The Rāginī Festival, formerly known as the Women's Raga Massive Festival, is a month-long virtual and in-person festival that explores the creative work of artists working to challenge and abolish systemic patriarchism in the intersecting fields of art and music. This year’s edition is a meditation on the concept of Reclamation and features a dynamic roster of artists whose work spans many disciplines and whose ancestry lies both in the lands of South Asia and in the farthest reaches of the diaspora. Hosted by comedians Zubi Ahmed and Pooja Reddy of Kutti Gang, this evening features singer Falu Shah’s ensemble Karyshma, tabla player Roshni Samlal, poet Raena Shirali, violinist/electronic artist Natie, drag performer Sundari, The Indian Goddess, and visual artist Renluka Maharaj celebrating the power of telling your story on your own terms.
Featured Artists
Falu Shah’s Karyshma - Folk and Classical Singing (Mumbai/NYC)
Kutti Gang (Zubi Ahmed + Pooja Reddy) - MC (NYC)
Natie - Violin (she/her) (Reunion Island/Brooklyn)
Raena Shirali - Poetry (she/her) (Philadelphia)
Renluka Maharaj -Visual art, Photography (she/her) (Trinidad/Colorado)
Roshni Samlal - Tabla, Sound Design, Poetry (she/her) (Trinidad/NYC)
Sundari, The Indian Goddess - Dance (she/her in drag) (Guyana/Queens)
Falu Shah's Karyshma ensemble was born on a train station. The band has performed 900+ concerts in the US and around the world. The artists have been featured in The New York Times, RollingStone, and Billboard magazine among others. Falu is a Grammy- nominated singer who has collaborated with artists ranging from Philip Glass to A.R. Rahman to Yo-Yo Ma. She serves as Carnegie Hall’s ambassador of Indian Music and is on the NY Board of Governors for the Recording Academy. Sandeep grew up on stage. He fell in love with music at age five, had his first international concert tour at age 16, signed with a major record label at age 21, and released his first album as a songwriter/producer at age 22. He has played over a thousand concerts in more than 20 countries and is an undeserving life-long student of the great tabla maestro Ustad Zakir Hussain. Soumya spent much of his life bumming around musical crossroads, training in classical violin since the age of four, teaching himself guitar and piano as a kid, becoming a published composer at age ten, soaking up the music of his Indian roots as well as the country/folk/rock found in Lubbock and beyond. Gaurav spent the second, third and fourth four-year blocks of his life in Texas sticking his neck into the world of music. After spending hundreds of hours learning flute, he turned to singing and composing cross-culturally. He also got to spend time with the great Indian master Ustad Sultan Khan. www.karyshma.com
Kutti Gang is the New York Times and Time Out New York recommended live comedy show hosted by Zubi Ahmed and Pooja Reddy. What started at The Tank Theatre in Manhattan in November 2018 has since expanded to sold-out stages across New York, Chicago, and LA. The comedy duo’s first special, Kutti Gang at The Tank, aired on PBS in August 2020. Zubi Ahmed is a Bengali-American Muslim writer & comedian from Brooklyn. She’s been featured on Vulture’s Up And Coming Comedians, Bustle, and Refinery 29. You can find her performing standup and searching for iced coffee in the middle of any given day in NYC. Pooja Reddy is a rural Kentucky raised first-generation American with roots in Hyderabad, India. A recovering government employee from the Obama Administration, Pooja is now a comedy writer and stand-up comedian based in NYC. She’s been featured on Vulture’s Comics to Follow and can be seen hosting for Disney ABC’s Localish Network. Pooja incorporates her experiences growing up in the South, her passion for the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, and the best of her Scorpio traits to her writing. @kuttigang
Natie is an artist from Reunion island, currently based in Brooklyn. With a looper, violin & vocals, she builds full tracks live, with flavors of Soul, Electronic and World music. Fresh off a world tour with Beyoncé and Jay-Z, she's launched her solo career with the release of her single "Sirens" and "HKHT". Recent performances include solo sets for 100 Years 100 Women @ Lincoln Center, Transcendence @ Sultan Room, The Revolution at National Sawdust, and Afropunk Battle of the Bands. Through her music, Natie aims to share and nurture authentic connections, more dialogue and openness around some of the differences which currently divide us. Her debut EP "In the Key of Fall" came out last Spring, drawing connections between her native land, Réunion, and her new home, NYC. www.natiemusic.com.
Raena Shirali is a poet, editor, and educator from Charleston, South Carolina. Her first book, GILT (YesYes Books, 2017), won the 2018 Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award, and her forthcoming collection, summonings, won the 2021 Black Lawrence Press Hudson Prize. Winner of a Pushcart Prize & a former Philip Roth Resident at Bucknell University, Shirali is also the recipient of prizes and honors from VIDA, Gulf Coast, Boston Review, & Cosmonauts Avenue. She holds an MFA in Poetry from The Ohio State University Shirali and is an Assistant Professor of English at Holy Family University, where she serves as Faculty Advisor for Folio—a literary magazine dedicated to publishing works by undergraduate students at the national level. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A Day, The Nation, The Rumpus, & elsewhere. www.raenashirali.com
Roshni Samlal is a New York-based, Trinidadian tabla player who has studied within the Farukhbad, Benares and Punjab gharanas or schools of indian classical percussion. She is a prolific local teacher and performer, both in traditional tabla solo, an Indian classical accompanist and a variety of contemporary jazz and chamber ensembles. Roshni also explores creating sound design, text narratives and beat production as a context for building mythos around traditional tabla repertoire. www.roshnisamlal.bandcamp.com
Renluka Maharaj was born in Trinidad and Tobago and works between Colorado, New York City and Trinidad. She attended the University of Colorado, Boulder where she earned her BFA , and her MFA at The School Of The Art Institute of Chicago in. She has received numerous awards including Martha Kate Thomas Fund, the Presidential Scholarship at Anderson Ranch Center and the Barbara De Genevieve Scholarship. Her works are in institutional collections including The Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Joan Flasch artist book collection, Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, special collections at the University of Colorado, Boulder as well as numerous private collections. Her work has been recognized with awards including fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, Fountainhead Residency, Virginia Center For Creative Arts as well as The Golden Art Foundation and the McColl Art Center Residency in North Carolina. She will also be attending a residency at Project For Empty Spaces in Newark, New Jersey in 2022. Most recently, her work has been published in the second volume of Coolitude co-authored by Khal Thorabully and Marina Carter, an amazing volume of stories, poems and visual art which addresses Indian indentureship. Her work has appeared in Elle India, Harper's Bazaar. www.renluka.com
Under the stage names Sundari the Indian Goddess and International Dancer Zaman, Mohamed Afzal Amin, a native of Guyana, has over 15 years of award-winning experiences as a performer. Both as Zaman and as Sundari, Amin draws on his training in Bollywood, chutney, and multiple Caribbean and classical Indian dance styles to promote Indo-Caribbean arts and culture and the multiple, intersectional identities of LGBTQ+ Caribbean immigrants in the diaspora. Zaman is one of the founding members and the lead choreographer of the Taranng Dance Troupe (Waves of the Future), a group of diversely trained dancers amplifying visibility and unity within the Caribbean performing arts community in the New York metropolitan tri-state area. And, as an LGBTQ+ rights activist and artist, he has pioneered several historic initiatives leading to queer and drag-centric performance pieces in faith-based institutions and at religious and cultural parades and festivals under both of his ionic personalities. In 2021, Amin bridged the skills, expertise and wisdom of his performer personalities into Zamandari, a consultancy, mentorship and community engagement platform to support new and up and coming Caribbean artists and connect the public with training, volunteer, and community support opportunities. Find Sundari on Instagram at @Zaman_aka_Sundari and Facebook at Sundari, Indian Goddess.