Radhe Radhe: Rites of

H o li

Filmmaker Prashant Bhargava and I created Radhe Radhe: Rites of Holi in 2013/14 to commemorate the centenary of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring). Commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts, our project focuses on the celebration of Holi, a spring holiday with Hindu religious origins practiced throughout South Asia and around the world. Prashant’s remarkable, transgressive film reveals it as an all-encompassing, chaotic, exuberant, bawdy, at times harrowing, days-long ritual of devotion. The film unfolds in tight counterpoint with my live score for winds, strings, percussion, pianos, and electronics. In the dozen years since the premiere of this work, the dangerous ascendancy of Hindu nationalism in India and among the global Indian diaspora, the systematic stripping away of citizenship rights for Muslims and other religious minorities under Modi’s eleven years as India’s prime minister, and the rampant Hindu supremacist, casteist, and anti-Muslim violence across the subcontinent, have thrown this project into a different, more problematic light. I find it of special urgency to reframe our work today, particularly in recognition of the fact that global anti-Islam has reached dangerous heights across Europe and North America, as well as India. Our dear Prashant died suddenly and tragically in 2015 at age 42. He was like a brother to me. If he were with us today, he would want to express his compassion for Luxembourg’s vibrant Muslim community, whose concerns are especially magnified in this historical moment. 

Tonight’s performance is dedicated to them, to all nonwesterners finding themselves on these shores, and to Prashant. He was one of our best, and we miss him dearly. Below is our original program note from 2014. Thank you for joining us.  

Vijay Iyer

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Holi is known around the world as a joyful, chaotic and colorful celebration of springtime in India. When we were invited to respond to Stravinsky’s own famously chaotic work about springtime, we were intrigued by the possible connection with Holi. This festival provides an occasion to reconsider the aspects of ritual and transformation represented in Le Sacre du printemps. 

In early conversations, we realized that we were interested less in an artistic fantasy of pagan sacrifice than in the lived and felt reality of individuals on the brink of change: the significance of myth in earthly life as a living heritage. Our attention turned to the Braj region of Uttar Pradesh, India, the mythical home of Krishna, the Hindu deity whose youthful flirtations with his beloved Radha and her friends form one of the narratives for the holiday. According to one story, the young god (who was said to be dark-skinned and is portrayed as blue), annoyed that Radha was so fair, sneaks up on her and her friends, surprising the girls with showers of colored powder, perhaps evening the score. Whether a playful strategy for overcoming racial difference, or a moment of interplay of gender and power, or simply the enactment of a youthful fantasy, this particular impulsive act is now the central, cathartic ritual of Holi. On that day everyone becomes Krishna and Radha (or fondly, Radhe); all participants throw color and get color thrown at them. A pulsing desire to unite with the goddess sends a city into a feverish state of spinning and yearning. Everyone enters a state of uninhibited, ecstatic freedom that remains hidden for the rest of the year. In March 2012, Prashant and his film crew traveled to Mathura and the surrounding region, where Holi celebrations last not one day and night, but eight. The cameras captured members of a community in the heightened throes of transformation, turning the seasons of their own lives. Temples fill with devotees, dancing without inhibition, pushing and shoving to receive blessings. Gangs of teenagers loiter on corners with buckets of colorful liquid and powder waiting to douse those who pass by. Men, high on intoxicating spirits, make a pilgrimage to Radha’s village dressed in vibrant garb from the region of Krishna’s playground and equipped with ceremonial shields; as the men boisterously taunt with sexually provocative chants, women await armed with long sticks ready to beat them. Purging fires, expressions of devoutness, and feats of austerity offer a nighttime counterpoint to the baudy daytime revels. Radhe Radhe: Rites of Holi is a journey of devotion for the goddess Radha. In this project, we answer back to the Sacre score and ballet with a new work for chamber ensemble and film. Our suite for winds, strings, percussion, pianos, and electronics unfolds in live counterpoint with cinematic episodes compiled from the Holi footage and from a staged depiction of Radha’s encounter with Krishna. The temporalities that structure the score come not only from the rhythms of the rituals and dances that you see onscreen, but also from the experiences of longing, catharsis, and transcendence that this celebration brings. The result is also a ballet of sorts: a performative encounter between live music and film, between lived experience and myth, the self and the transformed self, winter and spring. 

Vijay Iyer & Prashant Bhargava