Manchester Museum launches RhythmXchange
14 Oct 2022
New music festival – with the Indian Music Experience Museum, Bangalore – celebrates India-UK connections through rhythm
Manchester Museum and the Indian Music Experience Museum, Bangalore, have launched a new collaborative project that seeks to explore rhythm as a shared language between East and West – RhythmXchange.
Four young people with musical skills from India and the UK have been selected to take part in this exciting artistic development programme.
Starting in autumn 2022, the young musicians will each be supported by two mentors – one from India and one from the UK – to design and facilitate a percussion-based art project.
This mentoring programme will culminate in youth-led international performances of their collaborative piece at two on-site festivals at Manchester Museum in the UK, in March 2023, and the India Music Experience Museum in Bangalore, in November 2022.
The idea of rhythm as a language can be dated back to antiquity. Vocal percussion is common in the East and West, but the styles differ considerably, as do the cultural contexts in which they evolved and are performed. The project seeks to understand how music traditions interact across borders. While this unique experience focuses on developing and giving autonomy to young musicians and growing their global networks, it also aims to create a collaborative cross-cultural artistic outcome.
Deepikaa Sreenivasan, the mentor in India, said: “The four young artists in this program are extremely talented, with such diverse skills that the music they create will certainly be refreshingly new!
“It is as much a journey of self-discovery for us mentors as it is for them, since we will all need to place our art and learnings in contexts very different from the norm.
“The possibilities for all of us are infinite and that, I think, is the most exciting aspect of this project!”
This is an international partnership between Manchester Museum and the Indian Music Experience Museum funded by British Council’s India/UK Together Season of Culture and Our Shared Cultural Heritage programme.
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Manchester Museum is currently closed to the public for a £15 million transformation. When it reopens in February 2023 it will have a new South Asia Gallery, a British Museum partnership, which will present a compelling, contemporary take on South Asian and British Asian culture. This multilingual gallery is being designed and built with the South Asia Gallery Collective, an inspiring group of musicians, community leaders, educators, artists, historians, journalists, scientists, students and others from South Asian diaspora with a unique spirit of collaboration and co-production. At the heart of the gallery will be a room for performances, filmic experiences and participatory activities.