniz, the track While She Sleeps, I completely made myself, oh,
Leah Roseman:
Oh, okay. You're playing hand pan on that. Okay.
Avi Kishna:
Everybody plays handpan nowadays, right?
Leah Roseman:
I bought one too.
Avi Kishna:
There you go. It's a very nice, I love the, yeah, I think violin as well, right? The combination of violin together with the hand pan is really nice. So yeah, that's what we've been doing as well. The guy in particular, Deniz, he's awesome. He's a percussionist and from being a percussionist to play that instrument. So yeah, he makes it, again, the life element to be able to share that on stage with people, that's amazing to me. That makes my heart tick.
Leah Roseman:
You're about to hear an excerpt from Avi's composition While She Sleeps. (music)
You use hip hop beats in a lot of your music. Do you think it brings new listeners into classical Indian music?
Avi Kishna:
Yeah, well, no, not per se. I think it's just a way of expression for me. It's me trying to share people how I would sound like if, yeah, because that is me. I'm a bit of hip hop, I'm a bit of street music or popular music, but I'm a lot of Indian music too, so that's what I'm trying to share. Not as a, I don't like the term fusion, but more as a blend of different genres and trying to make it genre-less. I'm saying all weird words right now, but okay. I think, you know what I mean?
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, yeah. You do some cool things with your Soundscape Sessions. I was listening to Acceptance. Would that be something we could share a part of that?
Avi Kishna:
Oh yeah, definitely. I love doing that one. The idea was to eventually do some more meditative, more towards a meditation app kind of thing. We wanted to set up with a spoken word artist, and that was the initial thing. But hindsight, before we started to do the thing with the spoken word artist, because it was so filled with so many elements and so many sounds, and it brings you to so many different states within each tracks, we thought maybe this is okay, just like this fully instrumental. And to me it was really special to do because all the sound samples, all the outside noise and rain and sirens and voices are actually recorded here in my hood where I live. Outside, I went on walks, I actually went to kindergartens, and that sounds really creepy, standing with my microphone next to the elementary school with permission of the teachers. So I tried to, that was my first attempt to do combine live audio recording, like a sound or a sound recording or with my music. So I always try to work in threes. I dunno, that's how I'm programmed. So that's why I have the process of, and anticipation anticipating on what happens around you or what is going to happen in life or anticipation of love, because that's what the raga I use in that piece in particular, it's called Bagreshi which actually is called is a raga that's been developed to depict emotion of one lover, the moment as a lover that you are awaiting the arrival of your lover, something like that. So that's the anticipation part as well. Second part I have in the Soundscape Sessions is Realization. Realization that what you were anticipating on, that it actually happened, being aware of it. And the final stage is Acceptance. It is what it is. Whether what you've been waiting on still hasn't arrived or is there and you're fully into it and enjoying it in every kind of way. That's the part of acceptance. So I'm trying to, as you may hear it, then it's more like a laid back vibe, more kind of going towards the trendy, chill, lo-fi type of music. So that's what I've been trying to do, and everything with sounds and samples of made here are literally in and around my house.
Leah Roseman:
Next is an excerpt from Acceptance from Avi's Soundscape Sessions (music) . Now I found your yoga flow album on Bandcamp. I'm a big fan of Bandcamp. You should put your other stuff on there.
Avi Kishna:
A lot of people told me to do that! I'm just so reluctant in doing it. My girlfriend actually had to push me to redo my website last year because it was looking like something out of 1990. So I'm getting into, I'm really happy that I've just found out how to get the Spotify and title and all that thing's working. So yeah, we've tried to do that in recent years, and now we're slowly backtracking all the music on there as well. But I'm going to take you, yeah, I'm going to go into that for sure. You'll see me more on Bandcamp.
Leah Roseman:
Well, it's a way to support the artist directly, and I'm just a big fan of that.
Avi Kishna:
Thanks you for support.
Leah Roseman:
Hi. Just a short break from the episode, which I hope you're enjoying so far. If you want to check out over a hundred episodes you may have missed in addition to your podcast player or YouTube, I have an extensive website, leahroseman.com with show notes, transcripts, the complete catalog of episodes, and you can sign up there for my weekly newsletter to get access to Sneak Peeks of upcoming guests. Please do share your favorite episodes with your friends, follow me on social media and share my posts. And if you can spare a few dollars to help support the series, that would be amazing. And you can find that link in the show notes. I'm an independent podcaster and I really do need the help of my listeners. Now, back to the episode.
So I wanted to talk about your father and the kind of creative childhood you had.
Avi Kishna:
Yeah, my dad is for many people the first hero in your life. Yeah, he's the first hero in my life and my first kind of guru in the sense of musical gurus, not per se, the spiritual guru. Yeah, he's a musician, multidisciplinary artist. From the day I was born and aware at least to experience what was happening around me, I've been seeing him working on composing, arranging music towards painting, creating his own decor, art pieces which he can use in his own directed theater plays. So yeah, to me it was normal to be around amazingly creative person, entity in the form of my father. So I've been blessed, so everything, and I keep saying that, and not to sound too Indian or too heuristic or I owe everything to my dad, but I do owe everything I do musically to my dad a hundred percent sure.
He was one of the first to start playing tabla in Suriname, like classical tabla, because in Suriname, the music and the cultural didn't, yeah, it wasn't classical, it was folkloristic music happened a lot in Suriname, but Indian Classical music wasn't alive in Suriname at all. So he was one of the first people at that time who started learning, sarod, not sarod, tabla. And from that, he started learning himself like harmonium. And later, when he came to the Netherlands, he started actually in his mid thirties or early thirties, he started learning saxophone. So I woke up and fell asleep with him going in and out of tune on saxophone every day and going backstage on their performances and all that. So all credit to my dad.
Leah Roseman:
So he was involved with theater, what kind of theater?
Avi Kishna:
He rolled into that one, because he isn't a trained actor or anything, but from his drive to promote his own culture in a foreign country as Netherlands was to him, he started writing his own plays based on stories that he experienced or his family experienced, or he knows from his great aunts or uncles or dads. And so he made, in the start of his career as a theater maker, he made a lot of folkloristic sketches, art, folkloristic theater pieces and plays. And literally he developed into a more Indian classical stories, not so commonly told stories. We all know the Rama and or we know the Bhagavad Gita and the En Hamaharat, but there are so many more stories and tales of past times of Indian culture. So he started to develop that, and he now's like he's 75 and he's still working. He's still working on a new theater play based on just one part of the story between Ram and Sita. And he's actually working on it right now, so he's not stopping. So yeah, I've been fortunate enough to work with my dad on his theaters as well as a musician. He gave me the first opportunity to actually start thinking as a producer, not just making the music, but it has to add the sound to the moment or the story that's been performed on stage. So I've been fortunate enough to do that at a young age as well, when we first had the first personal computers in our homes, the Atari St or that, so from that time on, yeah, I followed him in his footsteps in that way.
Leah Roseman:
So what's it like in terms of the racism in the Netherlands and being part of that Indo-Surinamese community?
Avi Kishna:
Racism is here. There are different forms and layers of racism, but then again, it goes both ways because there are big communities that keep clinging to each other and just want to live within each other's bubble in a foreign country. Well then you going to instigate some forms of racism, always, in my opinion. So in that sense. But then again, this country, it has very many forms of institutionalized racism, and you can blame it because this is one of the only country which kept on going with slavery when all the other countries said no. And Holland and the Netherlands at that time was one of the last countries that even increased their profits in the last couple of years of slavery before they came to a bargain with the British and found my ancestors to do some labor for them in Suriname and other places. And those traces are still to be found here. I'm fortunate enough now to work in an organization called the Music Center Southeast of Amsterdam, and through that, I'm getting to be quite active within the social domain it's called. So I'm actually trying to connect the people of all those different ethnicities within the world of art or music, because it's needed. And fortunately, there are a lot of people who are speaking up who are actually working with education within fields of education, within the fields of political system.
Even within the media, we have our first couple of non Dutch channels move it like TV channels. So we have our new Channel X and our Black channel and our cultural programs, and there are people who are actually researching to for lost names of European composers who weren't necessarily white. And so there are a lot of good things that are happening around here as well. So yeah, racism is alive and that's everywhere. And in my maybe little bit dark view, it will never go away. But fortunately, we have a lot of people who are speaking up more, reaching more people, speaking up louder. So it resonates with more people or with a wider audience. There are more people like you who give people like me the space to share their ideas and thoughts. And as you said, you reach a younger audience as you first expected.
So those things are needed to keep the whole non racism ideology alive. But, and being an Surinamese Indian guy in the Netherlands, I'm not going to say my life was heavy and no. Yeah, it was. But yeah, I don't have a lot of authentic Dutch friends in that sense. I have a lot of people who I know and I get along with, even I collaborate with a lot of white or authentic Dutch people, but I'm not seen as Dutch. And when I go to Suriname, I know a lot of Surinamese people, but I'm not seen as Surinamese. Going to India, I know a lot of Indian people, but I'm not seen as Indian. So wherever I go, I'm not seen as theirs. So I'm just being mine as much as possible.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I was curious about that intersection of cultures. Yeah. So you have traveled to India?
Avi Kishna:
Yeah, oh yeah. I had to and was blessed enough to be able to visit India multiple times. Now, I haven't been to India for a while now as well. That has to do with two things. One, my personal life didn't give me the opportunity to go at a certain time. And when it did, then the political climate in India started changing a lot, and not necessarily in a way that attracts me to feel welcomed in that country as much as I used to, But that's a topic I don't know too much about to go into that. But it doesn't feel okay to me in these times. And a lot of people may disagree or not. We don't need more nationalism, we need more erasing all the lines and borders and all those things, and we need to find, allow ourselves to be different and be different together. It's so easy. But that's maybe another podcast or, I dunno, but yeah, no, the movement within India is for me too nationalistic. And you see that pretty much in more countries around the world, that there's a shift going on in the political climate, economical climate, social climate. It's not nice.
Leah Roseman:
Well, in your country of the Netherlands as well now.
Avi Kishna:
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Even here, it's not nice, but I've been thinking to move out of the city life for a long time, find my own place either in somewhere south of France, Spain, Portugal, and happily go off grid and share my knowledge from there, and have good memories, create great memories, do my own gardening, which I'm already starting here and anyway, and I can make music from there and share it all the world. And I don't even have to move the woods where I would be at in a couple of years if it's up to me.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, well, I guess as an EU citizen, you can, yeah.
So if we could go back to when you were 11 and you discovered the sarod and your guru.
Avi Kishna:
Yeah, the nice thing to say that I was like Columbus, who discovered America, but no, the sarod was already there and it found me, and that's really how I see it without trying to sound too yogi- istic, but I really feel like that the sarod, it allowed me to play it. That sounds really crazy, but it is. Yeah, maybe you felt the same. How did you start violin? You could have chosen all the other instruments that were in the orchestra, for example, but you didn't choose it per se. I believe it came to you. I think that's the experience that many musicians have. I'm not that unique in that way. So in that sense, yeah, sarod found me and I was struck by the first string that I first stroke of the strings that my guruji at that moment played. And something told me, I had to say to my mom that really, I want to learn this. I need to learn this. I was playing cello at that time. I did a little bit of piano and a little bit of sitar. But no, this is the first instrument that I really had. Okay, I really need to play this.
Leah Roseman:
Just a quick break from this episode to point out that we're in Season Four, and you may have missed more than a hundred episodes with a fascinating diversity of musicians. If you like South Asian music, you will like my episodes with the bansuri player Milind Date and with sitar and tabla player, Mohamed Assani. Please check out the complete catalog of episodes, which are linked in the description. Now, back to the episode.
How do you pronounce his name?
Avi Kishna:
If you really want to go call Calcutta Indian Kaustuv Ray, but he has a nickname which he's more commonly known by in the musical world, like Gungun, Gungunda, or Gungundada. But Kaustuv Ray is actually his name.
Leah Roseman:
What kind of memories do you have of those early lessons or?
Avi Kishna:
Pain and torture! No, yeah, that's the thing I realized, of course later in my life, how special his teachings actually were because he actually comes from a lineage which was very strict and very heuristic and very, this is the way you play. And he already, as a person wasn't like that. He as a person, the fact that he was in the Netherlands as an Indian artist is not that crazy, but crazy enough. So that made him different in his approach to his teaching. He was very structured, he was very organized. I still have so many written lessons of him because it's all been done verbally. So he actually was writing all the different compositions or practices or exercises. So he was very structured in that sense, very patient and very blunt, very outspoken.
But to me, that's a perfect combination of a good teacher, someone who you can respect enough to take all the bullshit from, take all the hammering and all the torture and sit straight, sit this, don't play all those things like you need that, but you need a friend and a companion as well. And he became more of a friend and a companion during the time. Of course, I was young as a kid, and as I grow older, I started talking to him more because the first five years I didn't say anything more than Guruji and thank you and bye, that's it, or How do you play this? But later on, yeah, you started being actually a good friend and not just a guide in life, not just a guide in music, but a guide in life more so, yeah, I keep saying that to many people because he passed away a couple of years ago, five years ago.
I've never had the intensity and the dynamics of the conversation I had with him, I never had with anyone else in my life up till now. So what is quite uncommon for a sarod student as I still am, to not go and search for another Guruji, I have absolutely no need or urge to do that. Having had my guru in my life for such a big span of my life taught me so many things on so many levels. I really need to learn a lot of things as we all can. As a musician, we can always learn a lot of things, but I don't really feel, per se that I need to have that from another guru type of person. I love to learn a lot, but I think the best way to learn is to do and to do with a lot of good people as well.
So every artist that I know that's at the top, A class level or a better level or higher experience level than I am, I love to work with you. Let me work with you because that's how I learned you are my guru at that time. Like Shailesh, for example, the dancer we've been talking about at that time, those moments that we interacted, we had our jam sessions at that time. He was my guru. I might've been the same to him. I will never see myself like that, but because that's where you learn, that's where you feel, that's where you explore. That's where you feel, that's where you enjoy. That's where you feel the pain of not doing it right, or not coming to that emotion or not that. Yeah. So the person that's my guru was, is too special of me to replace him in another person. That feels weird to me. Suddenly I have another dad. No, no. If my dad is gone, he's gone.
Leah Roseman:
And he's taught vocal singing as well. Yeah. Did you do that with him at all?
Avi Kishna:
Yeah, for one lesson. And then he said, you should never sing again.
Leah Roseman:
Really?
Avi Kishna:
Yeah, because at that time I was going through, my voice was changing and that always stick to me, and I never dared to open my mouth again.
Leah Roseman:
That's too bad.
Avi Kishna:
Apart from in the shower.
Recently though, last year for the first time that I dared to record my voice again, and that was for maybe something nice to talk about, our new art collection, Raga Reflections.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, let's talk about that because you're an entrepreneur and you've had different projects.
Avi Kishna:
I don't like the sound of the word entrepreneur, but it is what it is. But yeah, I am try to not be the trend follower in that sense, but I like to see what applying different developments within those trends, how you can apply that to your form of art or music in this way. So digital art, AI, all those things we just trying to find out as musicians if when you combine it with your music on using digital apps and stuff. Yeah. I'm just trying to figure out how that works as goes for putting words into art and putting art into music. See how that works. So what I tried to do or what I actually did not try to do what I actually did a little bit over a year ago, I just started talking to our new friend, Chat GPT, and I asked him, okay, if this is the theoretical background of this rug in particular color, what would be the explanation in this type of emotion?
And then based on that, I started to craft some poetry poems out of it, composed a little bit of pure sarod music. So just the sound of the sarod, either it's sampled looped or whatever, but it's just the sound of the sarod, nothing else. And so combined the poetry with the soundtrack or the soundscape of the sarod combined with digital art piece is like what we call now Raga Reflection. So I just made a selection of a couple of ragas because there's so many, and they're all registered, and maybe if you read about or want to read about the Indian classical ragas, like Northern Indian and Saudi Indian, there's a whole encyclopedia about it.
So there have been made paintings on the ragas, which called Ragmala paintings. So my idea was, okay, let's upgrade those paintings, or at least try to make a 2023/4 version of it and see how it works. Because nowadays everybody wants to do a remake of everything, all the movies, all the stories, all the books. After all the music even has have been getting the remake. So I try to remake some of the ragmala paintings and called it Raga Reflection. And I chose the word reflection because it's not actual raga, but it's a reflection of the raga. So not to kick anyone's shins on the puristic level, because people are very particular about their raga history and all that.
Leah Roseman:
So I listened to some of that. I was curious, the artwork then, is that AI generated for the merch and all that?
Avi Kishna:
That's AI generated based on some info and prompts. I gave the, so what I first, the process was I actually did a whole research, of course, I used chat GPT, but you have to do the input, otherwise chatGPT just blows out something. So yeah, actually quite some time spending to get the right information out of chatGPT and then made the curated selection of what to use in that whole picture. So now the idea is we started with the first three art pieces, and we're only going to do up till now. That's the plan for now, going to do a whole selection of nine art pieces, not the 174 or 47 that are there, but just nine and make a story, make some music, and just see if we can get, yeah, this is maybe the first thing that I'm really trying to reach an audience that we as Indian classical musicians haven't reached before.
So this is maybe my first ever attempt to see, okay, what's out there and how can we reach those people? So based on that collection, we actually made NFTs going into the trend, and based on the NFTs, people can actually buy those three current art pieces that are out there for one Ethereum piece. And we made a whole web shop now. So we are trying to sell, and actually people are buying it, and I'm wearing it, and I'm not going into stores anymore. I'm just printing my own clothes now and being my own banner, so to speak.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, yeah. I took a look at the merch and I listened to some of the music.
Avi Kishna:
Now that I have three Raga Reflections out, one is based on Bhairavi. One is based on one of my favorite rags, Malkauns, like night mood, and one is Darbari, the rag of the royalties. So yeah, that's where I took, that's my starting point. And from that, we did what we did.
Leah Roseman:
You're about to hear Darbari from Avi's Raga Reflections series. Please check out the link to his website in the description of this podcast. (music)
So you do have this background in sales and marketing.
Avi Kishna:
Yeah, yeah, it was kind of because in my early twenties I came to a certain point because I came to Codarts at a young age. At a young age, I was really, a lot of people put a lot of air, a lot of feathers up my, so I knew I could do anything I want within the world of art and music. I would be okay anyway, but I didn't know anything about the world around me as much. I was living in that bubble of being on my father's theater pieces, going on their shows, doing all the study with my guru and Codarts. So that was my bubble. So I kind of wanted to prove myself and the world around me. I can sustain and I can excel even in the materialistic world as we live in. So I did. I started in finance, even started up some companies and I failed, and then I slowly got into sales, very simple, selling whatever you can imagine, legit, into actually building up sales teams and sales companies and doing big actually marketing campaigns for a lot of big brands.
And at a certain point, I was married at that time, my relationship broke and collapsed because that happens if you focus just on the materialistic side and don't put any attention into your relationship. So it broke and my motivation broke, and there was no passion anymore to do so. So I stopped that whole entrepreneurial, that whole organization, which I actually proven myself quite a lot, that what I can do within this system. And now I'm just picking up bits and pieces and trying to put it in, sharing the skills with the community, kids talents, artistic endeavors, projects. We put up a foundation to support in different ways from project support, media support. And to me, it didn't have any in any kind of way. It came close in the financial rewards of what I gained in my sales and marketing time, because that was crazy.
But the reward, I feel after every day, at the end of every day with experiences of what I shared with the people now, like all the kids that you see this milestone when you share your art classes, all the teachers who are happy, who can be focused better on teaching their classes, all the projects that I can help people do what they want and can do best. That's so rewarding in so many ways, much more than that for me. Another way of realizing and accepting the definition of success can be quite different than what we all conditioned to see what success is. So that's pretty much what I'm experiencing in my recent years. Now.
Leah Roseman:
Were you still playing music during that time when you're so busy in the corporate world?
Avi Kishna:
No. No. And that's where I felt so lost. That was the most financial successful time I ever had in my life. But I wasn't as close as, that wasn't me. I was as far from myself as I could be at that time. So yeah, because I had to develop or actually get trained to have a certain mentality or focus or mindset that wouldn't allow me to fully tap into my creativity or tap into my musicality more. So, yeah, no, it was 10 years of being fully focused on going into all the profits.
Leah Roseman:
So Avi, this organization you referred to where you're working with children, what is that?
Avi Kishna:
No, a couple of years ago we started up a foundation with a collective within the community, some volunteers, people who still volunteer for the foundation with the idea of supporting artists talents like myself, because there are a lot of very talented people around there. Not that I'm so talented, but people with a lot of skills, talents, and everything, but they don't have the surrounding or the backing or the big company or the patons around them to support them. And yeah, I've had the opportunity to learn a lot from big management moguls and all those people. So why not share it with people who don't have that? So that's what we try to do and still do. And now we are connected through that. Me personally as well connected to an organization called the Music School of Amsterdam, like a music center of Amsterdam. And what they do is actually people like kids from elementary school, so from, I dunno in the grades how you have that in the us but from on elementary school, they give them a couple of times a week, once a week, how do you say that?
Orchestra classes. So they teach them either violin, cello, trombone, or all the different instruments. And then once a week they come together as an orchestra within the class. So as part of that organization, just supporting the teachers, so enabling them to focus more on the teaching and not be too much involved with all the fuss around it. So to support them in that in other way, in other sense, I'm trying to connect the kids more with the community so it gets a more community thing than just on the schools to attract partners within the community, like local initiatives. There are a lot of different initiatives and community initiatives going around here, like NGO type of organizations. But yeah, that's a thing in the Netherlands, a lot of islands, but they don't come together. So my job recently has started, I started is to bring all those people together with music.
So that's pretty much where I spend 20, 30% of my weekly time with quite a lot, actually. This is getting more and more, but it's something I can support. It's something I always wanted to do anyway, to share the experience, share the knowledge, and enable people to actually make music. And that music has to be a basic thing, basic right, basic element in any school. So fortunately with this organization, I am able to do that. And yeah, I can't wait to do more. It's been, the last couple of months has been quite intense. But yeah, bringing on anything for the kids in the community, especially the kids where if you have a little bit of understanding of the community, where I live in the neighborhood where I live in or the part of Amsterdam is, it's the most mixed area. Maybe I'm convinced to say enough of Europe, like 189 different ethnicities walking around this area of Amsterdam. So that's crazy. So lot of flavors, a lot of different smells and scents and a lot of different ideas on life and approaches to life, but a lot of things happening together as well.
And obviously most parts in Europe, as you may know, where the ethnicities are more mixed than it is authentic or you said the original Dutch, I don't know even what original Dutch is, it's more of a lower income, generally speaking. So in that sense, yeah, our parents had to pay quite some money for us to study the music. And most of the parents in the communities and neighborhoods where I live in or where I'm surrounded in, don't have that. And so we need help from organizations that I'm allowed, that I'm able to work with now. So I'm very fortunate that I'm able to do that now.
Leah Roseman:
Wonderful. Well thanks. Just to close this out, if you could reflect, I listened to quite a bit of your music before we talk today. I find it's very spacious music, and I'm wondering, I think you have kind of a spacious mind. Did that come with the training or with changes in your life?
Avi Kishna:
My guru used to say to me always like, Avi Avinaj, that's how he used to call me. You're way too intuitive. So that's all I can say about that. I really had to learn, and I'm still learning to be grounded enough in the sense of, yeah, I'm very much an earthy person in that sense, but I'm very much into the ether as well. And I dunno, maybe that's the stars I'm born under or I dunno.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. Well thanks very much for this today.
Avi Kishna:
Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Pleased to share this with your friends and check out episodes you may have missed at Leahroseman.com. If you could buy me a coffee to support the series, that would be wonderful. The link is in the description. Have a wonderful week.
