Purabiyan Taan: An evening of Bhojpuri music | 26th July | Sunday | 530 pm | Samsa Auditorium

We are now in the age of cities: Fast cities. Smart cities. Model cities. They will be planned and will be built, even if the blue prints are undesirable. Workers who build cities experience the idea of a city very differently. 

In the backyard of the city, far from habitation, away from the din of urban life, workers occupy makeshift enclosures. Barely a home, they set off each day to build something concrete. Between, the labour colony and the construction site, workers get broken glimpses of a city. 

Songs and poems are born from this pain of separation, alive. He listens to music, to remember. His presence and absence are punctuated by these songs. 

We hope to create passages to meet workers in a third space, outside of surveilled spaces, to meet each other outside the context of work. A space where we can recollect, collectively. A space free of authority and suspicion: through music.

This monsoons, for the first time in Bangalore, we at maraa are proud to present Kalpana Patowary and her mandali for a performance of Bhojpuri songs and poems.

We specially invite you to be present for Purabiyan Taan (Songs from the East) and share this experience with us on 26th of July | Sunday |5:30-7:00 pm onwards | Samsa Auditorium, Ravindra Kalakshetra. Kalpana will also be launching an anthology of Birha songs here in Bangalore. 

   

Often hailed as the Bhojpuri queen, Kalpana Patowary’s body of work is vast, exploring the intersections between Bhojpuri music and other folk traditions, including blues and jazz. Kalpana’s music speaks to the separation, longing and anticipation that marks any experience of migration. 

We have made a special effort to invite workers building the metro and construction sites in the city. We hope that it will be a memorable experience for you.