MEDIA RELEASE: National Folk Fellow Mahesh to launch EP with band Tapestries of Sound

This week Sydney, Canberra and Aotearoa-based world folk band Mahesh & Tapestries of Sound are launching their new EP ‘Circling Beyond the Square’ with a tour supported by Aimée Falzon. The dates for performances are as follows:

7pm Thu 16 Feb Gadigal/Wangal (Sydney) Petersham Bowling Club (buy tickets)
7pm Fri 17 Feb Dharawal/Gandangarra (Bundanoon) Bundanoon Club (buy tickets)
3pm Sat 18 Feb Ngunnawal/Ngambri (Canberra) Smiths Alternative (buy tickets)

‘Circling Beyond the Square’ comes out of research singer, ethnomusicologist and band/leader Dr. Mahesh White-Radhakrishnan (they/them) carried out for the 2022 National Folk Fellowship. This research focused on the global circulations of tunes accompanying the 19^th century dance sensation known as the quadrille or square dance and surprising connections between South Asia and Australia.

Some well known English, Irish and Scottish folk tunes were part of this circulation including the Irish Washerwoman which ended up in Sri Lankan baila music and The Rakes of Mallow, Lord McDonald’s Reel and Gallopade which ended up in Carnatic music. All of these tunes also came to Australia after 1788 with people from those regions and developed as Australian traditions. Mahesh recently teased out these threads as a guest on an episode of ABC’s The Music Show.

Mahesh’s project explored such stories as the above and others including a “Nepaulese Quadrille” which happened to be performed in Melbourne in 1859 and an Afghan cameleer’s tune which ended up in the Australian bush music repertoire. The resulting EP contains original songs and tune arrangements by Mahesh & Tapestries of sound inspired by these stories of connection and drawing on these traveling tunes. The band performed these at last year’s the National Folk Festival and recorded these at the National Library’s sound studios in August. The other performers in the band are Dave Carr, Nitya Bernard Parker, Andrew Purdam and Philippa Murphy-Haste.

For Mahesh, these shared musical links between Australia, South Asia and the world which stretch back over a century show how diverse people have always found creative ways to connect and relate to one another, even in spite of difficult and often oppressive circumstances as arose during the colonial period.

The National Folk Fellowship is a program at the National Library of Australia (NLA) also supported by the National Folk Festival which enables recipients to explore the NLA’s Folklore audio collections and music manuscripts to use to create new work.

See over the page for photos. For further details contact Mahesh White-Radhakrishnan on 0402-209-410.