[Assam] London Museum exhibition featuring Assam

[Rehanna Kheshgi]

Hello everyone, ki khobor?

I am an ethnomusicology masters student at the School of Oriental and 
African Studies (SOAS) in London, and my dissertation research is focused on 
Bihu as celebrated in Assam and abroad.  I attended the London Rongali Bihu 
festival this year and was very warmly welcomed.

I am now writing to formally invite anyone with an interest in and/or 
knowlege of Assamese culture to participate in a community meeting at the 
Horniman Museum to discuss plans for the Assam section of the museum's 
upcoming exhibition:  Utsavam - Music from India.  I will present film 
footage taken by the museum in Majuli featuring different kinds of bihu 
dance as well as sattriya dance and lok geet to provoke discussion about the 
importance of celebrating Assamese culture abroad and to generate ideas for 
community participation in the upcoming exhibition.

The community meeting will take place at the Horniman Museum on
Saturday, the 21st of July from 2:00pm to 4:00pm.

The Horniman Museum is located at:
100 London Road
Forest Hill
London  SE23 3PQ

A map can be found at http://www.horniman.ac.uk/visiting/getting.php

If you are interested in attending, please let me know either by email 
(rebuena at hotmail.com) or by phone (07872187634) so we can make sure there 
are enough refreshments for everyone!  And please don't hesitate to contact 
me if you have any questions or any information that might be useful to me 
in my dissertation research.

A draft of the exhibition description follows below.

Thank you very much.

Sincerely,

Rehanna Kheshgi



UTSAVAM - MUSIC FROM INDIA

While Hindustani (North Indian) classical music is appreciated in many 
musical circles in the west, and Bollywood film music has an even wider 
global audience, the music of the rural-dwelling majority of the population 
of India, including the Adivasi (indigenous) groups remains relatively 
unknown.  In 2008 the Horniman plans to hold a major exhibition showcasing a 
new collection of musical instruments from rural areas of India, and 
associated musical traditions.  The involvement of members of London-based 
communities of Indian heritage is envisaged as a key element of the 
exhibition. In the course of the next few weeks we shall be establishing the 
remit of a community project to be held in association with the exhibition.

The majority of the instruments identified for the exhibition were collected 
for the Museum during the course of three fieldwork projects carried out 
between 2001 and 2005, which were organised jointly by the Horniman and the 
British Library National Sound Archive. Two researchers, Rolf Killius and 
Jutta Winkler, collected and documented musical instruments for the Horniman 
Museum and made broadcast quality audio and video recordings of the music 
played on them for the BLNSA.
The exhibition will provide glimpses of the cultural, musical and linguistic 
diversity of the sub-continent, since the musicians and musical instrument 
makers whose work will be presented are representative of the four main 
language groups of India (Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, Tibeto-Burman and 
Austroasiatic). Represented in the exhibition will be the performance arts 
of the temple musicians and priests of rural Kerala, musician-farmers of the 
villages of the Sora groups, who are among the Adivasi (indigenous 
minorities) of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh, members of fishing and farming 
communities on the island of Majuli in Assam, and communities of farmers and 
artisans in the mountains of Arunachal Pradesh on the border with China.

Using the wealth of photos, videos, and audio recordings, made during the 
course of the acquisition project, each section of the exhibition will 
convey information about the geographical, social and cultural environments 
in which the musicians from the four different areas of India work and make 
music.  Some of the proposed themes for the exhibition: “Temples and shrines 
of the coastal plain”, “The Island”, “The hills and forests”, and  “The 
Mountain” will reflect the contrasting terrains that are the sources for 
many of the raw materials for instruments.

The Museum will also be incorporating of a new collection of traditional 
instruments from Punjab in the exhibition.  The sounds and rhythms of these 
instruments, notably the dhol and the toombi, are integral to the music of 
bhangra.

The Horniman Museum celebrated its centenary in 2001, and now holds a 
collection of over 8,000 musical instruments from all over the world.  The 
exhibition will also provide an opportunity to showcase of the Horniman 
Museum’s older collections of instruments, some of which date back to the 
mid-19th century. The exhibition will draw on the wealth of material in the 
Horniman Museum’s Anthropology collection.  It is anticipated that a lively 
programme of performances, workshops and related events will be held in 
conjunction with the exhibition.

www.horniman.ac.uk

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