The “Third Culture Collective” is a unique initiative that unites musicians from both South Asian and Western cultures. Their collaborative efforts result in new and innovative music, while also providing a platform to exchange their distinct music-making approaches.
The Collective’s Founder and Director Kavi Pau was responsible for putting together the Cambridge University choir that performed “Shree Raam Jaya Raam” at the Ram Katha by Morari Bapu. He also composed the musical piece.
Speaking to Asian Voice, Kavi discusses the “Third Culture Collective”, Indian and Classical music, and the Ram Katha choir.
Third Culture Collective: a fusion of Western and Indian culture
The story behind the “Third Culture Collective” is quite a personal story for Kavi. Trained in both Indian and Western classical music, he was learning the harmonium and Gujarati Bhajans at the same time as he was learning the Western piano. “Slowly my focus shifted to Western classical music and I studied just that. Later, I taught at the University of Cambridge. After I graduated, I realized that my musical identity wasn't reflective of my embodied identity. I was performing this old Western classical music with lots of Western people, but there was this other side of me that I had to hide”, says Kavi.
It was during Lockdown that Kavi thought about bring people like him, this fusion of Western and Indian culture, together creating a third culture to make new music. That’s how the “Third Culture Collective” was born. The group comes together as a full orchestra and as a choir, and it seems to have really resonated with people.
The Collective has worked with AR Rahman, performed at the House of Parliament twice, once recently during the South Asian Heritage Month and have collaborated with BBC Prom.
The process behind “Shree Raam Jaya Raam”
Talking about the process behind the mesmerizing performance of “Shree Raam Jaya Raam” at the Ram Katha, Kavi said: “Usually we have long timelines and there's no particular deadline, but with this one, I was in touch with the organizer and asked them if I could sing Bhajans for Morari Bapu. While there was nospace for bhajans in the programme, they were looking for a Cambridge choir to perform. I volunteered to put the act together. This was twelve days before the event and I tookupthe challenge of writing a new piece, getting eight singers together, rehearsing it and performing it.
“It was a short time span and the piece needed to be simple. For that reason, we only use the words Sri Ram, jay Ram, something that the singers could pick up. It also needed to be a piece of music that the crowd would recognize and I used the main melody from Ramanand Sagar’s, Ramayana. People recognized the tunes when the choir started singing and started clapping in the middle of the performance.”
The merging of Indian and Western styles
Indian and Western music have been experimented within a pop setting and not a lot of people are doing it with Western classical and Indian classical. According to Kavi, this is because, “ the two worlds are so far apart.”
He further adds, “What we try and do is we find the similarities between the two. Sometimes it's as simple as putting the music from one culture onto the instruments of another. We've taken music by famous German composer Bach, which was meant to be for the oboe, a Western instrument, and rewritten that part for the bansuri. So that's one way of how we do things. We've also taken traditional Hindi bhajans and rearranged it for jazz.
“We're looking at ways that Western instruments can be played like an Indian instrument and the other way around. We've taken old Bollywood songs, orchestrating them in the style of a Western composer. For instance, we have visualized how would someone like Mozart approach, with his orchestra, a song like Chaya Chaya and what would that sound like?”
Finding a personal voice as a musician
Ask Kavi if he has any advice for those willing to follow his path, he says, “It always comes down to your personal voice as a musician, in a way. I don't feel qualified to tell anyone else how they should do it, because all I'm doing is trying to express my own identity through music.
“Someone else might have more Indian influence than British, and their music might be a bit different. I think that the hardest thing for any young composer is finding their own compositional voice. For me, my British Indian identity has been such a big part of that, so I'd encourage them to stay true to themselves. Don't chase fame. If you want to become commercially successful, the number one thing you need is a strong identity and being true to that first.”
