Madras Cafe Unlocked 2020: The Music of What Happens curated by Ansuman Biswas

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Ansuman will share a selection of artworks and ideas to nourish the soul of the Madras Cafe. With musical performances, poems and provocations he will weave threads between Rabindranath Tagore and Free Jazz, silent meditation and industrial noise, ancient tradition and modern experimentation, the villages of India and the streets of Britain, the gallery and the laboratory.

Ansuman Biswas has an international, inter-disciplinary practice which has included directing Shakespeare in America, translating Tagore, designing underwater sculptures in the Red Sea, living with wandering minstrels in India, being an ornamental hermit in the English countryside, touring with Björk, surviving blindfolded in an unknown place, travelling with nomadic shamans in the Gobi Desert, playing with Oasis, collaborating with neuroscientists in Arizona, living for a week with nothing but what spectators chose to give him, singing for 24 hours non-stop, organizing grassroots activists in Soweto, meditating in a box for ten days with no food or light, creating a musical in a maximum security prison, being a soloist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, bathing strangers, running seminars in a Burmese monastery, running a club for women in Hamburg’s red light district, working with children in hospital isolation wards, making a radio telescope sing and dance, being locked in a Gothic Tower alone for forty days and nights, flying on a real magic carpet in Star City, Moscow, and stopping time.

If you are enjoying our online events and would like to support our Partners in India, you can donate to Madras Cafe Unlocked.

About Madras Café Unlocked

As a result of COVID-19, WOMAD festival 2020 has been cancelled which has a huge impact on Madras Café and AVI. This is normally a key fundraising event and opportunity to raise awareness about AVI’s solidarity with rural communities across India. Our re-imagined event, Madras Café Unlocked brings you a summer of online content in support of Action Village India and partners. We launch our five ‘stages’: Madras Café Family, Madras Boombox, Food for Thought, Partnerships & Solidarity and our Exhibition: Food for Justice and Peace on the 24th, 25th & 26th of July and events will run throughout the summer up to 26th September, when we conclude with an International meal in support of Jai Jagat 2020.

Please visit our website www.madrascafeunlocked.co.uk for more information.