Rajna Swaminathan - Part 8

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 172: Rajna Swaminathan - Part 8

In this week’s episode, we talk to Rajna Swaminathan about how her identity and background influenced her path and her advice for emerging composers. 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/17691980

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 How has your identity and how has your background played a role in your path? We've heard how it's influenced your compositions, to some extent. But let's see if you can kind of focus on this one for a little bit for our listeners.
• 8:14 What advice would you give to composers who are seeking to incorporate themes and concepts of identity and culture into their works?

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

How has your identity and how has your background played a role in your path? We've heard it how it's influenced your compositions, to some extent. But let's see if you can kind of focus on this one for a little bit for our listeners.

Rajna Swaminathan  00:45

Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think I was really curious about, you know, what it means to be an Indian-American, and to kind of zoom out a bit, just South Asian-American, and what, you know, what other kinds of music have been created in the diaspora. I've just tried to open myself up to that more recently. You know, because I think when you're in Indian classical music, there's a there's a lot of elitism that's built into that music as as I'm sure there is in all forms of music that calls them call themselves "classical."

Nanette McGuinness  01:24

[laughs] Right.

Rajna Swaminathan  01:24

And in India, it's quite nefarious because it's connected to caste.

Nanette McGuinness  01:28

Yeah. 

Rajna Swaminathan  01:31

I've wanted for a long time to figure out, what are those things that I can't even sense within myself, that are actually about caste that, you know, in the ways that it manifests in esthetics. 

Nanette McGuinness  01:44

Yeah.

Rajna Swaminathan  01:45

And one, one way that I've learned to do that, I would say, from, from my, my best friend and closest collaborator Ganavya, who's a vocalist and composer and scholar, and who was actually the the second student at Harvard right...

Nanette McGuinness  02:01

Right

Rajna Swaminathan  02:04

...because she has been, you know, she, like me, came from the Carnatic music scene, and it's similarly like a musical family. But she also has this background in this devotional style of music called the Varkari Sampraday. And you know, it might be, I don't really believe in all these designations, but you might call it a folk music or a kind of sacred music, and it just has such a different vocal style. And I when I met her now, I guess eight years ago, I just remember being so drawn into that as a possibility, and when we started working together, it really forced me to contend with, "Okay, my music is not really about combining Indian classical music with jazz" or something - it's really about understanding this broader identity that has so many kinds of musical practices embedded within it. And it also extends to the fact that I grew up listening to Bollywood music, and, you know, my parents would almost always talk about, like, the Indian classical influences on Bollywood music, but, but, you know, as I thought about it as an adult, I was like, well, there's actually so much in there: there's elements of jazz, there's elements of classical music, you know, Western classical music. There's elements of, you know, different South Asian folk music traditions. There is Indian classical music elements in it. But the beautiful thing about that music is that it combines all of them and integrates all of them. So working with Ganavya really created this new set of conversations, which made the music less about, like trying to, you know, bring these abstract concepts together, and more about understanding this, like broader South Asian sensibility, which permeates all different kinds of music from that part of the world. And I've been trying to think a little bit more about it recently, because I find myself in community with people who are, who are not from an Indian classical music background, but who you know, for instance, DJ Rekha, who's you know, whose background is not only as a DJ, but in Bhangra, that as a as a community binding force. And, you know, I think there's, there's so many artists like that in the South Asian scene that, you know, and it's, it's hard to point to all of them right now, but that, I think I find myself needing to interface with and think about as being in community with the music that I make. So in terms of that, I think I've really needed to step outside of my, like, Indian classical training and think more about these broader historical encounters that even Indian classical music was shaped by. It was only labeled the classical music in the early 20th century when needed a place in the kind of political landscape. But before that, it was, you know, combinations of different communities coming together and different kind of community aesthetics coming together. So I find myself wanting to return to that as I think, in these diasporic terms. And the other thing is, you know, being a queer artist, thinking through my identity, not that queerness needs to have its own aesthetic, but, you know, living a queer life brings a kind of open perspective on to the forms that we inherit. I think we're...it explains a lot about, even my engagement with Carnatic music, because I was always kind of curious about these rhythmically ambiguous things. I was not always moved by incredibly mathematically...

Nanette McGuinness  06:03

Precise

Rajna Swaminathan  06:05

Precise music. I was almost always curious about the in betweens

Nanette McGuinness  06:08

Yeah. 

Rajna Swaminathan  06:08

And it makes sense. In retrospect, I'm like, "Okay, well, that that makes sense." I had a very kind of queer approach to rhythm, and continue to have that curiosity, you know, and I write about it in my dissertation in terms of queer temporality, and thinking about not only multiplicity in terms of perspective, which is a very intercultural kind of thing, but but really noticing that things are always in flux and things are always dynamic, and learning how to listen for that movement, and not always being in a position of just trying to categorize or, you know, lay things down in a firm way, but really allowing things to be fluid, and connecting that with my queerness, I think, was something that I was able to do in the process of working on my PhD, because there's so many queer scholars who have written about this. You know, I just found myself really resonating with that and thinking, "Okay, well, there's, there's clear applications of this to music." And specifically to my own personal journey with music. You know, whether it's being between genres and traditions or literally just having a curiosity about the in betweens musically, I think that, for me, it sort of feels very integrated to think about it from the perspective of being a queer artist and wanting to question those minds and boundaries.

Nanette McGuinness  07:42

Right, in terms of fluidity and the temporality and all that. That makes sense, actually, and it even fits how this interview has flown, because at each point you're usually slightly right where I'm about to go with you anyway, which is wonderful. It's been an interesting collaborative process. I mean, I still have a few more questions for you, but it's been a very interesting flow for doing this interview, and very enjoyable as far as it goes on my end. 

Rajna Swaminathan  08:10

[laughs] 

Nanette McGuinness  08:11

What advice would you give to composers who are seeking to incorporate themes and concepts of identity and culture into their works?

Rajna Swaminathan  08:24

Sure. I think my one piece of advice, which is something I've learned over time, is to not force it. I think the more that you try to force something to happen, the less likely it is to happen in a meaningful way. And I think there's ways that I mean I've learned from my collaborators that just living your life and paying attention to things, just in your lived experience, and noticing how they manifest in your creative work, can be a way of orienting it towards that. It doesn't have to be like a one to one relationship, where you can clearly, you know, explain what is, what is what in a piece. And I find myself in this situation always because, you know, people do want me to explain my work or justify it, or say why, you know, and I'm not saying that your questions are doing this. In fact, I think, if anything, your questions are allowing me to to, you know, say exactly why. I don't think that needs to happen, because we're always in flux. And you know what I say to you today is going to be different if we speak like, a year or two from now? 

Nanette McGuinness  09:39

Absolutely. 

Rajna Swaminathan  09:40

So I don't see the purpose of fixing it. I don't see any purpose in saying, Well, this is the Indian part of my work, and this is the Western part of my work, because even those, those categories are are in flux, you know, and have informed each other over the years, over the centuries, I should say. And so I think my advice, in general, maybe this, this is obviously probably pertinent for young, female and queer composers, but, but to any composer, I'd say, who's who's trying to deal with their identity, is to allow it to come forward in ways that maybe you don't understand yet, and maybe you'll listen back a couple years from now, and it'll make sense in a different way, and to allow that depth to come through. There's this Martinique and poet philosopher whose work I really enjoy, Édouard Glissant, and he talks about it as the right to opacity, um, because there are all these colonial frameworks that make us feel like we need to be intelligible to the, you know, what is usually defined as a kind of white gaze, or like a white framework. 

Nanette McGuinness  10:58

Right. 

Rajna Swaminathan  11:00

You know, or a kind of framework that wants to taxonomize, and his whole point is, well, actually maybe lean into your right to not be intelligible, into your right to be mysterious and to maybe not even have those things clearly defined for yourself. Because sometimes the most meaningful and deep kinds of experiences come from that - come from not knowing.

Nanette McGuinness  11:27

mmhmm...the mystery.

Rajna Swaminathan  11:30

Right. And so that's sort of general advice in saying "don't force it" - to also allow things you don't know to come through.

Nanette McGuinness  11:40

That's true. When one forces things, they never work. You know, they really don't, but what you were saying about the mysterious or the unnamed or the non-categorized? My mom is an artist, and for years she wouldn't put titles on her pieces. She refused because she said it would - and she's right - that it would focus the viewers expectations on the piece, and they would see it in a certain way. And she didn't want that. So it was, it was interesting. So the unfathomable becomes or stays that way. Instead of just, you know, you put a stamp on something and say, "Okay, this is about that." So we'll move on now...

Rajna Swaminathan  12:26

...from the conversation a bit.

Nanette McGuinness  12:30

Yeah...I think so, or at least it constricts it, if nothing else.

Rajna Swaminathan  12:34

Yeah. 

Nanette McGuinness  12:34

[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 www.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]