“...You gifted me my memory. We did not know then that one day you would lose yours.”
— Naveen Kishore, Mother Muse Quintet
A dimly lit room and black walls with abstract photographs and a few excerpts of poetry. The setting at the performance space was dream-like — warm tones and a crimson light focused on the mic and the man at centre stage. In the spotlight, stood Naveen Kishore, delivering one of his best performances as a poet. The experimental poetry recitation of Naveen’s debut book Mother Muse Quintet, an evening enhanced by Jivraj Singh helming the soundscape, took place in Experimenter, Kolkata, recently.
An ode to grief
The coming together of Naveen’s poetry and Jivraj’s music created a unique experience
“...This irrational time like impending grief…”
Listening to Naveen Kishore’s recitation was like travelling through time back to Kashmir, his childhood, and his life around his mother. Standing in the middle of the performance area, the music and the play of light and shadow assisted the poet to express love, longing, and loss.
All the excerpts from the book were held together with a common feeling — grief. The glimpses of memories through the observing eyes of Naveen painted fragments of pictures for the audience, taking them to the moments that inspired the words. The other key motif was memory and remembrance — someone gradually losing their ability to remember and their near ones grasping at what’s fleeting, trying to memorise passing moments.
Poetry by Naveen Kishore on the walls of Experimenter, Kolkata
“Past, present, future tends to merge in our work that renders memory into jazz. Standing there in that theatrical space with spotlights surrounding me in different intensities, the black box, the audience in the dark, the void makes my words directly interact with Jivraj’s improvised music and everything else stops mattering. One only looks into the void and finds the original muse, the one who I write about — my mother,” Naveen observed.
KL Saigal and a soundscape to remember
Jivraj Singh created the soundscape as Naveen Kishore recited poetry
Who would have known that the soulful voice of K L Saigal, when layered with birdsong could create poetry? Jivraj Singh, a musician known for his experimental soundscape, was a devoted artist, accompanying Naveen that rainy evening in Kolkata.
The duo have previously performed in a similar arrangement of poetry and music coming together. Jivraj’s preparation to curate the soundscape involved listening to Naveen express his thoughts and reading his poems. “It has been a long series of collaborations, I would say,” said Jivraj, adding that it began even before they started working together on this project. “Just spending time together, having conversations, and also just sitting quietly established a good shared mental space that helps when making art together.”
The music was not simply background score but a key element of the evening along with Naveen’s verse. With the surprising chime of bells or the notes of flowing water, the soundscape was serene yet surprising, caressing the audio-sensory perceptions of the audience, creating a unique experience. Also intriguing was the constant hum — a base note that accompanied the words and on which the soundscape was built.
Naveen Kishore, reciting from ‘Mother Muse Quintet’
“My poems are made up of ‘sound images’. I am not sure which comes first, the image or the sound. These are written but only after I have begun to ‘hear’ them. The chamber of my head tends to respond, resonate, be inhabited by the sound each word embodies,” shared Naveen, when asked about the amalgamation of poetry with sound as a medium of expression. His collaboration with Jivraj Singh made an “intuitive sense to explore my spoken sound with his soundscape,” said the poet.
This coming together of two creative minds was also the coming together of three generations — Naveen’s mother in his poetry, Naveen, and the young artist Jivraj. “The music he (Jivraj) creates is enough for grief to find its way into our embrace. Being enveloped by Jivraj’s soundscape the words begin to take on meaning — their own and mine. It doesn’t really matter as long as they strike a chord in the mind of the listener,” added Naveen.
Sound of silence
An enthralled audience of diverse age groups
It is important to talk about the stillness among the audience — as if preparing to face resolved and unresolved emotions through the ebb and flow of prose and symphony — even before the performance commenced. Ruffles of pages between the poetry from Mother Muse Quintet, long sighs of relatability accompanied the poet as he read excerpts from his book.
L-R: Actor Tillotama Shome at the event; Sunandini Banerjee and Bishan Samadder in conversation with others after the performance
Among the audience were actress Tillotama Shome, and colleagues of Naveen including Sunandini Banerjee and Bishan Samaddar, among others. The audience represented a diverse age group with college and university students to senior citizens.
An abstract photography by Naveen Kishore
Anyone in the audience that evening noticed the rootedness in Naveen’s recitation. It was as if he was speaking to his past and all that was left behind — unsaid notes to the muse.
