Rajna Swaminathan - Part 5

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 169: Rajna Swaminathan - Part 5

In this week’s episode, we talk to Rajna Swaminathan about her collaborations, conventions in Indian classical music, and how improvisation has affected her compositional process. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Rajna Swaminathan, check her out here: https://www.rajnaswaminathan.com/. This episode was originally recorded in January 2024.

This podcast is made possible in part by a grant from the California Arts Council and generous donors, like you. Want to support For Good Measure and E4TT? Make a tax-deductible donation or sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the podcast!

Intro music: “Trifolium” by Gabriela Ortiz, performed by E4TT (Ilana Blumberg, violin; Abigail Monroe, cello; Margaret Halbig, piano),  as part of “Below the Surface: Music by Women Composers,” January 29, 2022
Outro music: “Lake Turkana” by Marcus Norris, performed by E4TT (Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Alchemy,” October 15, 2021

Transcription courtesy of Otter.ai.
Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1903729/episodes/17691902

Producer, Host, and E4TT co-founder: Nanette McGuinness
Co-producer and Audio Engineer: Stephanie M. Neumann
Podcast Cover Art: Brennan Stokes

Interns: Renata Volchinskaya, Sam Mason, Yoyo Hung-Yu Lin

Chapters

• 0:22 In this week's episode, we continue our conversation with Rajna Swaminathan, who we spoke to in January 2024.
• 0:30 You work in the realm of collective improvisation. Can you talk about that and what role improvisation plays in your compositional process and some of the ways that you fuse composition and performance?
• 5:27 Yeah, and so that's more of a kind of a jazz context. How would you translate that, if you were doing, say, improvisational composition for classical chamber music? Or would it be very similar.
• 7:36 What do you do about... in terms of the the pitch realm? Because the scales and pitches and spaces between the notes are different in the...

Transcript

Nanette McGuinness  00:00

[INTRO MUSIC] Welcome to For Good Measure, an interview series celebrating diverse composers and other creative artists sponsored by a grant from the California Arts Council. I'm Nanette McGuinness, Artistic Executive Director of Ensemble for These Times. In this week's episode, we continue our conversation with Rajna Swaminathan, who we spoke to in January 2024. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS]

Nanette McGuinness  00:30

You work in the realm of collective improvisation. Can you talk about that and what role improvisation plays in your compositional process and some of the ways that you fuse composition and performance?

Rajna Swaminathan  00:45

Sure, yeah, I think, you know, improvisation is central to the kind of music that I make. I was first, I think, a composer for improvisers, before I even ventured into composing in a through-composed way. I think it's been so central because mrudangam music is an improvised music; jazz is improvised. There's a lot of resonances between those two traditions, and I think it's just very central to who I am as a musician to be able to improvise and to have that be a way of getting to know yourself as well as getting to know the world and other musics and other people. So I often do find a way to center that in in the music that I write. So in 2013 I started this group called RAJAS, which I had mentioned as a kind of way to, well, figure out how to situate the mrudangam in an ensemble context that wasn't the Carnatic one. It started with just open forms that were intended for improvisation, often ones that explored polyrhythms, which was something I was really curious about, because those, they sort of exist in Indian music, but it's a little different. So I was studying a lot about kind of Afro Cuban rhythm and West African approaches and how that had found its way into jazz. And I just found a lot of depth in pursuing that curiosity, because it does open up different ways of listening, and it sort of forced me to expand my perspective on how I hear and sort of listen to music actively as an improviser, and otherwise. So I try to center that, usually, even in even in the work that I've written for for classical musicians, it ends up being a major component. I think more recently, I've thought of it in terms of memory, maybe, maybe it's not an accident that this is coming up for me some years after I've sort of taken a step back from the Carnatic music world, because things do sort of, I feel like I'm experiencing some kind of resurgence of things, which is that it's no longer that I'm actively engaged with this music, but now just these fragments of memory are coming through. And what's beautiful about the memory is that it's creative. It's not just about reproducing something that you heard. It's actually about listening to something that has been in your body and has been swimming around in the depths for some time and has been growing with you almost. So it feels very personal, but also it feels like it connects you to a place in time, in the past or or in the future, whatever it is. 

Nanette McGuinness  03:43

[laughs]

Rajna Swaminathan  03:45

There's a kind of dynamic nature to it, and so I've been exploring that in a lot of my compositions recently. But, but in some ways, it's been part of how I approach improvisation interculturally anyway, because I've never really been interested in, you know, like I work with a lot of jazz musicians, I'm never going to them and saying, here's the authentic way to play this raga, the writing a sort of melodic contour or rhythmic idea, and I give it to them, and I want them to do what feels good with it for them, so that I learn more about what this contour can be in the world, and maybe it evokes certain memories for them, or it evokes a certain kind of approach for them. And I'm more curious about learning about that than I am in imposing a certain kind of ornament or certain kind of like inflection onto onto the musical material. I mean, there's times when I do pursue that kind of specificity, but I think more of the curiosity is around: "Okay, what do you do with this?" And how do we come together around this musical idea and allow our perspectives on it to coexist both my perhaps very specific memory. That and your like, more recent engagement with it and whatever it evokes for you, and to learn together about this form and really see it from multiple perspectives, and improvisation is just kind of the best way to do that, because it it sometimes it allows you to bring things forward that you don't know are there.

Nanette McGuinness  05:22

Yeah, no, that's true. Yeah, and so that's more of a kind of a jazz context. How would you translate that, if you were doing, say, improvisational composition for classical chamber music? Or would it be very similar.

Rajna Swaminathan  05:42

There are some similarities. I think the only difference, the only main difference, I guess I see, is the level of notation involved, or the kind of specificity of notation involved. As far as you know what, what mentors in the classical music scene have told me they're like, "You just have to be really specific about duration." And it's taught me a lot, you know, it's, it's taught me a lot about things that we might assume otherwise, or that we can rely on a kind of shared language, and when that doesn't necessarily exist, to be able to conjure that kind of specificity and say, "Actually, no, it's this kind of length, this kind of tempo, this kind of dynamic." You know, and coming up with language for that, whether it's relying on standard notational practices or or adding some text to help a performer know what I'm talking about, so that it's not just, you know, completely open, but it's, it's sort of open within a certain set of boundaries. And, you know, I think notationally speaking, a lot of it ends up looking kind of like box notation with with these note palettes, or perhaps a phrase that I will offer some some kind of language to help them approach it again. More recently, I've been drawing on the performers memory also, and trying to get them to meet me somewhere with what they bring to it. I've just been trying various various things. Sometimes graphics help orient an ensemble.

Nanette McGuinness  07:26

Sure, sure. Yeah. So the nuts and bolts involve boxes and graphs, and occasionally staff, you know, staff, paper, whatever. What do you do about in terms of the the pitch realm? Because the scales and pitches and spaces between the notes are different in the...

Rajna Swaminathan  07:46

Well, I think that's, you know, I don't to me, that's, I guess, less important, partly, there's, there's some myth around Indian music being microtonal, which is, [laughs] it's not really microtonal... [laughs]

Nanette McGuinness  08:04

[laughs] 

Rajna Swaminathan  08:04

It moves in the space between tones, but it still lands on a pitch, or it works within these discrete pitches. It's in the sense that it's different from like maqam traditions, where they actually land on a note that might be between, like the notes of the keyboard, right? 

Nanette McGuinness  08:04

Right. 

Rajna Swaminathan  08:07

In this case, the tunings might be slightly different. And I'm not totally educated on exactly what the tunings are, so I just deal with the equal temperament when, when I need to. 

Nanette McGuinness  08:35

[laughs] 

Rajna Swaminathan  08:35

And again, it's not, it's not so important for me that, like, we get stuck on that, because I'm not looking for an authentic reproduction of something that's Indian classical music, but I'm looking to exist in that, in between space and so whatever microtonality is natural, I try to find, you know, a space for that, I guess, for the ways that people interpret it, rather than trying to specify exactly what it is.

Nanette McGuinness  09:10

Right. So that makes it easier to live in that liminal space, if you will.

Rajna Swaminathan  09:16

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's just it opens up more possibilities for a piece, for people to bring their own understandings to it.

Nanette McGuinness  09:27

Right. And so that's how you incorporate the improvisation into the classical space as well.

Rajna Swaminathan  09:33

Yeah, I mean, and there's degrees, right? I think there's sometimes things are quite open, and other times, you know, they're open within certain restrictions. It sort of depends on the context. And I think I've been trying to see how far I can push it.

Nanette McGuinness  09:52

Yeah, why not, right? [laughs] That's the whole point of being creative, is to see what happens if you go to the edges.

Rajna Swaminathan  09:59

Absolutely, and sometimes it's easier when I know the performer or like I'm working with a soloist, then I can have a dialog with them. If it's not so easy to have that conversation, then I need to make sure it's in some specific form of notation, so that, you know...

Nanette McGuinness  10:18

Yeah. 

Rajna Swaminathan  10:20

Whatever happens can be acceptable within certain possibilities. It's been a learning curve for me, honestly, because it just sometimes it works well, sometimes I'm just like, "Oh, okay, that's what happens when I do that." [laughs] So it's been just, it's been fun to kind of experiment with that. [laughs]

Nanette McGuinness  10:37

Yeah, so part of it is what you've learned about how to work with other performers and composers, and what communications are successful, and what perhaps lead to interesting results that you didn't intend but you like, and what are just like leaving you scratching your head.

Rajna Swaminathan  10:55

Yeah, yeah. 

Nanette McGuinness  10:56

[laughs] 

Rajna Swaminathan  10:56

But so far I've had, you know, good experiences with everybody who's played my music, they've been open and curious and interested in that kind of dialog.

Nanette McGuinness  11:07

Yeah, I think they would need to be, you know, just because if they were going to step into that world. 

Rajna Swaminathan  11:15

Yeah. 

Nanette McGuinness  11:15

[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure, and a special thank you to our guest, Rajna Swaminathan, for joining us today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast by clicking on the subscribe button and support us by sharing it with your friends, posting about it on social media, and leaving us a rating and a review. To learn more about E4TT, our concert season online and in the Bay Area, or to make a tax-deductible donation, please visit us at e4tt.org. This podcast is made possible in part by a grant from the California Arts Council and generous donors like you. For Good Measure is produced by Nanette McGuinness and Ensemble for These Times and design by Brennan Stokes, with special thanks to co-producer and audio engineer Stephanie M. Neumann. Remember to keep supporting equity in the arts and tune in next week, "for good measure." [OUTRO MUSIC ENDS]