In a time of world conflict, the 2008 World Festival of Sacred Music invites the people of Los Angeles to put aside their fears and come together to appreciate the best in one another.
The 16-day citywide festival with a multitude of UCLA connections had an appropriately peaceful yet impressive conception.
Judy Mitoma, the founding chair of the department of world arts and cultures, received a letter from His Holiness the Dalai Lama, calling for a message of hope and peace through music for the new millennium. Responding to this call for harmony, the world arts and cultures department came together in deciding what can be done in the art world to mobilize artists and the public to promote peace and spirituality.
The result was the creation of the World Festival of Sacred Music of 1999.
“We wanted to take a completely grassroots initiative to create a better tomorrow and a better today,” said Anuradha Kishore Ganpati, the director of development and communications for the festival.
This initiative was the creation of a healing antidote to the fear of difference in culture and religion. The festival was created to expose the community to different cultures not only from around the world, but also in Los Angeles’ backyard.
The festival, put on every three years, highlights world artists such as those from the former Mongolian territory of Tuva, Italy and Greece, but also those from the San Fernando Valley, Santa Monica and all across Los Angeles.
“This is a moment to realize how fabulously diverse our city is geographically, ethnically and religiously. We don’t have to go all the way to Greece to experience this. It is right here in our backyard and we don’t always realize this wealth,” Ganpati said. “It is a moment to look at each other and say “˜Wow! This is tremendous.”
This opportunity to cross cultural and neighborhood boundaries and explore the city is an event featuring 41 venues and almost 1,000 artists.
The Los Angeles Electric 8, which performed at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena on Sept. 21, is an ensemble of electric guitarists performing classical pieces by Bach, Rachmaninoff, Mendelssohn and others. Four of the eight classically trained guitarists are UCLA graduates.
“All of the Los Angeles Electric 8 group members have experience in rock bands but were students of classical guitar. We thought it would be interesting to mesh these types of music and genres,” said Philip Graulty, a UCLA alumnus with a master’s degree in guitar performance. “We all bring in different musical experiences into the group, creating a unique sound because all the different viewpoints are melting into one voice.”
Another blend of musical traditions is the concert version of the opera “The Escape Artist” by UCLA professor Robert Een, performed at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater on Sept. 24.
“The Escape Artist” is an opera composition of mayhem and murder, conducted by Een and performed by the International Mystical All-Star Band. Een is an award-winning classical cellist whose musical style is influenced by arts and cultures from different parts of the world. Een is also a professor in the world arts and cultures department.
The UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures will highlight one of its current graduate students, d. Sabela grimes, in the Sept. 22 performance of Soulular Memory at the Temple Bar.
“Soulular Memory … the Reconnect” is a theatrical fusion of Eastern mysticism with urban Spirit movement, hip-hop, and the spoken word. Dancer and choreographer grimes will perform with rappers and musicians to entrance the audience with monologues and immersion into his characters.
The festival even features its own Bruin love story.
UCLA dance graduate student Michael Sakamoto and recent UCLA alumnus Waewdao Sirisook, will perform “Anatta,” a collaborative work mixing contemporary performance, experimental artistry, and traditional Thai movement at Highways Performance Space on Sept. 26 and 27.
Sakamoto and Sirisook met in the world arts and cultures department during their graduate study and married in Thailand earlier this month.
Another festival artist with a UCLA connection is violinist Lesa Terry, who recently finished her fourth year at UCLA in the pursuit of a doctorate in ethnomusicology. Terry and the Women’s Jazz Orchestra will present “Guardians of Sound and Spirit,” a concert of both vocal and sacred music by an all-female jazz band at the First United Methodist Church of Santa Monica on Sept. 26.
But the festival will not only bring UCLA’s students and alumni to the stage: It will bring the stage to the campus.
“Intersections of Sound and Space,” a performance by String Theory at Fowler Museum on Sept. 26 will transform the outdoor venue into a massive playable musical instrument with musical and dance performance.
“String Theory is a group of very creative and avant-garde musicians and artists. The massive multimedia instrument installation is as visual and aesthetic as it is oral,” said Ganpati. “It’s contemporary and urban. It’s exciting. It’s L.A.”
The Los Angeles-based festival was founded on the belief that sacred music has the ability to bring forth our shared human values of peace, understanding and respect for all living things. This ideal will be put forth in the “Honoring the Sea” closing ceremony on Santa Monica beach. At the event, artists will perform on the Santa Monica sands, using a sacred Native American canoe to carry flowers, offerings and blessings out to the sea.
“It will be a visually beautiful moment,” said Ganpati. “The mood is celebratory until sunset, when all will quiet down as we pay homage to the sea. Life is a big circle. We must respect the Earth.”
The overall theme of respect, tolerance and understanding is an opportunity for locals to see the surrounding abundance of cultural diversity at a time of national tension and world conflict.
It’s a small step but an important move toward answering the Dalai Lama’s call for world peace through cultural understanding.
“People are just stuck in their cars with no place to come together and experience the culture of the city,” said Graulty.
“The festival is a reminder of what L.A. is, of what is present here.”