M.D. Pallavi and Bindhumalini Narayanaswamy, two local voices of the city have been touching and reaching out to masses with their music over the years. Having experimented in diverse genres independently they have both built a sizeable body of work that is simultaneously alternative and accessible. These days, they can be found performing together in what they like to call “a musical conversation”. In a production titled, “The Threshold”, they feature a remarkable line up of songs that trace a vast terrain of women’s struggles, historically and geographically. Rich in content and creative in its craft, “The Threshold” promises to leave a lasting impression.
Threshold is a context sensitive performance, both in its adaptability to different spaces and in its attempt to engage with diverse audiences. With an adaptable structure, the two performers have been taking this musical conversation to a variety of spaces across the city and outside. The Threshold was recently performed in K. H. Kalasoudha as a part of the space’s centennial celebration. While the multilingual interludes made for a linguistically inclusive performance, their ability to take the audience along through stories, conversations and music could dispel the gulf between the stage and the audience, even in an auditorium space.
Along with their reverberating voices, Bindhumalini and M.D. Pallavi, occupy the stage with a plethora of sound instruments around them such as rainmaker, ghungroo, thunderdrum, harmonium (to name a few) which come alive in turns during the course of the performance. Threshold therefore, is not a performance of the voice alone, but a performance of body as the two women use their hands, heels, fingers and mouth to play the instruments while singing songs and stories. By wholly embodying womens’ stories, they transform into pulsating agents of much neglected side of the human history.
They celebrated the stories and sang compositions of women ranging from Nina Simone to Moroccan freedom fighter Kharbaoucha – ( buried alive for having asked for a free society ) , from a Devadasi’s composition banned by the IPC to 4th Century to Greek thinker Hypatia and many women from regional mystic traditions such as Gogavva and Lal Dedh.
In the process of rendering the invisible stories visible, the two performers challenge many notions of gender, sexuality, women’s rights, feminism and remind us that a “progressive mind” is not a modern product. The freedom we enjoy today has come with centuries worth of price paid by our women ancestors.
