SAALT Summit

SAALT Rally in DC (SAALT.Org)

DC-based non-profit SAALT, the South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow, will be hosting the South Asian Summit March 16th through the 18th.

“It will be an opportunity for organizational leaders and community members around the country to engage with policymakers, federal agency representatives, South Asian advocates, and funders,” says SAALT’s Executive Director Deepa Iyer.

Workshop topics range from the practical (how to effectively build a grassroots movement) to sessions that focus on emerging policy issues (“restoring civil liberties” and “worker rights”).

For more information, and to find out how you can register, visit SAALT.org.

Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told

Celebrate the day after Valentine’s Day with Nina Paley’s Sitayana Sita Sings the Blues, the animated feature based on the ancient Indian epic the Ramayana, as told from Sita’s view. Expected to be completed by 2008, the feature includes jazz vocals from Annette Hanshaw and music from Rohan. Thursday’s screening at the Cinema Arts Centre in Long Island, NY, with Paley in person will be the most extensive show of the work-in-progress yet, featuring eleven musical episodes and the first public screening of the latest chapter, Agni Pariksha (Trial by Fire).

More:
Nina Paley: America’s Best-Loved Unknown Cartoonist
The Ramayana
The Ramayana in Wikipedia

Tunes in Saskatoon

Deesha on MTV Desi (MTVDesi.Com)

The Junos (Canada’s top music awards) have recognized desi singing sensation Deesha, by nominating her debut album Life Less Ordinary as one of the country’s best R & B/Soul records of the year.

As an Indo-Canadian woman, Deesha’s commitment to R&B—a musical tradition she finds “melodic and timeless”—has been challenged.

Last December, she told Nirali magazine she understands R & B music, and remains reluctant to lace her tracks with dhol beats. “Just because the blood that runs through my veins is Punjabi doesn’t mean the music that comes out of me is going to be—if it’s going to be honest.”

Read the full feature here.

The Juno Awards will be held on April 1st, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and televised live on CTV.

Dhol Di Awaz IX

With an emphasis on culture and tradition, Dhol Di Awaz brings bhangra dance groups from across North America together for performance and competition. Billed as the oldest bhangra competition on the west coast, DDA was formed nine years ago as a fundraiser by students from the Berkeley Student Sikh Association and put on in a high school gym with six teams, an audience of 300 and the students’ parents as supporters. It has grown to sell out increasingly larger venues with audiences of thousands, obtain business and media sponsors and feature dozens of accomplished bhangra groups. This year’s Dhol Di Awaz takes place February 24, in Cupertino, California.

Videos:
Surrey India Arts Club exhibition performance at DDA 2006
2005 DDA champions Florida’s PHULorida Bhangra
Jeeta Jatt, parody of Punjabi movies of the past

Ballads By Bali

Vandana Bali (Urban Peacock Studios)

Noted in the San Francisco Bay Times “10+ Best Shows of 2006,” and recently profiled by India Abroad, Vandana Bali is a classically-trained vocalist with a three-octave range and two albums who enjoys singing powerhouse songs just as much as she loves singing sultry, soothing standards. Her primary influences include Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Patti LuPone, Sam Harris and Barbra Streisand.

Born in India, she grew up in a New York household where she could hear legendary singer Lata Mangeshkar in one room and Streisand, The Police and the Beatles in the next. Bali feels the story-telling tradition of Indian music has drawn her to cabaret. After moving to California, she found that the air pollution wreaked havoc with her voice and started working with a nonprofit promoting clean air policies. Today she works in government, running clean vehicle and alternative fuel infrastructure programs.

In honor of her parents’ 43rd wedding anniversary she is kicking off 2007 with a show full of positive songs about love and life at Martuni’s Piano Bar on February 17, before heading out to London and L.A. with her “Power of Love” show. The show debuted last year, featuring 14 ballads and show tunes including the works of Steven Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Gershwin, and Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child.” Listen to samples of her high-powered voice online.

Patel Not To Be Envied

Roopal in Red (Style.Com)

“I wore the cute white dress and jacket that we picked out on Thursday, and it was soooo cold! Why would I rather look good than be warm? I got to the show and sat next to Meredith Melling Burke from Vogue and Bergdorf’s Roopal Patel, who both have back-to-back shows because of their jobs. I don’t envy them. I mean I love fashion, but it’s really exhausting to run around like that!!!”

So blogs socialite Fabiola Beracasa–daughter of fashion royalty Veronica Hearst–about being behind the scenes in New York this week, where collections by Vera Wang, Behnaz Sarafpour, and Donna Karan will be showcased (among others).

Be sure to check out Beracasa’s forthcoming entries by visiting New York magazine online–because um, it’s going to be, like, soooooo totally cool!!

PS: You know Roopal Patel as Bergdorf Goodman’s fashion director. Read about her in this Ego Magazine piece.

More about Roopal:
Patel gets promoted
Roopal’s “diary”
Gawker takes a jab, naturally

Christmas Cakes, Bagels and Begging Lepers

She’s a Bryn Mawr grad and account director who will tell you an assignment’s “due on Wednesday, when it’s really due on Friday.”

He’s from a family that likes to name its men after military figures (Rommel and Napoleon, Alexander and Bonaparte–you get the picture).

They met online and had their first date at Grand Central (where they both discovered they share a liking for bagels!). Now they’ve gotten married.

The New York Times’ Style section (c’mon, you know you read it too) featured handsome couple Frances Wu and Rommel Nobay on its front page yesterday. Wu, a Chinese-Japanese American woman from Virginia, moved to Japan seven years ago to find a husband. She was unsuccessful (“…there she heard herself heartlessly referred to as a Christmas cake…Who wants a Christmas cake after the 25th of December?”).

Dispirited, Wu, who is in her thirties, returned to New York where she joined an online dating site looking for a “tall Chinese man.”

Instead she found Nobay, who grew up in Kenya and the US to Goan parents. His first language is Swahili.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sunita Moonwalks Her Way Into History Books

Williams on Jan 31 (AP/NASA)

American astronaut Sunita Williams broke a world record yesterday, having spent more time walking around in space than any other woman.

According to an Associated Press report, Williams set the record–of 22 hours and 27 minutes–while upgrading the international space station’s cooling system.

This beats the previous women’s spacewalking record by over an hour.

More:
Blast off! Sunita Williams Heads Back to Space
We spoke to Williams back in 2004. Read the interview here.

Sawhney in LA (Come Rain or Shine)

Nitin Sawhney will be in LA next weekend. Catch him at the Temple Bar on February 10. Tickets are expected to sell out (so buy yours today).

Here’s the Rishi Rich remix of Rainfall to help tide you over until then:

Princes, Palaces & Passion

Lovers on a terrace, approx.1810.

Today marks the start of a new exhibit at the Asian Art Museum, Princes, Palaces, and Passion: The Art of India’s Mewar Kingdom. For the first time outside of India, an exhibition of 74 rare artworks ranging from the early 16th to early 20th centuries, conveys the artistic traditions of the legendary kingdom of Mewar and its capital city Udaipur in the Rajasthan region. Special events associated with this exhibit include performances by traditional storytellers from Rajasthan Mohan Bhopa and his wife Patashi, who were featured in New Yorker article “Homer in India,” a Kathak dance performance by the award-winning Chitresh Das dance company, and a lecture by Rahul Jain, a World Bank economist turned textile technologist who runs a weaving workshop.

The exhibit seeks to distinguish itself from other exhibits of art from Rajasthan by challenging the notion that Indian art from this period was produced by anonymous artists uninterested in leaving personal legacies, and by broadening the focus beyond courtly production of art to village and temple arts. It will bring together works from great individual Mewari painters Bakhta and his son Chokha, works by other known artists, and paintings that were displayed in shrines and private homes.