Adam Torres and Srividya Venkatasubramanya discuss Indian performing arts.
Subscribe: iTunes / Spotify
Apply to be a guest on our podcast here
Show Notes:
How do you create a thriving Arts community? In this episode, Adam Torres and Srividya Venkatasubramanya, Executive Director at Ra-Ve Cultural Foundation, explore the thriving Indian performing arts community in Northwest Arkansas.
About Ra-Ve Cultural Foundation
Diversity is the essence of life. What would we be without our artists? In a world increasingly dependent on a screen, we at Ra-Ve Cultural Foundation seek to bring real world experiences to our little corner of the world here in Northwest Arkansas.Ra-Ve Cultural Foundation are a registered non-profit dedicated to bringing Indian performing arts to NWA
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on BE our guest to apply. All right, to today’s guest is Vidia Vanta Sub Mania, who is the executive director over at Rave Cultural Foundation.
Vidya, welcome to the show. Hi, Adam. Thank you. Oh, man. So we have one of my favorite topics here. We’re going to be talking about the arts and also collaboration. So I’m all about that. And so we’re going to have some fun here today, but we’ll start this episode the way that we start them off Srividya with what we like to call our Mission Matters Minute.
So at Mission Matters, our goal is to To amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, experts, you know, people out there with a mission, that’s what we do. Trivedia, what mission matters to you?
I want everybody to be together and be a big family. That’s my mission. That’s my personal mission. Particularly the organization that I started RAVE Cultural Foundation. It aims at celebrating Indian performing arts in Northwest Arkansas. And What better way to come together and learn about each other and become great friends than through art, right?
so So that is that is what I do. It’s amazing. What gave you what gave you the original idea for it for the foundation? Like how’d that come about? So moved here to the United States in 2001 and I I think as, as just an adult myself, you know, I had my own ways of keeping in touch with my roots, my heritage, my culture, my family, everybody, because when you are an immigrant, you know, your immediate family is not with you.
Right. You have to, you know, you start finding substitutes, the great substitutes, you know, I have some wonderful friends. But so when we started having children it shifted because children don’t engage online. You know, they don’t like, I remember my young children wouldn’t even talk to my parents or my husband’s parents, you know, on the phone, like they wouldn’t engage, you know, children need people in front of them.
You know, for sure. So, yeah. So then I thought, and that’s when I started asking more questions, you know, about, you know, okay, what am I doing as a parent? And how do I transfer, you know, continue my heritage with my children. And then I started. You know, I looked around and there weren’t too many opportunities, easiest music you can listen to is what is freely available, which is your popular music, right?
For sure. and especially with all the online, you know, the online world, it keeps moving things up that people are already engaging in. And what do you typically engage in? Mm hmm. The popular easy stuff, right? So the more cultural pieces you know, that you really want to engage with, connect with you know, you have to find them, you have to search for them, you have to look for them, and you have to spend time and effort and money building that environment and that that, that, that community and I started doing that in about 2000, I think I want to say 2010 is when I started doing, we moved in 2009 2008, I think we moved here to Bentonville, Arkansas.
And then I started, you know, and, and we had like minded friends, you know, who had very similar ideas. The problem always is you know, we all have starting trouble, it’s like, oh, what do we do? What do we do? That’s how entrepreneurs are. Yeah, that’s what we all do. We’re like, oh, we have this idea, but we have too many.
Go ahead. So, you know, I just, you know, started it. And, you know, I used to, my friend and I, we got together, we started organizing this. Annual event, which would just bring all the traditional music, Indian music and dance performers together. That was it. You know, we just had a one show. Are these local performers?
Are these people from around the country, the world, or I’m just curious how like the layout works. No, but that’s perfect. It was all of the above. Wow. yeah, we would try to bring you know, anybody locally. Like we, if we were like. Is anybody here who’d like to perform?
And we bring them on, and you’d be surprised. You said this is in Northwest Arkansas, right? Yeah. Yeah. So I was just, I was just going to ask you, are there a bunch of Indian performers there? I don’t know. I’ve never been to Northwest Arkansas. You’ll be surprised at what we find when you, you know, when you start looking, it’s somebody working for Walmart and they’ll contact us and say, Oh, you know what?
I learned you know, say Carnatic music or Hindustani music or something all my life. What a beautiful community. That’s amazing. Exactly. Because if you didn’t create this platform, that person would have never maybe had the way to have that expression of themselves and that cultural expression.
Exactly. Totally. We’ve had a lot of people who said that, you know, I never knew I could, get in touch with my, you know, what I learned all my life and put aside because I was working for corporate America or corporate, India, or whatever. And they are like, Oh my gosh, this is the best thing because, you know, why do you learn?
I mean, all these things, they, take a lifetime to learn. You know, these are not things you just go for one year, six months and you, you’re done. No, these are things you learn from the time you are five or six and you keep learning into your adult life. And the story always is, oh, and then I got married and then I moved to the U.
S. And then, you know, I didn’t know what to do with it. so I kind of was like, no, you learned, you know, and you spent all that time and energy and your parents supported you. I mean, you didn’t just do it by yourself either. Of course not. You know, There was a community that was supporting you at that time and you know, it’s like betraying that whole community investment, right?
If you don’t continue to do something with it. So, so that is where it started, you know, with we call that even Sargam and it used to you know, just do this and we would then sometimes invite is that happening now? You said it’s been happening for a while. You said, right? Yeah. So I started that in 2010.
And we took a break in 2017, and then in 2018, I started Rave Cultural Foundation. what are some of the plans for the foundation going forward? Like, what kind of events do you have, man? I might have to visit Northwest Arkansas. What’s going on? What’s next for the, on the agenda? Oh, absolutely.
You have to come to Northwest Arkansas and visit us because we are very busy. We, we average about, I want to say somewhere between 30 and 40, 45 events a year. Wow. Yes, they’re of all sizes and types, but it’s become a full blown like production because I obviously there’s going to be the big core ones.
And, you know, all kinds of different ones in between. But, and I feel like it’s become if it hasn’t a cultural institution that other people can connect with. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that is one of the big focus with Rave Cultural Foundation, which you won’t really find anywhere else, which is that we are not just about promoting Indian performing arts.
We do that with the, you know, we always see that through the lens of How can we bring people together? How can I have someone who keeps saying that, Oh, I don’t know anything about Indian music. And I’m like, okay, how can you learn more about Indian music and become a patron or become someone who enjoys it?
Because it is amazing music, you know, it’s beautiful music. And the only reason you don’t know about it is because you’ve never been to a concert or you’ve just never heard it. Because like I was saying earlier, everything online, now we, everybody lives online. And then. What keeps showing up to you is what you already like and comment, you know, so you never get to real unless you make a very focused attempt, a very intentional choice to go and follow some other organization or some other musician, you know, you would never really get to hear.
that kind of music or watch that kind of dance. So we are very particular about that, collaboration of working together. How can we, one question is how do we connect the current generation with our traditional arts? and obviously that current generation is very, very diverse, you know, and my daughter, my children, they both grew up here in Northwest Arkansas in Bentonville and their friends are from all over the world.
You know, and when they learned you know, Indian music and dance, my daughter learned Carnatic violin and Bharatanatyam, which is a traditional dance form, and my son learns an Indian drum called the Mridangam, and you know, as they learned that, and they tried to share it with their friends, It was hard.
It was not easy because the friends didn’t really understand. They didn’t have exposure to that kind of music and history. So, we started Rave because of all that, you know, how do we make that easier so that you can, that anybody can just come together, enjoy the music, enjoy the dance, connect with it, learn more and keep it alive for the next, you know, it survived a few thousand years.
hope it will survive the next few thousand years. Yeah, what’s one of your favorite events like for the year that you put on like this? So it’s really hard to pick, but I mean, that’s like asking what’s your favorite kid. It’s okay. That’s my next question. So just get ready for that one next. If you could only save one, no, we’re not going there.
So I’ll have to say it is the professional concert series. And what we do in that is one is we work with local Indian artists, and we challenge them to re think their performance in new ways with which they can connect with new audiences. So if you typically go to a, you know, a Bharatanatyam dancer, for example, and you tell her, Hey, you know, will you, can you come and give us a performance for 90 minutes?
And she’d be like, yeah, I’ll do a Margam. A Margam is basically set Repertoire, you know, of various pieces and it showcases the dance vocabulary beautifully and you’ll have a great time if you know what she’s really doing. Now, if you don’t know what she’s really doing, then you get a little lost, you know, you’re like, okay, what is she doing?
And so, and our own children, you know, growing up here in the US, they don’t understand a lot of those things. So now the challenge is how do we. Bring that Bharatanatyam, not without changing the form, because we have no business doing that, you know but without changing that, how can it is still a storytelling art form, you know?
So how do we continue to tell these stories and connect with with the audience? So recently, for example, just this year, we did a dance performance production. It drew dancers from the community. And the main performer choreographer was Megha Rao, who was a brilliant Bharatanatyam dancer here in Bentonville.
We are so lucky to have her here. And she did something called Thula, which means balance, you know, the weights and balances like the balance. Yeah. So Thula and what she talked about was the balance of the two sexes. Of male and female. And she divided the production into three parts and she started with a contemporary storytelling of you know, what does gender really look like in different contexts in today’s world.
And she used Bharatanatyam to express that. She even had transgender actor, you know, like from theater who came and showed, you know, what are the problems that transgender people face. Right. And she started from there. Then she went into the beautiful story of Shiva and Parvati, which is a very ancient set of stories revolving around the God and Goddess Shiva and Parvati, because they have a very unique form, which is called Ardhanari, which is Ardhanarishvara, which is basically Shiva and Parvati in one human form, but half male and half female.
Right. And then she went on to this and she finished it with this beautiful grand story we have in our you know, mythology of the goddess who is called upon to destroy this demon who’s been creating all sorts of havoc. And she is empowered by all the gods. So she’s a female empowered by A lot of men, but it is she who goes and kills this you know, demon and not the men.
Like the men can’t get the job done. So they need a woman, you know, so, and then, you know, it sounds about right now. And she finished by going back to the contemporary life, you know, to show how, yes, you know, It is possible for us all to live together because we have these stories from time immemorial which tell us all these things, but we just don’t pay attention.
And she retold the whole thing. Everybody was on their feet. I mean, we had a sold out house of more than like almost 300, 200 and odd people there in that theater watching this, that lighting was brilliant and the music was also, you And we had brought it here, it was amazing, and that is, and everybody enjoyed it even more because a lot of the people on stage were from the local community, you know, this was not just something that we you know, just brought in from somewhere else or something.
it took almost more than a year to plan it, to choreograph it, to practice it, to bring all the details together. Production, this is not like you just. It’s not a, I mean, it is a community gathering of sorts, but it’s a, it’s a production. It’s different. Yeah. Yes. Wow. Through the professional concert series.
That’s what we try to do. You know, we reach out to local artists, but it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to be Indian. You know, that point is not that because dance and music, you know, they transcend. Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. So, so that’s the whole point. Wow, that’s I’ll tell you one thing.
I can hear your passion for it. I can hear how exciting and it must be exciting. Like, how do you feel personally after all these, like, I think you said it was 2014. So, you know, a decade into this project and this foundation and to be able to bring together and put together like experiences like that.
So, what started with, and I like when entrepreneurs or community organizers do anything like this, they’re starting with a problem they’re trying to solve for themselves. In your case, it was, you know, I don’t have to Lose some of my culture or heritage. And I, my kids can understand some of these things, if it doesn’t exist now, I got to bring it here.
I got to make this happen, which you’re doing. And now it’s grown into this phenomenon in your area. Like, how do you feel about that? It is I don’t personally see it as, you know, something out of the world, because for me, it’s, it’s part of me, and it’s my day to day, you know, it’s who I am. So I don’t see it as, you Like something out there kind of a thing.
It’s just for me every day. I wake up and I’m like, okay, what do I do today? Oh, I need to get this done and I need to work with that person that person’s not replying to my emails You know, I need to find a way to talk to them or so. It’s just a day to day building towards this goal constantly, you know, and I have my you know, I have my high days and my low days.
And, you know, all that is just part of it. There are days I just have to like switch off the computer and go like, no, I just need to take a break because it’s frustrating. Yeah, it’s just totally frustrating. And, and you know, challenges are always there and they need to be, you know, to, to find, to keep digging in yourself to find the physical and mental strength to keep moving forward.
I think, I think that is what I really value because I think this process has taught me so much about who I am and What kind of a person I am, I think that is the biggest thing. I think I’ve grown so much since 2018. I mean, even before that, when I, when we had started the annual event, but I think it’s truly, you know, when people say, you know, it’s the hard knocks in life that.
You know, make you stronger. And that’s so true, because really the number of doors that get shut in my face, the number of people who are just too busy to talk to me, the number of times you just don’t, it’s finding the money. I mean, people don’t want to give it. It’s so funny. You know, there are Indians who don’t want to support their own culture.
There are people who believe in diversity and equity and they don’t support and it’s a mess. Yeah. and I mean, that’s in any business or in anything, it just comes down to like people, people ask, no, you’re serious, right? Like they have to know that you’re committed in what you’re doing.
They have to know. to know that like you believe in it and you’re not just another person who’s starting something that’s not going to be around. So you kind of have to pay your dues, right? And that’s just the process. Exactly. when I started this show, I’ll tell you, I was begging people, please come on the show, please.
And I say this very humbly, but we had over 30, 000 applications to come on the show last year. So now it’s changed, but that’s eight years later, you know, And I say this also for the entrepreneurs that are listening, because, you know, if they’re going through it right now or somebody, they have this idea and maybe they’re, you know, they’re in year one or year two, I can’t imagine what that was like for you in year one, like when you’re like, I have this idea, I want to do this, like, I’m guessing everybody wasn’t like, Oh, of course we’ll fund you.
That’s the best idea in the world. Let’s give her, is that how it happened for you? Is that what happened? and that’s exactly the point, you know, for every, you know, 20, 30 people who said no, there was one person who said, you know what, I really don’t know much about this, but I’m going to help you. I’m going to help you in whatever way I can.
And those are the people that, you know, that’s a small group, but it’s growing. And that’s it. I keep focusing on that. You know, every, every time I, I get knocked down, I just look back and look at all that group that’s cheering me on. And that’s it. And then I move on, you know, and I, One more day, one more solution, one more way to make this better and easier.
I think a lot of times it’s just, you know, not really not really knowing, you know, a lot of, like a lot of people in the Indian community, for example they don’t know what it means to be a board member, you know, on a nonprofit organization, you know, they don’t understand. Well, we’re not, we’re not born with this knowledge.
It’s true. Exactly. Exactly. We take things for granted when we learn them, but it is true. It’s just like, Oh yeah, like it becomes common knowledge after a while, but I know I didn’t come out of the womb like, Oh, bored. I think I’ll be a board member one day. Guarantee. My dad was a board member. My great grandfather was a board member.
yeah, that’s the point, yes, and that’s it. for saving that one, Shividya.
Oh, I think that’s a great way to end it. if somebody’s listening to this, Shividya, and they want to learn more about Rave Culture Foundation, how do they do that? Says, go to our website, rave cultural foundation.org. We are also available on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Just search for Ra hyen, VE Cultural Foundation. You’ll find us and follow us. Sign up for our newsletter. Stay in touch. Keep supporting us. Thank you. Amazing. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll put that information in the show notes so that you can just click on the link and head right on over.
And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with us, this is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new entrepreneurs, new stories, new content. If this is your first time with us, again, we don’t want you Any of the upcoming episodes. So what do you got to do hit that subscribe button.
So you get the notification. And then when we bring on our next shows, you’ll get that notification and you will not miss out Sri Vidya. Thank you so much. This was so much fun and I’m so excited and proud for all the work you’re doing over at Rave Cultural Foundation and congratulations on creating a, an epicenter and a place that the community can come together and connect.
So thank you. Thank you so much, Adam, for having me.
