The turn of the 18th Century seems light years away from the world of today. Yet, like poetry often is, William Blake feels prescient to singer Susheela Raman. “As soon as you read him, you realise that he was a visionary who believes in the importance of art and imagination,” she writes in reply to our questions. On Thursday, Raman will step on stage at The Prithvi Theatre, alongside actor Naseeruddin Shah, and composer Sam Mills, to bring Blake’s verses alive to a contemporary audience.
Julie Christie reads from Enion’s Lament at the London performance. Pics Courtesy/Susheela Raman on YouTube
A Golden String began in 2018 when Raman and Mills set Blake’s poem, A Sick Rose, to music. In the following years, they have added verses, poems, and compositions as they travelled to Paris, London, Jaipur, Agra, and Pondicherry before eventually arriving in Mumbai. Throughout this tour, poets, writers, and actors — Julie Christie, William Dalrymple, Jeet Thayil, and Khalid Abdalla among a few of them — have joined them.
Why Blake?
The Ancient of Days by William Blake (right) William Blake by Thomas Phillips. Pics Courtesy/Wikimedia Commons
The London-based Raman quotes the poet in reply, “I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man’s system. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.” She adds, “Blake treats human imagination as sacred, otherwise there is a whole machinery, both outside and even inside us, which will crush our sense of self and make it conformist, automated, and disassociated. We can see that today with digital technology and identity politics invading our brains. It all feels devoid of personality, yet we are drawn to participate.”
Mystic connections
(From left) Jeet Thayil, Susheela Raman, and Sam Mills perform in Pondicherry. Pic Courtesy/@susheelaramanofficial
Theatremaker Mahmood Farooqui who has worked on the translations for Shah’s performance, also observes, “They [Blake’s works] are elliptical, mystical and deeply infused with Biblical references. Fortunately, much of Urdu and Persian poetry follows a similar strain.” Another key collaborator, composer Sam Mills is a PhD of Anthropology in Sufism. Raman compares Blake to the saint Kabir — uncanny, and mischievous.
A visual artform
Naseeruddin Shah
The performance itself goes beyond music, as it brings to the stage the prints and engravings by Blake in the form of visual projections. Goa-based videographer and editor Hina Saiyada worked with curator Stephen Ellcock, and designer Sam Sharples on these visual additions.
Sam Mills
Each performance is also a new iteration in musical interpretation and language. Raman signs off by reminding us, “Blake was a kind of outlier to the Romantic tradition, which was about people reacting to industrialisation and the reasoning that came with it. That might seem like a distant historic thing, but in today’s consumer culture, we are still living in the Romantic era, where we have to think about our own uniqueness and personal choices.”
An engraving by the poet on his book, Songs of Innocence, c. 1789
From April 9 to 12; 8 pm
AT Prithvi Theatre, 20, Juhu Church Road, Juhu.
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Poetic voices to the fore
“When [Sam Mills and I] had written the songs, we liked the idea of presenting them with spoken interludes from William Blake’s work and with visuals taken from his art, which is as extraordinary as his writing. So, we have performed French versions in our shows in Paris and London. Every version has its own resonances.
This time, Mahmood Farooqui has given us some Hindustani translation [to be read by Naseeruddin Shah]. For these shows, we are deeply honoured to work with Naseeruddin Shah who is such a brilliant actor. We will all witness how he connects with Blake’s energy,” reveals Raman.
Blake’s songs
Apart from being a poet, a painter, and an engraver, William Blake was also a musician. “Blake sung his own poetry and apparently, he had a good voice. But nobody kept a record of what he sang. He was born and lived in London, so he must have heard songs that were sung in the streets and in salons he attended. I imagine he was concerned with getting his words across, so the melodies would have been simple and direct,” Susheela Raman tells us.
