Music For Meera

Here's my column that appears in The Toronto Sun today. I love writing pieces that tell a story behind the music!

Today’s rock ‘n roll rebels have nothing on Meera Bai.
A queen living in 16th century India who was so infatuated with the Indian god Krishna that she penned reams of poems declaring her love for him, Meera Bai was a real revolutionary.
“Even after the death of her husband, she insisted that her actual husband (Krishna) was still alive and she refused to participate in the Sati tradition where the widow is expected to burn herself in the funeral pyre of her dead husband,” explains Vandana Vishwas, whose gorgeous album, Meera: The Lover, introduces us to Meera Bai through her own poems.
“She continued to write prolifically for Krishna,” adds Vishwas. “She was ostracized by her in-laws because of this and her brother in-law, who was the new king after his brother's death, even tried to kill her a few times, but she survived and openly mingled with vagabond devotees in plainclothes instead of her royal attire.
“She finally left the royal palace later in her life and lived as a saint in Vrindavan which, according to Indian mythology, was Krishna's hometown.”
Vishwas says Meera’s fascination with Krishna began innocently enough.
She was watching a marriage procession with her nanny and asked, ‘Who will be my bridegroom?’ Showing her a miniature statue of Krishna, the nanny replied, ‘Him!’
Vishwas says that what started as a childhood infatuation, turned into a lifetime of devotion and unrequited romance, leading Meera to ultimately denounce her royal stature and become a saint, social reformer and a legendary poetess.
To tell the story of this intriguing character, Vishwas chose poems that express Meera’s gradual development of romantic feelings towards Krishna. The album is available with and without spoken word narrative that tells the story of Meera between the tracks.
So, for example, Badare Re, the album’s first song, conveys innocent devotion; Piya Bin, the second song, “represents the phase when Meera begins to realize she needs Krishna in her life, and starts longing for him,” and Chala Wahi Des, the last piece, “represents Meera's final disillusionment with not only the royal palace, but the world itself.”
Each song features Vishwas’s expressive, crystalline voice accompanied by musicians playing various traditional Indian instruments like the sitar, tabla and dholak.
Vishwas says she was exposed to Meera’s poetry when she was a child, and had been listening to Indian legends Lata Mangeshkar and Kishori Amonkar’s compositions of Meera’s songs regularly “since as far back as I can remember.
“Being a composer myself, I found Meera’s lyrics very forceful and compelling, as if begging to be composed and sung,” she says. “And being a woman, as I grew up, I started to grasp the true emotions she conveyed through her poetry.”
Vishwas, who’s been singing Meera’s songs since she was her teen, says that although there are scores of movies and albums that focus on Meera’s poetry, there weren’t any that told her life story through music.
“Ever since I discovered Meera, it was in the back of my mind that one day I would create a musical story of her love for Krishna using her own poems.”

NOTE: Meera: The Lover is available online at cdbaby.com, iTunes, and amazon.ca and also at HMV and Chapters/Indigo.

Posted by Errol Nazareth at Friday, November 13, 2009