COLOR YOUR MIND FESTIVAL Celebrate South Asian Traditional and Modern Arts

Co-Presented by

Yerba Beuna Gardens Festival and RootStock Arts

Saturday July 27th 2024

12:00PM - 5:00PM, FREE ADMISSION

ybgfestival.org

Yerba Buena Gardens, 745 Mission St, San Francisco, California 94103, United States

CYMFestival@rootstockarts.com

About Color Your Mind Festival

Alam Khan - Sarod, 3:30pm

Modern approaches to traditional South Asian music come into focus for this festival that brings together a cross-section of diverse performing artists to audiences and supporters of all ages.

Fill your mind with color at the ‘Color Your Mind Festival’ on July 27th 2024 with a triple bill of creative South Asian music and contemporary diasporic arts.

Roopa Mahadevan, 1:30pm

‘Color Your Mind’ is how the South Asian Classical music term raga or ragam translates to modern english. No term is as fundamentally important to contemporary classical Indian music, yet as deceptively elusive as rāga. Raga, (from the Sanskrit meaning “that which colors the mind”) is an organized musical mode that becomes the framework for improvisation. Ragas are indigenous to India, and provide the elemental structure of Indian classical music.

Sameer Gupta, 12:00pm

In conjunction with Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, RootStock Arts will present the first Color Your Mind Festival on Saturday July 27, 2024, to celebrate South Asian influenced contemporary creative music, and the arts overall. This free, family friendly, daytime festival will feature sets by Alam Khan, Roopa Mahadevan and Sameer Gupta, collaborative short improv sets with Classical Revolution SF and Leela Dance. Family friendly tents with visual artists, textiles, crafts, and more will be available throughout the event.

Gallery of Festival participants

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2024 Festival features the master of Sarod, Alam Khan. Along with accompanying his esteemed father, Alam’s inner voice began to emerge and grow with his solo career, which began in 1998. He has toured worldwide and established himself as Ali Akbar Khan’s true heir and the face of a new generation.

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2024 Festival features the captivating Roopa Mahadevan

Hailed as a “stirring voice” by the New York Times, Roopa Mahadevan is a leading second-generation Indian classical and crossover vocalist in the American diaspora, known for her powerful, emotive voice, versatility, and collaborative spirit.

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2024 Festival features Jupiter by Sameer Gupta. JUPITER is a shoe-gazer inspired vision of Indian classical music impressions and universal consciousness set across a luscious landscape of layers, long-samples of meditative Indian classical ragas and shimmering down-tempo dynamics.

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Alam Khan

Son of the legendary Sarod Maestro, Swara Samrat Ali Akbar Khan, Alam has been touching the heartsof audiences worldwide for many years. Since his initial training into the Maihar Seni Gharana at theage of seven, Alam was blessed to learn and live in the traditional style of Guru and student.Ali AkbarKhan’s careful crafting and guidance shows in each note as well as in Alam’s imaginative way ofexpressing the ancient ragas passed down from the courts of Emperor Akbar by Mian Tansen in the16th century.

Roopa Mahadevan

Mahadevan is a sought-after vocalist for new music and crossover ensembles around the country. She has been selected for residencies at the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity, Hedgebrook, and Ryder Farm, among others. When she is not performing, Roopa is a composer for dance/theater and a passionate teacher, sharing her love for the Carnatic music tradition and the liberatory power of improvisation.

Sameer Gupta

Known as one of the few percussionists simultaneously representing the traditions of American jazz on drum-set and Indian classical music on tabla, musician and composer Sameer Gupta is a co-founder of the non-profit collective Brooklyn Raga Massive, a group rooted in and inspired by Indian classical music and hailed by The New Yorker as the “leaders of the raga renaissance.” As an established voice in the jazz, world, and fusion music scenes, Gupta is recognized for melding traditional and modern improvisational styles, creating a distinct sound all his own.

A RootStock Arts Project