Literary Commons!Writing Australia-India in the Asian century with Dalit, Indigenous and Multilingual Tongues

1st April 9:00am – 4:00pm2nd April 10:00am – 5:00pm

The Library at the Dock107 Victoria Harbour Promenade, Docklands VIC

Image © commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Madhubani_Mahavidyas.jpg

AUSTRALIA CHINA INDIA ITALY MALAYSIA SOUTH AFRICA

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WELCOME!It is an honour and a privilege to welcome you to Phase II of Literary Commons! Writing Australia-India in the Asian century with Dalit, Indigenous and Multilingual Tongues. I would like to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people, traditional custodians of this land, and pay my respects to the elders past, present and future, for they hold the memories, the traditions, the culture and hopes of Indigenous Australia. Under the concrete and asphalt, this land is, was, and always will be, traditional Indigenous land.

Playing upon the old idea of the ‘commons’ where communities and cultures share in a co-operative space of creativity, as well as building upon much that is common between our world views, Literary Commons! is a long-term and deep-impact project that brings together writers and fosters literary exchanges that are of especial relevance to Australia and India: First Nations/Indigenous and bhasha/Dalit/tribal literatures.

Funded by a Creative Partnerships with Asia grant from the Australia Council for the Arts, Phase I of Literary Commons! took 10 Indigenous Australian writers to India, where they participated in 4 literary festivals and 4 university symposia in 2014-15. Their work was presented to new audiences, appreciated in conference presentations and translated into 8 regional Indian languages.

Now, for the first time, 12 Dalit and tribal Indian writers are visiting Australia at the same time, to continue with the conversations and expand upon connections made during that trip. This is both a necessary gesture of reciprocity and a testament to the common grounds of identity, voice, land and country that indigenous and first peoples in both countries celebrate.

Come, join us in this exciting journey!

OVERVIEW: Dalit and tribal literature is at the cutting-edge of contemporary Indian writing and opens up a fascinating world of story-telling in the 24 bhashas, or recognised languages of India (including English) as well as many that are not yet officially recognised.

What will unfold over the two-day event is truly a celebration of the multilingual, multifaceted and multicultural nature of Indian literature. This is a complex and rich literary landscape that will compel us to think beyond mainstream Anglophone writing and challenge our very notion of the ‘literary’.

We hope that the two days of the Literary Commons! public event will enable new understandings of the power, vision and beauty of Dalit, tribal and Indigenous story-telling. It will forge a vibrant and strong relationship between the first peoples of Australia and India and make their stories heard far and wide on these lands.

FORMAT:Dalit and tribal writers will come together with Indigenous writers in free-wheeling conversations in themed panels. They will read from their work in individual and group sessions. Informed moderators will guide the exchange as well as the audience participation at the end of each session. All panels are open to the public to attend. All sessions will be conducted in English.

REGISTRATION: For information on the participating writers, please see our website: future.arts.monash.edu/literary-commons/

To register your interest in attending, please go to:artsonline.wufoo.eu/forms/literary-commons/

Dr Mridula Nath ChakrabortyDeputy Director, Monash Asia Institute All welcome to this free, open-to-public event!

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9:00am-10:00am Welcome to Country & Opening Words MC: Dr Mridula Nath Chakraborty Convener of Literary Commons!

10:00am-10:30am Tea/Coffee break

10:30am-11:15am Genealogies of Dalit and Tribal Writings in India Des Raj Kali & Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih Moderator: Oishik Sirkar

11:20am-12:05pm Bounds and Freedoms of the City Ajay Navaria & Nicole Watson Moderator: Ivor Indyk

12:05pm-1:15pm Lunch break

1:15pm-2:00pm Special presentation on story-telling through Gond painting Venkat Raman Singh Shyam Moderator: Terri-ann White

2:05pm-2:50pm Treading the Experimental Lionel Fogarty & Devanoora Mahadeva Moderator: Mridula Nath Chakraborty

3:00pm-4:00pm Readings by the Poets Kalyani Thakur Charal, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Lionel Fogarty, Chandrakanta Murasing, Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, Venkat Raman Singh Shyam, Joopaka Subhadra Moderator: Raj Paul Sandhu

10:00am-10:55am I Speak: Women in Dalit narratives Urmila Pawar, Kalyani Thakur Charal & Sivakami Moderator: Roanna Gonsalves

11:00am-11:45am Of vanishing languages and state violence Chandrakanta Murasing & Ali Cobby Eckermann Moderator: Irfan Ahmad

11:50am-12:35pm Rewriting Histories Marie Munkara & Joopaka Subhadra Moderator: Anne Brewster

12:35pm-1:45pm Lunch break

1:45pm-2:30pm Translating Dalit and Indigenous stories M Dasan and Tony Birch Moderator: John Bradley

2:35pm-3:20pm New Directions Favita Dias, Jane Harrison & Jared Thomas Moderator: Chandani Lokuge

3:20pm-3:35pm Tea/Coffee break

3:35pm-4:45pm Readings in Prose Tony Birch, Favita Dias, Jane Harrison, Des Raj Kali, Devanoora Mahadeva, Marie Munkara, Ajay Navaria, Urmila Pawar, Sivakami, Jared Thomas, Nicole Watson

4:45pm-5:00pm Conclusion of the public program.

PROGRAM Friday 1st April 2016

PROGRAM Saturday 2nd April 2016

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Kalyani Thakur CharalKalyani Thakur Charal is a Bengali Dalit writer. She has published 4 books of poetry, a collection of short stories and a collection of essays. She has also edited 4 books and various special issues of journals on topics like folklore, water, refugees, poetry of Dalit women, Dalit women writing and short stories by Indian women.

Mannarakkal DasanDr. M. Dasan is currently Professor and Head of the Department of English and Comparative Literature, Central University of Kerala, following an illustrious academic career of three decades. He has published about 40 research articles in prestigious journals and books on a variety of topics like culture, land rights, human rights, environment, Australian Aboriginal/Canadian First Nations/Indian Dalit & tribal writings. He has authored and edited 9 books including the Oxford India Anthology of Malayalam Dalit Writing (2012), Countercultural Discourse and Dalit Literature in India (2014). He is the recipient of a Shastri Indo-Canadian Fellowship and a UGC Doctoral Research Award.

Favita Rochelle DiasFavita Rochelle Dias has recently entered the space of tribal identity in the face of social discrimination and disen-franchisement. Her recent article on Goan Dalit identity was published on Savari (www.dalitweb.org/?p=2963), a website run by Dalit women activists. Favita holds a Bachelor’s degree in Arts from Smt. Parvatibai Chowgule College, Margao, and an Masters in Sociology from Goa University in 2012. She is a teacher and has worked as a research assistant for projects on ethnic relations among expatriate workers and Primary Health care in South Asia.

Subhadra JoopakaJoopaka Subhadra is a powerful Dalit woman writer who has written poems and short stories in Telugu, which shed light on the lives and conditions of the Dalits, and more specifically Dalit women. Many of her stories are drawn from her own experiences. The collection, Rayakka Manyam, contains vignettes of different aspects of Dalit life and recently won the National Laadli media special award for Gender Sensitivity, awarded by the Mumbai-based Population First Trust supported by the United Nations Fund for Population and Indian Bank. Subhadra has also published a poetry collection, Ayyayyo Dammakka, political essays, book reviews, songs and journalistic pieces. She contributes columns to the well-known feminist journal, Bhoomika. She has co-edited Nalla Regadi Sallu (a collection of Madiga women’s stories) and Kaitunakala Dandem (Madiga poems), both of which have had an impact on the Telugu literary scene. She has translated the well-known Tamil Dalit woman writer, Bama’s Sangati into Telugu (via the English translation). She is an activist and has been instrumental in establishing the Mattipoolu (SC, ST, BC and Minority) Women Writers’ Forum.

Des Raj KaliDes Raj Kali has produced hundreds of articles on Dalits, and on culture and literature in various magazines including the renowned Tehalka magazine. He has been conferred several awards as fiction writer. He has been a key panel speaker at the Jaipur Literature Festival (2010) and at Samanvay Samagam, Habitat Centre, Delhi. He has offered regular features on All-India Radio, Jalandhar since 2013. His Punjabi stories and novels have been translated into Hindi, Urdu, English, Bengali, Tamil, Kashmiri, Gujarati and Rajasthani. Five of the projected series of Kali’s seven novels enmeshing a mythological past and a real present have already been published to critical acclaim. He also made a major contribution to the film Kite mil ve Mahi and has regularly participated in seminars and conferences at the universities of Punjab, Haryana, Maharashtra, Kashmir, Chandigarh and Delhi.

PARTICIPANTS

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Devanoora MahadevaDevanoora Mahadeva emerged as a major literary voice in the 1970s, which also saw the emergence of the Dalit Movement. Mahadeva’s Kannada short stories collected in Dyavanuru (1973) broke new ground introducing themes anchored around the life of Dalits. The novella Odalaala (1981) was instantaneously recognized as a classic in the manner it brought to light the inner reality of the Dalit life-world. Kusumabale (1988) is a milestone narrative that weaves together many tales told in many voices and modes all of which speak with love, irony, and compassion. Apart from fiction, Edege Bidda Akshara (2012), a collection of Mahadeva’s writings on socio-cultural issues, has seen ten reprints within a year. He is the recipient of many awards. He lives in Mysore and is closely associated with most of the people’s movements in Karnataka.

Chandrakanta MurasinghChandrakanta Murasingh is one of the leading poets of Kokborok, a language spoken by a large number of indig-enous people. He was born at Tuiwandal, a remote village of Tripura on 1st April, 1957. He works with a Bank and now resides in Agartala. He has seven titles of collection of poems to his credit. The English translations of a considerable number of his poems have found room in Indian Literature, the Journal of Sahitya Akademi (India’s National Academy of Letters) and in the Anthology of Contemporary Poetry from the North-East published by NEHU, as also in anthologies published by Oxford University Press and Penguin Books. He was awarded Bhasa Samman Award by the Sahitya Akademi, Delhi. Tripura State Government awarded him Rabindra Puraskar. He received “True Legend of North-East India Award” from the Telegraph Group. He participated thrice in the National Poetry Festival of Bangladesh. The picturisation of the hilly life with all of its struggle, distress, frustration and happiness with the sense of Unity is the glory of his poems. A hundred of his poems in Hindi translation have been published by the Presidency University (Calcutta).

Ajay NavariaAjay Navaria is the author of two collections of short stories in Hindi, Pathkathaauranyakahaniyan (2006), Yes, Sir (2012), and one novel, Udhar ke log. A collection of his short stories, translated by Laura Brueck into English and published as Unclaimed Terrain (2013), has won critical acclaim. Navaria works as Assistant Professor in the Department of Hindi, Jamia Millia Islamia University, Delhi. He has played a key role in debates around the aesthetics and politics of Dalit Literature in Hindi but has also been an important player in Hindi literature as such. He has been associated for over a decade with the premier Hindi literary journal, Hans, while at the same time being recently elected chairperson of Bhartiya Dalit Lekhak Sangh (Indian Dalit Writers Association). Navaria has won several literary prizes and awards, has delivered lectures at national and international conferences, and was invited to the Jaipur Literature Festival in 2010 and 2013.

Kynpham Sing NongkynrihKynpahm Sing Nongkynrih writes poems, short fiction and drama in Khasi (the language of his tribe) and English. He has a total of 13 publications in Khasi and 10 in English. His collections of poetry in English include Moments, The Sieve (Writers Workshop), The Yearning of Seeds and Time’s Barter: Haiku and Senryu (HarperCollins). He is the author of Around the Hearth: Khasi Legends (Penguin) and the co-editor of Dancing Earth: An Anthology of Poetry from North-East India (Penguin). His poetry has been widely published in national and international journals. His awards include the first Veer Shankar Shah-Raghunath Shah National Award for literature (Madhya Pradesh, 2008) and the first North-East Poetry Award (Tripura, 2004). He also received a Fellowship for Outstanding Artists from the Government of India (2000). He teaches literature in the Department of English, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, where he lives.

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Urmila PawarBorn in a small village of Ratnagiri as the youngest child of a Dalit family, Urmila Pawar learned, early in life, the meaning of her subordination as a woman and as a Dalit. The lesson she learned about the needs of self-confidence, and the courage to overcome these forms of discrimination, has stood her in good stead in her attempts to break barriers and reach to the stars. She has published ten books including three short story collections in Marathi. She has won many prestigious prizes for her sensitive exploration of the lives of Dalit women in India. Her Autobiography Aydaan in particular continues to touch the heart of all lovers of Marathi literature. Additionally a commitment to change the lives of women has made her a member of many organisations.

Venkat Raman Singh ShyamVenkat Raman Singh Shyam belongs to the tradition of Pardhan Gond art. Venkat has pursued a full-time career in art despite several hurdles. Having travelled and exhibited widely in India, the US, Canada and Europe, Venkat has been exposed to a wide range of arts practices which have influenced his sensibility. While continuing to harness the Pardhan Gond method of pointillistic detailing, Venkat also has honed the ability to draw figures that aspire to realism. Art, for Venkat, is both an escape from and a grappling with the harsh realities that become a part of our existence. Even as he remembers myths and legends that are being overrun by the surfeit of information in this electronic age, he reminds us that the world has barely changed, that time is not linear, that art can still produce magic. Venkat’s graphic autobiography, Finding My Way, coauthored with S. Anand, was published in 2015.

P SivakamiP Sivakami is a prolific writer and Dalit activist. She has published 5 novels, 4 short story collections, 5 essay collections and 2 poetry collections in Tamil. Most of her works are translated into English and other foreign languages. Her first self-translated novel, The Grip Of Change, rated as among the five favourite novels of India by BBC literary review, has been prescribed as a text in translation studies in many colleges. Her second novel, The Taming of Women, was published by Penguin India Books, while another novel, Kurukku Vettu, has been published by the Sahitya Akademi under the title Cross Section. Sivakami has served the Sahitya Akademi as its advisory member.

Tony BirchTony Birch is the author of five works of fiction; Shadowboxing (2006), Father’s Day (2009), Blood (2011), The Promise (2014), and Ghost River (2015). In 2016, he is publishing his first poetry collection, Broken Teeth. He is currently the Dr Bruce MacGuinness Research Fellow in the Moondani Balluk Unit at Victoria University. His research interest is concerned with Indigenous Knowledge and Climate Change. His most recent essay on the research is “Climate Change, Mining and Traditional Indigenous Knowledge in Australia” (Social Inclusion 2016, Volume 4, Issue 1).

Ali Cobby EckermannAli Cobby Eckermann is a Yankunytjatjara poet. Her first poetry collection, Little Bit Long Time, celebrated her successful search to find her birth family. She has written much about the legacy of the Stolen Generations including her first verse novel, His Father’s Eyes. Her second verse novel, Ruby Moonlight, won the 2012 Deadly Award for Literature, the 2013 Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize and NSW Premiers BOOK OF THE YEAR. Ali released her poetic memoir Too Afraid To Cry that same year. In 2014 Ali was Artist In Residence at the University of Sydney, performed at the Ledbury Poetry Festival in England, and attended the International Writers Program at the University of Iowa. Ali’s latest collection Inside My Mother was published in 2015 by Giramondo. A bilingual collection of her poetry was published in Bengali in 2014 by Jadavur University. Ali’s passion for Aboriginal literature encouraged her to establish Aboriginal Writers Retreat in her home in South Australia.

Lionel FogartyLionel Fogarty has given voice to Aboriginal poetry for over thirty years. Since the 1970s, he has been active in many of the political struggles of the Aboriginal people, particularly in southern Queensland. Lionel’s first book, Kargun, was published in 1980, providing an essential voice to the human rights struggle of his people. Over his long career, he has published twelve volumes of poetry, as well as a children’s book, Booyooburra, a traditional Wakka Wakka story. His most recent works include Minyung Woolah Binnung: What Saying Says (Keeaira Press), Mogwie Idan (Vagabond Press) and Eelahroo Nyah MoBo MoBo (Vagabond Press). He has won the Scanlon Award for Connection Requittal in 2012, the Kate Challis RAKA Award for Best Book of Aboriginal Australian Poetry in 2015. Lionel has travelled throughout the world seeking justice for Deaths In Custody and remains a passionate mentor to young Aboriginal writers in remote regions of Australia.

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Jane HarrisonJane Harrison is a descendant of the Muruwari people of NSW. She is a playwright/writer and a researcher/policy maker. Her award-winning play, Stolen, has been performed in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Tasmania, WA, the UK, Hong Kong and Tokyo, with readings in Canada, New York and Los Angeles. Rainbow’s End premiered in 2005, has had a Tokyo production, toured throughout Australia in 2011, winning the Drover’s Award for Tour of the Year. Her most recent play, The Visitors, was part of the MTC Cybec Electric series and the Melbourne Indigenous Festival in February 2014. Her teenage novel, Becoming Kirrali Lewis, was published in June 2015 and won the 2014 Black & Write! Indigenous Writing Fellowship. Jane was Festival Director for Blak & Bright, the first Victorian Indigenous Literary Festival in 2016. Jane’s other publications include Indig-curious: who can play Aboriginal roles? (2012).

Marie MunkaraOf Rembarranga and Tiwi descent, Marie was delivered on the banks of the Mainoru River in Arnhemland by her two grandmothers and spent her early years on Bathurst Island. Her first Novel Every Secret Thing (University of Queensland Press) won the David Unaipon Award in 2008 and the NT Book of the Year in 2010. She has written two children’s books Rusty Brown and Rusty and Jojo (Laguna Bay Oxford Press) and a second novel A Most Peculiar Act (Magabala). Marie has recently finished her Memoir (Random House/Penguin) and is currently working on the TV mini-series for Every Secret Thing.

Jared ThomasDr Jared Thomas is a Nukunu person of the Southern Flinders Ranges. He currently works as Arts Development Officer, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts, Arts South Australia and prior to this was a lecturer at the David Unaipon College of Indigenous Education and Research, the University of South Australia where he is now an adjunct lecturer. Jared’s play, Flash Red Ford, toured Uganda and Kenya in 1999 and his play, Love, Land and Money, featured during the 2002 Adelaide Fringe Festival. Jared’s young adult novel, Sweet Guy, was short listed for the 2009 South Australian People’s Choice Awards for Literature and his children’s novel, Dallas Davis, the Scientist and the City Kids, is published in the Oxford University Press ‘Yarning Strong’ series. His novel, Calypso Summer, was a winner of the 2013 State Library of Queensland Black&Write Fellowship and received an International Youth Library White Raven label in 2015. Jared’s novel, Songs that Sound Like Blood, will be released at the 2016 Melbourne Writers Festival.

Nicole WatsonNicole Watson is a member of the Birri-Gubba People and the Yugambeh language group. Nicole was admitted as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of Queensland in 1999 and has worked for Legal Aid Queensland, the National Native Title Tribunal, the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency and as a columnist for the National Indigenous Times. Nicole currently writes for Tracker Magazine and is a senior research fellow at the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning, University of Technology, Sydney. Her first book, The Boundary (Penguin), won the 2009 David Unaipon Award. She has made a name for herself as a crime-fiction writer and is currently working on her second novel.

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Irfan AhmadAssociate Professor Irfan Ahmad teaches Political Anthropology at the Australian Catholic University, Melbourne. Irfan is the author of Islamism and Democracy in India: The Transformation of the Jamaat-e-Islam (2009). He is the founding co-editor of Journal of Religious and Political Practice and contributes to debates in the media such as Al-Jazeera, BBC, The Times of India, Open Democracy. His interviews have appeared in Dutch, English, Hindi, Malayalam, Turkish and Urdu media.

John BradleyAssociate Professor John Bradley is the Deputy Director of the Monash Indigenous Centre. He speaks two Indigenous languages, Yanyuwa and Kriol, and hears two others, Marra and Garrwa. His most recently published work entitled Singing Salt Water Country is a detailed exploration of how song lines are not only environmental, ecological ways of knowing country, but also intimate narratives of human relationships to country. His two-volume Yanyuwa encyclopaedic dictionary will be released later in 2016, a work that has spanned over three decades.

Anne BrewsterAssociate Professor Anne Brewster teaches creative writing and literature at the University of New South Wales. Her books include Literary Formations: Postcoloniality, Nationalism, Globalism (1996) and Aboriginal Women’s Autobiography (1995). She co-edited, with Angeline O’Neill and Rosemary van den Berg, an anthology of Indigenous Writing, Those Who Remain Will Always Remember (2000). She has also published books on Singaporean literature including Towards a Semiotic of Post-colonial Discourse: University Writing in Singapore and Malaysia 1949-1964 (1988) and Notes on Catherine Lim’s Little Ironies: Stories of Singapore, with Kirpal Singh (1987). Her most recent book, a collection of interviews with and essays on Aboriginal writers, Giving This Country a Memory: Contemporary Aboriginal Voices of Australia appeared in 2015.

Mridula Nath ChakrabortyDr Mridula Nath Chakraborty is the Deputy Director of the Monash Asia Institute. She recently co-edited Abohelaar Bhangon Naame Booke/Broken by Neglect, a bilingual edition of Nunga poet Ali Cobby Eckermann’s poetry from English to Bengali (2014). She has convened high-impact projects in literary-cultural diplomacy between Australia and India, such as Australia-India Literatures International Forum (Sydney 2013), the Autumn School in Literary Translation (Kolkata 2013) and Literary Commons: Writing Australia-India in the Asian Century with Indigenous, Dalit and Multilingual Tongues (2014-2015).

Roanna GonsalvesRoanna Gonsalves is an Indian Australian writer and academic. Her series of radio documentaries entitled On the tip of a billion tongues, (Earshot, ABC RN Nov-Dec 2015) is an acerbic socio-political portrayal of contemporary India through its multilingual writers. She received the Prime Minister’s Endeavour Award 2013, and is co-founder co-editor of Southern Crossings: Re-imagining Australia, South Asia and the world. Her first book of fiction will be published in October 2016 by University of Western Australia Publishing.

Ivor IndykProfessor Ivor Indyk is the publisher of the award-winning Giramondo book imprint, and Whitlam Professor in the Writing and Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University. He was the founding editor of the literary magazine HEAT, and co-founder of the Sydney Review of Books. A critic, essayist and university teacher as well as a publisher, he has written a monograph on David Malouf for Oxford University Press, and essays on Australian literature, art, architecture and literary publishing.

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Chandani LokugeAssociate Professor Chandani Lokuge teaches creative writing and literature at Monash University. She is the author of three novels, If the moon smiled, Turtle Nest, Softly, as I Leave You and Moth and Other Stories. As Editor of the Oxford Classics Reissues series, she has published six critical editions of Indian women’s writing in English. She has guest-edited several refereed journals. She founded and directed the Monash Centre for Postcolonial Writing from 2002-2012. She has held guest professorships at Le Studium Advanced Studies Institute, Loire Valley France, Free University Berlin, Goethe University Frankfurt and Harvard University.

Goffredo PolizziGoffredo Polizzi is a doctoral candidate in Italian and Translation Studies in the joint program of the Universities of Warwick (UK) and Monash. His project looks at the trans-national dimension of the “Southern question” today using contemporary literature and cinema as sources for mapping those spaces of translation and intercultural transfer where a new and more inclusive notion of “Italianness” is emerging. He works as a translator and has published various articles on contemporary Italian literature.

Raj Paul SandhuRaj Paul Sandhu is an Australian Punjabi author and spoken word poet. Raj lives in Perth and runs creativity workshops on “Nothing”. He also teaches Business & Project Management in the VET sector. His shorty story, “Mungo Man” was recently translated into English for Peril Magazine.

Oishik SircarOishik Sircar is a legal academic from India, and is presently a Teaching fellow and Doctoral Scholar at the Institute for International Law and the Humanities, Melbourne Law School. Some of Oishik’s recent writings have appeared in the Economic and Political Weekly, No Foundations and the Osgoode Hall Law Journal. Oishik’s co-edited book New Intimacies/ Old Desires: Law, Culture and Queer Politics in Neoliberal Times will be out this year from Zubaan and Chicago University Press. Oishik has co-directed two doc-umentary films, of which We Are Foot Soldiers (co-directed with Debolina Dutta) on the activism of children of sex workers in Kolkata, has been screened widely at festivals and universities globally, and won the 3rd Best Film award at the 2012 Jeevika: Asian Livelihood Documentary Film Festival in Delhi.

Terri-ann WhiteProfessor Terri-ann White has been the Director of UWA Publishing since 2006. In 1999, she was the inaugural Director of the interdisciplinary Institute of Advanced Studies at The University of Western Australia, a post she combined with her role as Director of UWA Publishing until 2011. She has made an outstanding contribution to contemporary Australian society and the humanities, and has pioneered connections with international organisations, such as the Consortium of Humanities Centres and Institutes.

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In order to mark this unprecedented coming together of Australian and Indian Indigenous traditions, two musicians from these countries have come together to produce a unique blend of music that touches the soul and sings of land and country.

Gnarnayarrahe WaitairieUncle Gnarnayarrahe Waitairie comes from the Yindjibarndi tribe in Western Australia. He has been playing the didgeridoo since the age of two. He plays at various universities, primary schools and kindergartens regularly together with a myriad of other performance venues. He is an accomplished actor for many years, a dancer, storyteller and original song-writer with 3 cds in the pipes.

Vinod PrasannaBorn into one of India’s greatest flute-playing families, award-winning bansuri (flute) virtuoso, Vinod Prasanna, shines as an outstanding performer of authentic traditional and contemporary Indian music. Vinod’s emotive melodies, exquisite improvisations and divine flute song distinguish his performance of Indian classical, world and meditation music. Hailing from Varanasi, one of India’s holy cities, Vinod’s late grandfather, Pandit Vishnu Prasanna, introduced him to the art of bansuri playing. His uncle, Pandit Rajendra Prasanna also taught him and further inspired his playing. Vinod has performed and toured extensively throughout his homeland and overseas, including France, Japan, Germany and now, Australia. In 2006, Vinod won the prestigious Sahara All India Flute Recital Competition. Residing in Australia since 2008, Vinod is a performing and recording artist, teacher, craftsman and ambassador of the Bansuri. Vinod has more than 17 years of performing and teaching experience and continues a family legacy that celebrates more than two-and-a-half centuries of Indian music.

His latest musical collaborations include joining musical forces with world-class percussionist, David Jones, and guitarist, Evripides Evripidou, to form Brothers, an Indian Jazz fusion/ambient groove ensemble. In 2012, Vinod and Chinese guzheng player extraordinaire, Mindy Meng Wang, formed Journey to the West to recreate ancient Indian and Chinese cross-cultural links and to bring the music of both countries closer to western ears. In 2012, Vinod toured Australia with Tibetan nun and singer, Ani Choying, playing, amongst other venues, in the Sydney Opera House and the Melbourne Recital Hall, to ecstatic audiences.

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Brought to you by Monash Asia Institute, Monash Indigenous Centre and the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics at the Faculty of Arts, Monash University.

The project is supported by Melbourne’s UNESCO City of Literature Office, the Library at the Dock in the City of Melbourne and the National Organising Committee for Regional Pravasi Bhartiya Divas (Sydney 2013)

For stories and bios of the writers, please check: future.arts.monash.edu/literary-commons/

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