"You ain't got a thing, if you don't have that swing . . ." Jazz culture 1900- 1950
Illustrated presentation by Sambudha Sen
 
This lecture will embed jazz (and its progenitor, the blues) in black communities settled in the great American cities especially in New Orleans, New York and Chicago. It will focus on that unique combination of the blue note and swing that is central to both jazz and the blues and show how the radically ambiguous experience of deprivation and joyousness determined a great many characteristics of jazz culture: for example the tension between the self-destructive lifestyles of individual musicians and the incessant collaborations between them and their instruments that drove the evolution of this great musical tradition.
  
Sambudha Sen is professor at Shiv Nadar University where he taught a course called Understanding Jazz

IIC DIAMOND JUBILEE POETRY READINGS – CULTURE AND CREATIVITY – LEGACY AND CHANGE

A YEAR OF POETRY AT IIC
Conceptualised by Gitanjali Surendran

Shahr aur Shaayari: The City in Urdu and Indo-Persian Poetry
An evening of readings, recitations, discussions, and appreciation of a wide range of Urdu and Indo-Persian poetry by the greatest as well as some contemporary poets on the city – cultures of Hindustan – of Delhi, Lucknow, Banaras, Hyderabad and elsewhere. Spanning from the shahr-ashob or the ‘lament or tumult of the city’ traditions to monothematic qat’as, and long poems such as the masnavi on Banaras by Mirza Ghalib

Panelists: Dr. Saif Mahmood, Advocate and author of Beloved Delhi: A Mughal City and Her Greatest Poets; Dr. Swapna Liddle, historian, and author of Connaught Place and the Making of New Delhi, Chandni Chowk: The Mughal City of Old Delhi, and Delhi: 14 Historic Walks; Dr. Maaz Bin Bilal, Associate Professor of Literary Studies, Jindal University and author of Ghazalnama: Poems from Delhi, Belfast, and Urdu; and translator of Mirza Ghalib’s Temple Lamp: Verses on Banaras; and Dr. Mohammad Sayeed, Co-Founder Chiragh-e-Dilli: Writing a City, Co-Curator, Smell Assembly: An Exhibition of Smells of Delhi, and Ethnographer of Delhi

Readings

Raúl Zurita and publisher V.K. Karthika release poet and fiction writer, Sharmishtha Mohanty’s Extinctions (Context, an imprint of Westland Books). Mohanty will then read from the work

Readings by Aishwarya Iyer who writes in English. Her first book of poems will be published shortly

Balam Rodrigo, one of the strongest voice in Mexican poetry, accompanied by translator Anna Deeny Morales

Readings 

By S. Anand, founder of Navayana Books and the publisher of Namdeo Dhasal, Poet of the Underworld, reads from this Marathi poet in English along with audio recordings of Dhasal reciting his work

Chilean poet Raúl Zurita, one of the most extraordinary poets of our times, accompanied by his translator, Anna Deeny Morales
 

Organised in collaboration with Almost Island. Readings by leading poets from India, Chile, Cuba and Mexico. All work will be read in the original and in English

Readings
By Reina Maria Rodriguez, leading Cuban poet, with her translator, Kristin Dykstra

Anitha Thampi, acclaimed Malayalam poet. English translations will be read alongside
 

An Evening of Poetry

With poets – Devi Prasad Mishra (Delhi); Vihag Vaibhav (Varanasi); Archana Tripathi (Delhi); and Adnan Kafeel Darvesh (Delhi/Ballia, tbc)  who will read from their original work

(Collaboration: The Raza Foundation)

IIC DIAMOND JUBILEE POETRY READINGS – CULTURE AND CREATIVITY – LEGACY AND CHANGE
Conceptualised by Gitanjali Surendran

A Lamp in the Sun: An evening of raga-poetry through two millennia in six languages

S. Anand, a student of words and music will explore how a Tamil Sangam-era poem, a vachana in Kannada, an abhang in Marathi, a nirguni shabad, a sutta in Pali, and a ghazal in Urdu find comfort in ragas. In this land, ye des, indha nadu, where hierarchy, inequality and cruelty thrive, two areas of unparalleled excellence have been open to all: poetry and music. Poetry, sometimes secular, sometimes clothed in the colours of belief, is mostly remembered and passed on as song. It is habitually and helplessly beautiful. The words, sung to the accompaniment of a tanpura, flicker with meanings and throb with awareness
 
Anand is the publisher of Navayana, and a student of raga music with the dhrupad exponent Ustad F. Wasifuddin Dagar. 

Gandhi’s Ascetic Activism: Renunciation and Social Action

By Veena R. Howard (State University of New York: 2014)

Speakers: Prof. Anjoo Sharan Upadhyaya, Distinguished Professor, MIT, World Peace University, School of Public Policy, Pune; Prof. Makarand Paranjape, Centre for English Studies, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University; Prof. Ramdas Lamb, Dept. of Religion, University of Hawaii; and Prof. Madhu Jain, Founding Member, Tantra Foundation

Chair: Dr. Bibek Debroy, Chairman, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India

(Collaboration: The Tantra Foundation Library)

Six String Story
Illustrated presentation by Theophilus Benjamin

The lecture-demonstration endeavours to take a look at the styles and kinds of music written for and performed by the guitar at different stages of the development of the instrument and through the different eras.

Theophilus Benjamin is one of the relatively few classical guitarists in the country who has had the distinction of having performed at various notable venues across the country. His primary focus is in the field of music education and he has been associated with some of the well-known academic institutions in the country as well as with some of the premier music schools in different parts of India

Speaker: Dr. Alka Mittal, CEO & Director (HR), Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) 

Chair: Ms Ravneet Pawha, Chairperson BCF and CEO South Asia, Deakin University

Dr. Mittal will share insights on the socio-economic issues impacting greater participation of women in the labour market, the roadblocks working women face in reaching the C-Suite and opportunities for India Inc to have more inclusive workforce for business sustainability. The talk will be interspersed with Dr. Mittal’s rich industry experience and personal stories

Business and Community Foundation’s 21st Annual Lecture