Vulnerability Discovered as a Form of Activism: Margaret Bonds & Narasinha Mehta of Gujarat

If you're like me, you love listening to podcasts with their transcripts. So, below is the transcript to the first episode of "The Sacred Symphony Essays Podcast." The official first episode of the podcast is here. Please enjoy!

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PODCAST EPISODE 1

Hi everyone! It’s Vivian again, and welcome to the first episode of my podcast, the Sacred Symphony Essays. Today, I’m so excited to talk about Margaret Bond’s song collection Three Dream Portraits and how it connects to 15th century Hindu poetry.

Three Dream Portraits is a stunning song collection written by Margaret Bonds, a criminally underrated composer in my opinion. In this episode, I’ll investigate the parallels between this moving work, and the poetry of a 15th century Indian poet named Narasinha Mehta of Gujarat.

This song collection was written at the dawn of the civil rights movement by composer Margaret Bonds. I think what’s so enchanting about it is how it combines Langston Hughes’s poetry with Margaret Bond’s music to expose this unspeakable trauma of racial oppression in America. Both Bonds and Hughes were just incredible truth tellers who alchemized horrific suffering into everlasting power through art.

Their opening song Minstrel Man beautifully describes the dehumanizing discrimination of a racist society.

I confess, whenever I listen to this song, I’m almost always on the brink of tears. Just imagine the singer’s assertion, “Because my mouth / is wide with laughter / You do not hear my inner cry?” Like, you can almost hear their cries drowned by a negligent society.

In Minstrel Man, searing resonances that emanate from the misery of racial oppression infilterate visceral desires for play and freedom of movement. Margaret Bonds masterfully fuses this stark contrast of joy and agony. Her natural minor melodies wind into major harmonies with (even) jazzy chord extensions and folklike rhythms. And embedded within the major are striking minor second clashes: like fleeting metaphors for the sob behind the grinning mask.

I think the epitome of this emotional friction comes later in the piece though, when a dance-like rhythm from the piano meets an elongated howl for recognition: “because my feet are gay with dancing…” The tension between the Gb and its dissonant half-step below it leaves me desperate for a resolution.

And any rigid reservations I had initially are unraveled by the time Minstrel Man’s solemn settlement arrives in B-flat minor, “You do not know...I die.” The echoes of Minstrel Man’s vulnerable art leave me forever bound to him.

Okay, on the rare occasion when I fall utterly vulnerable to a piece of music like this, I like to flip back to one excerpt by the 15th century poet Narasinha Mehta of Gujarat. He’s formally known as a saint-poet, which means that he wrote devotional Hindu poetry.

This particular song of his was about the Hindu Sustainer of the Universe, Krishna. It’s about how Krishna became a foster child in a rural part of India called Vraj. And how, even though the cowherders of that region were completely unaware of his divine status, they immediately showered Krishna with affection. In time, even this great Hindu god became completely devoted to his own devotees.

Here is the excerpt: (3:06)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8y6ZhFUReM

I actually first heard about this excerpt while reading a book called Narasinha Mehta of Gujarat, A Legacy of Bhakti in Songs and Stories. It’s a thrilling read, and it’s written by Professor Neelima Shukla-Bhatt, who currently teaches South Asian Studies at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

Here is her beautiful translation:

[Krishna] stands here before a gopi [cowherd woman]

With his mouth wide open

Whom Brahma cannot know

Whom Shiva happily serves

He, Narasaīya’s Lord,[Krishna] is bound to his devotees,

With Mukti [liberation] as his serving maid

To show that even women of such little social privilege on Earth can hold a God in utter vulnerability with their unconditional love, that is the ultimate protest against class hierarchy in my opinion.

Both Three Dream Portraits and this Hindu excerpt share a uniquely human approach to protest. For Bonds, the unparalleled selflessness of the musician melts the audience into utter vulnerability. And in Narasinha Mehta’s work, it is the astounding hospitality of the gōpi cowherd women that transcends any silly prejudice about class or gender. Their love is heartfelt and universally moving, even to the divine!

I actually spoke about this unique form of activism to Professor Shukla-Bhatt over zoom the other day. Here is my favorite part of our conversation:

Shukla-Bhatt: "What these poets have tried to highlight is that what makes human life meaningful is the element of love. And it is so precious that even the divine, who has all these luxuries and opulence -- I mean everything! The divine has everything! -- to experience that particular component or element in human life which is not available anywhere else, even the divine has to come down on earth...If that is what makes life so meaningful, then all other external markers of identity, gender or power or caste, they do not mean anything! It’s selfless love of simple people who do not expect anything in return, that love is so precious that even the divine has to come down."

It’s a similar expression of revolutionary selflessness that compels me to vow my whole heart to the tenor voice in the second song of Margaret Bond's song collection, Dream Variations. In Dream Variations, night is both a mirror of the beautiful black face as well as a safe haven, whereas day is “harsh” because it symbolizes the excruciating reality of oppression and invisibility.

There’s a special weightlessness to Bond's style in this piece. The first line, “To fling my arms wide, in some place in the sun. To whirl and to dance till the white day is done” exudes a sense of release as well as longing that is unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. Bonds writes bold vocal leaps and unexpected tonality jumps in dance -like rhythms to paint the tenor’s vision for absolute freedom. But unfortunately, the reality of discrimination permeates his dream…

In the last line, the rhythm simplifies to a soothing lilt, and a dissonant clash falls on the words, “black like me.’ It’s disturbing, but hope closes the song when those words repeat in an unexpected C# major chord. I just love this moment!

In my opinion, such a vulnerable elucidation of hope in the midst of devastation is beyond selfless -- it is truly art at its finest because it draws the deepest empathy out of every listener.

The last song, called I Too, serves as affirmation of the beauty of Blackness and true belonging in America.

Between Narasinha Mehta of Gujarat’s poetry about vulnerability and Margaret Bond's music that sings of such audacious compassion, I see something that we can all aspire to. In modern terms, you could call it "tough love." It’s a love that is able to transcend the ego and the fear of ostracisation -- a love that fuels the bravest truth-telling and the kindest care-taking. A love that has inspired some of the greatest movements in history, including both Martin Luther King Jr’s Civil Rights Movement and Gandhi's Indian Independence movement. It’s tough, and undefeatable once expressed, because it is the very thing that makes human life so precious.

This has been the first episode of “The Sacred Symphony Essays”. I truly hope you enjoyed my creative analysis of Bonds and Mehta. Stay well and wondrous, and I’ll see you later!

Three Dream Portraits: I. Minstrel Man - The Dessoff Orchestra, Conductor Malcolm J. Merriweather, Harpist Ashley Jackson et al.

Three Dream Portraits: II. Dream Variation- The Dessoff Orchestra, Conductor Malcolm J. Merriweather, Harpist Ashley Jackson et al.

Three Dream Portraits: III. I, Too - The Dessoff Orchestra, Conductor Malcolm J. Merriweather, Harpist Ashley Jackson et al.

PODCAST MUSIC CREDIT:

INTRO: Symphony No. 3 in A Minor, Op. 56 "Scottish" (Remastered) : II. Vivace non troppo · Leonard Bernstein · Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy ·

New York Philharmonic Orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8y6ZhFUReM - Narasaiya Bhakta Harino