Apr 13 2025 to Apr 13 2025 7 p.m.

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

Merging the boundaries of theatre, music, poetry, and visual art, A Golden String features new musical settings of Blake’s poems by singer Susheela Raman, accompanied by her co-composer Sam Mills on guitar. Their music alternates with spoken word performances, from memory, of Blake’s words by poet, author, and musician Jeet Thayil. The show features visuals drawn from Blake’s astonishing art.

This is definitely not a genteel poetry reading: It is a visceral, energetic, spiritual, and dramatic performance. Raman and Thayil are both known for their engaging and intense onstage presence. Blake’s fiery work demands a maverick spirit and energy, and both Raman and Thayil have carved their own unconventional paths in the worlds of music and words. Their highly individual work and willingness to experiment have resonated and met with acclaim and consternation both internationally and in India.

This is their first onstage collaboration, and they bring together their own deep love affairs with William Blake. While Susheela has spent the past few years honing these musical compositions, Thayil has long been an ardent admirer of Blake. Like Blake, Thayil writes the city as a mythological presence, forged through experience; its margins and corners, like its powers, terrors, and delights, ever present.

Although his death bicentennial is approaching, Blake’s work retains an always surprising edge and relevance. A dissenting thinker and rebel mystic, his creations champion the power of individual imagination to shape the reality we experience:

“I must create my own system or be enslaved by another man’s.”

Blake has inspired countless artists, poets, writers, and musicians to commit to their own vision, to rouse up. In an era of identity politics, mass media conformity, digital surveillance, and environmental crisis, Blake’s is an undiminished voice insisting that artistic imagination is sacred and indispensable.

Blake drew on Indian influences reaching London at the end of the eighteenth century. His sense that the divine and the human are inseparable resonates with radical Indian mystics and contrarians like Kabir, the Bauls, and Sufis.

The show is a raw and thrillingly fresh encounter with a visionary poet, artist, and thinker whose time is never finished.

About BIC Elsewhere:

While the majority of our events find a home at our premises in Domlur, BIC Elsewhere represents our commitment to bringing conversations, arts, and culture directly to diverse audiences. Through this initiative, we collaborate with various venues, extending the reach of our events beyond our own space. These partnerships not only breathe life into our gatherings but also play a crucial role in cultivating an environment for the flourishing of arts and culture in the city.

In collaboration with:

Supported by:

Performers

Susheela Raman
Voice
Susheela Raman as singer, composer and curator moves between genres, across frontiers and into new musical spaces with uncanny ease. She was born Sam Mills first made music as guitarist in 1980s experimentalist group 23 Skidoo. After a decade of living in Asia and getting a doctorate in Anthropology he returned to music, producing and performing on a number of records for Peter Gabriel’s Real World label. He has worked closely with Susheela Raman since 1998 both on stage and in the studio, and together they have created a series of acclaimed albums and live projects. to South Indian parents in London and raised in Australia. Susheela’s unique work in recent years has involved collaborations with a variety of sacred music traditions, including Sufi Qawali, Javanese Gamelan and Eastern Orthodox chant. She is known for her beguiling and incandescent stage presence and The Guardian described Susheela is “wildly original, passionate and dangerous”. She is currently completing a new album, based on the poetry of William Blake.

Sam Mills
Guitar
Sam Mills first made music as guitarist in 1980s experimentalist group 23 Skidoo. After a decade of living in Asia and getting a doctorate in Anthropology he returned to music, producing and performing on a number of records for Peter Gabriel’s Real World label. He has worked closely with Susheela Raman since 1998 both on stage and in the studio, and together they have created a series of acclaimed albums and live projects.

Jeet Thayil
Poetry
Jeet Thayil is the author of four novels and five books of poetry, and the editor of The Penguin Book of Indian Poets.