(upbeat music) - [Matt] Discover the natural beauty of the Hudson Valley with landscape painter Natalie Wargin, (Indian classical music) and learn about Indian classical music with Veena and Devesh Chandra.

(Indian classical music) It's all ahead on this episode of "AHA - A House for Arts."

- [Announcer] Funding for AHA has been provided by your contribution and by contributions to the WMHT Venture Fund.

Contributors include the Leo Cox Beach Philanthropic Foundation, Chet and Karen Opalka, Robert and Doris Fischer Malesardi and The Robinson Family Foundation.

- At M&T Bank, we understand that the vitality of our communities is crucial to our continued success.

That's why we take an active role in our community.

M&T Bank is pleased to support WMHT programming that highlights the arts, and we invite you to do the same.

(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Matt Rogowicz and this is "AHA- A House for Arts," a place for all things creative.

I think I'm gonna head outside to introduce this next segment.

Hold on.

(lively music) I'm here in Cottekill, New York at the studio of Natalie Wargin, whose paintings are inspired by the nature that surrounds her.

Let's go.

(lively orchestral music) - I'm working on an acrylic painting in 18 by 24.

My usual horizontal size.

The topic is a walk that I took with a couple of friends up at Mohawk, and it was spring.

This was a few years ago.

And we were walking and we were talking and we were laughing goofing around, and we turned this corner and my friend, Mary Grace, almost stepped on a porcupine.

I mean the pork... And I had never seen a porcupine before, I mean outside of a zoo.

And here's this porcupine.

And the porcupine was just sitting there eating.

And the porcupine was like nothing.

You know, we were nothing to this porcupine.

Eventually the porcupine got up and wandered and I took a bunch of photographs.

So that's what this painting is.

(bright orchestral music) I would describe my work as maximalist.

I do a lot of detail.

I use a lot of color.

When I post a new painting on my blog or on Instagram, there's always a story.

And I do that for two reasons.

One, because I wanna tell what prompted the painting and what is going on in the painting.

And the other thing that I do is I can kind of lead the viewer around the painting and point out details that unless you really look at the painting for a while, you might miss.

I do not have a fine arts background.

I have a graphic designs background.

I have a degree in graphics from the University of Illinois, Chicago campus.

And I had a business for 20 years doing graphic design in Chicago.

(gentle piano music) We moved here to Cottekill, Hudson Valley, beautiful Hudson Valley almost 15 years ago.

And I had retired more or less from graphic design before we left.

And I got here and we had a dog, and we would take walks, and the dog would stop to sniff, and I would stop to look.

And I started looking.

And I saw all kinds of things.

I saw bears in my front yard.

I saw coyotes all over the place.

Red foxes are everywhere, all the birds.

And I got a chance to sort of let my eyes linger on things.

And I started doing some watercolors, and I kind of liked it.

I didn't have a look or anything.

I just, I kind of liked it and I kept going.

And I think the trick is to do it every day.

I think that's the trick.

And I did, because it was very pleasant.

And so eventually I moved on to acrylics, and that's where I am now.

(gentle music) I mean, I'm really not a fine artist.

I mean, I do it, but I am, I just, I'm not trained that way.

So I use the tricks I know.

(bright lively music) I don't like to draw.

So if I've done, say now I'm working on a painting with porcupines.

If I've done a porcupine sketch, even if it's a loose sketch, I don't ever wanna draw that again.

I really don't.

So I scan it into my computer, and that's how I put my drawings together.

I do little bits by little bits, and then I piece them together.

And the beauty of this is that I can move things a little bit here, a little bit there, make the composition better to my eye, and then I can enlarge it to a full size sketch.

Print that out, you have to tile it out, piece it together.

And I use a piece of transfer paper, and I trace it onto my board.

And then I do an underpainting.

And the underpainting is always in black.

And because the drawings are so detailed and there are all kinds of little flowers and little things going on.

This really helps me.

Because it starts to look almost like, like when you're doing a paint by number thing.

You can actually see that here's a flower, here's a bird.

And then I apply the color over that.

And the way I use acrylics is as washes.

I don't throw a lot of paint at the board.

I work in slow small layers.

I build my color up.

And this allows me to make changes too, really easily.

(bright orchestral music) I think what you need to start doing this is, I think you need to feel something in here.

I think something has to grab you.

I feel that in every piece that I make, there's some part of me and there's a part when I'm painting where I feel it happen, I physically feel it.

And I think that's the thing.

I think people need to find something that really works for them, that really gets their mind going, gets their heart going.

- Veena Chandra is an internationally renowned sitar player and teacher.

And her son Devesh has been playing with her ever since he can remember.

Jade Warwick recently spoke with Veena and Devesh to learn more about the art of Indian classical music.

- Hi Devesh, hi Veena.

Welcome to a House for Arts today.

- Thank you.

- Hello.

How are you doing?

- Doing amazing.

I'm ready to talk about all things Indian classical music and all the great things you're doing in the community.

So to start, I wanna ask both of you, what are your musical interests?

What are your focus on?

So Devesh, let's start with you.

- Well, I play Tablas, a pair of Indian drums, and of course, this is my mom.

So I grew up in this world of the Indian classical music.

And I've been playing since I was really little.

And I sort of didn't know that I was doing it.

I just enjoyed playing with my mom.

She would practice, put the drums in front of me, and then I would just do something and here we are today.

- Right at that tambourine, at three, shaking it, right.

- Right.

- What about you Veena?

- So I grew up in this musical atmosphere because my father was, he created some Indian musical atmosphere for me and named me being after a instrument that's a predecessor of sitar.

So basically, I'm a sitar player, but my father played sitar, tabla, harmonium flute.

So I remember every Sunday morning sitting with instruments and going for whole day.

- Wow.

- And so, but then I really got interested into it and I took it further in schools and colleges and... - And didn't you have a school?

Didn't you run a school or?

- I run a school here in Latham and also in India.

But I mean, I went to regular school and college also.

But I was known for my music and I thought this was something very special that I wanted to do.

- [Jade] That's beautiful.

- And I've been able to continue and that's a very, I think the credit goes to my dad because he really spinned the wheel and that's still going.

- Yeah.

And you pass it down to your children as well.

- I didn't know that he would take it full time at a professional.

That was surprise for me also because he grew up doing all of that.

So again, I teach and perform in performing artist sitar and I also sing and teach harmonium, blah other instruments, Indian classical music only.

And I teach at Skidmore College for the last 34 years.

We both teach at the Williams College for the last 10 years at least.

- And you guys are doing a lot to the community too.

It's really beautiful.

- Yeah and we have our School of Music in Latham, where we teach Indian classical music to all ages.

- [Jade] Okay.

- All ages.

- From a baby to like an elder.

- Yeah.

So from the two years to the 80 years, they all can learn.

- That kind of goes to the community work you both do.

Like I know you do a lot for the community, and I know recently you had a pretty big grant come through, which was a huge Schenectady-based program.

So Devesh do you wanna give us a little bit of background on what was that program?

- So this was through the National Endowment for the Arts.

It's called the "Our Town Project."

And our project was based in Schenectady County.

And really we went to every elementary school, every middle school and the high school in Schenectady.

And we were there multiple days.

And we worked with the students, really teaching them about Indian classical music and culture.

And you know, there's the sort of X's and O's of the music, but like beyond that, it's like a cultural sharing that we're doing.

And our music is based on improvisation and it's really was a tool for your self development.

And so like when we go into the schools, like that's the element that we're sharing with them, whether we're working with them on an arts project or teaching them how to sing something, like it's that exchange that we're trying to communicate.

And I would say further in Schenectady County, of course the schools that we went to are, in terms of resources, they're not like funded and there's so much need for the kids and the community.

And in addition, like in Schenectady there's a large Indo-Guyanese population.

And so part of this project is like connecting them sort of to their roots in India.

- Yeah, like ancestry ties.

- We had so many great comments from the kids, from the staff.

- And the staff.

- From the teachers.

And yeah, it was a really special project.

- Other workers as well that they really were so enthusiastic to see us.

And I mean, even the students, they were like, they were very excited and then we had hands on with the drums and the other instruments that they, that would touch it or do play and.

- And I should say that we did this project with the NEA and New York Folklore Society was really instrumental in bringing this together.

- So how have you saw this project in Schenectady from your perspective, Nina?

Like how do you see this?

How have you seen this like help the kids with their wellbeing and their spiritual and emotional?

- Yeah, so, the community in Schenectady is in their family and all those people are a little bit of broken families and stuff like that.

And I was told that this is probably the one thing that they're going to remember because this is something like very, special in their life that we are doing.

And this art, this music is spiritual for us.

And also the good for spiritual development.

So it connects to your soul.

And then giving them a tool to connect that at early age, I think is very important.

- The music was originally like a way to your sort of self-development.

And because it's largely based, it's improvised based, so we have the structures of the melody and the rhythm, but then it's an improvisation and because of that, it lends itself to a self-expression.

So when we teach the kids, like we teach them, we give them some fundamentals and eventually, hopefully they're expressing what they feel.

- [Veena] Right.

So like-- - And that process, I think is the, a sort of a practice on mindfulness.

- Yeah.

And how does that play out like live when you play?

Like what does that look like?

- Yeah I mean it's, when we play together, it's a conversation.

So our relationship as it is, that's like on display on the stage.

So she's saying something, I'm saying something and it's a conversational.

- Conversation with the music.

So we have like 72 scales, and from each scale there is 484 rags.

And then the rag, there are like essentials of the rag, how it should have at least five minimum nodes, and it should have a scale, it should have different nodes.

There's a dominant node.

There's a subdominant, there are follower notes, and there's an enemy note, how to treat them.

And all of these things ascending, descending.

And then through that there is a unique agreement, which is the rag.

And that should touch your soul.

That's a requirement.

It's not like any sound can be rag.

It's not like that.

- Really has to go deep right in there.

- It has to go deep When there's, what we say, the child's mind is a blank slate, whatever you want to write on that you can do that.

Through the creativity that we teach them how to do that, or hands on working.

They love the drumming and they loved singing.

Even the kindergarten kids, they loved doing things with us.

So this way they will they have sublimation, redirection of their instincts.

- Yeah.

Kids love to bang on things too like moving.

- Right, right.

We also learn a lot when we go to the schools.

- And it's a, this music is an oral tradition passed down generation and generation.

So we teach them sort of in the way where, how it was meant to learn.

So we sit on the floor and play our instruments and the kids sit on the floor with us.

And we sing the notes and they learn the Indian selvedge, or they learn a song through the oral tradition.

And with that is the stories.

And with the passing of the music is this passing and continuation of a tradition.

- It's very generational.

Well, what's happening?

Like what's some cool things that are happening whether projects or whether workshops you're doing or events that you think people should know about?

- Yeah.

Well we have a number of things coming up.

And in October itself, we have this resonance series at the egg where we're doing a workshop every month, so you can catch us October, November, December.

And then there's a performance at Skidmore as well.

We're inviting a dancer from India.

- Kathak dancer.

- We have a lot of things going on.

So we have a website, veenachandra.com, deveshchandra.com.

But I think the best way is connect on social media.

So find her on Facebook or Instagram.

And sometimes we put stuff on YouTube.

I would say Facebook is the best way to find out about our events.

- Awesome.

Well, thank you so much for joining us today.

I appreciate it, and I will definitely be at some of your shows.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Thank you very much.

- Thank you.

(Indian classical music) - Thanks for joining us.

For more arts, visit wmht.org/aha and be sure to connect with us on social.

I'm met Matt Rogowicz.

Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funding for AHA has been provided by your contribution and by contributions to the WMHT Venture Fund.

Contributors include the Leo Cox Beach Philanthropic Foundation, Chet and Karen Opalka, Robert and Doris Fischer Malesardi and The Robison Family Foundation.

- At M&T Bank, we understand that the vitality of our communities is crucial to our continued success.

That's why we take an active role in our community.

M&T Bank is pleased to support WMHT programming that highlights the arts, and we invite you to do the same.