The ancient Sanskrit poem the Mahabharata is at the very foundation of Hindu religion, philosophy and moral code, as told through a dynastic struggle for the throne between two warring princely cousins.
In a monumental undertaking, Ravi Jain and Miriam Fernandes of Toronto’s Why Not Theatre had the chutzpah to bring the revered Mahabharata, the longest poem ever written, to the stage, and in the process created an international sensation. After travelling the world, this mammoth two-part epic production opens today at the Bluma Appel Theatre.
An integral part of South Asian storytelling is music, and this tradition is a strong component in this theatrical version of the Mahabharata.
As Jain himself related to me during our brief phone call, “The Mahabharata is a spiritual text, and verbal language is not enough. The staging needs the accompanying music to deepen the spirituality. Music helps shape the world we see on stage.”
To delve into the musical aspects of the Mahabharata, I had a Zoom meeting with 51-year-old Suba Sankaran, the show’s co-composer and co-sound designer. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. The über talented Suba is the daughter of world renown Trichy Sankaran, the grand master of the mridangam, the double-headed drum of South India.
Suba Sankaran: Q&A
How familiar were you with the Mahabharata?
I, like many South Asian children, grew up with it even though I was born and raised in North York. My parents would tell me stories from the Mahabharata, just like Canadian children would hear fables and fairy tales. I also had Mahabharata comic books.
How did you become involved in the show?
John Gzowski was the intended sound designer and composer, and he decided, I think, in consultation with Ravi and Miriam, that he really wanted somebody else who had serious training in Indian music to be able to tell the story in yet another authentic way. He thought that I would be a good addition.
We’ve known each other for years. It’s a very small community when it comes to world music.
The creators describe their epic play as a contemporary take on the Mahabharata.
The fact that the story is being told in English and not in an Indian language, gives it a certain kind of modernity.
The play is divided into two very different parts.
Yes, the first part is called Karma, and the word means the things that affect your life — the idea that you reap what you sow. The second part, Dharma, means your duty or your moral obligation. They have two very different musical treatments.
What is the music for Karma like?
We created a band and enlisted four other musicians to join us.
Why a band?
We knew our score would obviously begin as a fusion of Indian classical music traditions — Carnatic from South India, and Hindustani from the North. However, while the music is steeped in the roots of both North and South India, we wanted to include modern elements since the play is a modern retelling. By creating a small band, we could bring in more modern aspects.
Can you give me an example?
The musicians play multiple guitars, electric bass, keyboard, harmonium and a rare string instrument called the Chapman stick, along with traditional Indian instruments like tabla, dhol, dholak, and bansuri, plus a vast array of East and West percussion. I also give modern touches to voice and vocal percussion.
We’re all sitting on cajóns, the wooden box percussion from Spain, so our chairs are musical instruments themselves.
How did you begin to create the score?
Our music-making was very unique. We were in situ with the actors while they were learning their lines. When they were blocking each scene, we were creating the sound in real time, improvising as we went.
John and I would discuss things like, how do we elevate this particular scene? Or how do we create music that’s simply a transition from one scene to another? Or what underscore do we create to stay in service of the text? Music had so many different roles that we were constantly juggling what was what at any given time.
Improvisation certainly played a key role in developing the score.
The beauty of our six musicians is that every single one of them, whether South Asian or not, like John and my husband Dylan Bell, all have Indian music experience. They are consummate improvisers as well.
We developed our thematic material through improv, and because we were there with the actors, we were responding in real time, and so everything was responsive and reactionary in the most beautiful way.
During Karma, the band is on stage the entire time, and playing the entire time, although we do have moments of silence for dramatic effect.
You must have points of reference when you play.
There is some structure and there is thematic material. Improvisation takes place within structural markers of each cue that we’ve created, but within this structure, there is a huge scope for improvisation, and we all get to take advantage of that.
How did you and John musically approach Part Two?
Much of Dharma is about embarking on battle and the negotiations between the gods. There’s a lot of debate, there’s a lot of death, so John and I decided as co-sound designers that we would treat this part more traditionally through pre-recorded material that we generated. We composed actual music as well as using sampled instruments.
What happens in sampling?
There are a lot of instrument banks or sound libraries that any sound designer can find or purchase.
The beauty is you can manipulate a digital sample how you wish. For example, you can change the pitch, you can change the tempo.
What are some other elements that are involved in developing a prerecorded score?
For example, you hear us shouting the names of some of the gods and goddesses. I’m chanting various mantras and improvising with my voice.
There are no live musicians on stage except for soprano Meher Pavri who performs the 15-minute-long aria which is referred to as an opera that John and I co-composed.
Let’s talk about the why and wherefore of the opera. I understand that it is an adaptation of the Bhagavad Gita, the most famous chapter in the Mahabharata.
The opera was really Ravi and Miriam’s idea in the first place.
At this point in the story, we’re on the brink of battle. Heightened action and heightened acting are happening. Everything is in epic proportions. Ravi and Miriam did not want the text to tell the story. They didn’t want the actors to talk because there is so much talking and negotiating leading up to the battle, to this point of no return.
If they don’t want speech, what are our options to tell the story? What other art forms can we use to create that same epic bigness without using dialogue? And of course, opera is one of your most heightened musical art forms.
Our opera is the grand lead up to battle. It’s really quite brilliant and quite beautiful.
What was involved in the composition?
It became a project of its own. Ravi is very keen on Baroque opera, so the music marries certain Indian aspects with the Baroque.
He and Miriam gave us 200 verses which we finally cut down to 14 because an interesting thing happens when you go from speech to voice and melody. Everything gets elongated through breath and through phrasing and so on.
And of course, the opera singer is performing in Sanskrit, which is the Bhagavad Gita’s original language.
What does the text mean?
It is essentially the voice of Krishna, whom we also see on stage.
The Bhagavad Gita is considered the song of God, and so it’s basically Krishna dictating what’s about to take place, but it’s unfolding in this very slow operatic way. The one live element, the soprano, is very subtly often superimposed on some of those other sound samples.
I’d like to know more about the orchestration.
We assigned different instruments so essentially an entire digital orchestra is playing. It’s our intention that in the future we’ll create some sort of chamber version that an actual orchestra can play.
The other element is that we recorded my father playing the traditional mridangam as part of the opera, which you hear kind of halfway through. It’s really lovely to have that ancient instrument with a virtual orchestra and an opera singer.
How did your father become involved?
Because his instrument could help heightened the drama within the opera itself. The sampled orchestra just wasn’t cutting it, quite frankly. There’s only so much you can do getting timpani and other percussion from the sound library.
Our thinking was, we’ve got this ancient Sanskrit text and the Bhagavad Gita. Let’s add in another underpinning of South Indian classical music with an ancient instrument, and why not the actual instrument played by the leading exponent of that instrument. He gives us the climax of the opera.
The second half is all about battles and death, but as the play ends, the score gets very, very sparse, very subtle. Why is this?
It is the idea of detachment, the idea of letting go. There’s so much that we hold on to emotionally, so how do we shed these things and find our true selves within that? The music necessarily had to be calmer and more meditative.
How do you see the importance of the Mahabharata?
It’s a holy text in Hinduism. It speaks about your duty in life. It speaks about the overarching concepts of good and evil and lightness and darkness, of having moral obligations and duties to your family and to yourself. It speaks of power struggles and family feuds. The Mahabharata contains everything that everyone goes through in life, but in epic proportions.
And I feel really blessed to be a part of storytelling through sound.
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