Enactments - (Seagull Titles CHUP)

1 total work

Singing Emptiness – Kumar Gandharva Performs the Poetry of Kabir

by Linda Hess

Published 1 March 2009

Here, two men, 5 centuries apart, make contact with each other through poetry, music, and performance. Kumar Gandharva is the great 20th Century Hindustani classical vocalist and Kabir is the great 15th Century poet. Kabir composed poetry that evoked a space called nirgun or shunya - something without qualities or boundaries, empty - which challenged listeners to know it and to know themselves. Kumar Gandharva, drawn to Kabir and other poets of the nirgun experience, seeks the voice that can actually sing emptiness. "Singing Emptiness" includes an explanatory introduction, bilingual texts of 30 songs, and a CD with selected songs by Kumar Gandharva.