Tour was to begin in Washington, DC, next month.
By The American Bazaar Staff
WASHINGTON, DC: A month-long eight city tour of the US by the Bihar Brothers, acclaimed vocal exponents of Dhrupad music, has been canceled after the group was denied visas to travel by the interview officer at the United States embassy in New Delhi.
The group’s visa application was processed by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), but they did not clear the final hurdle in getting clearance to travel by the authorities in India.
The group comprised of Sanjeev Jha and Manish Kumar, vocal exponents of the Dhrupad, who are known as the Bihar Brothers, and they were to be accompanied by Ramesh Joshi on the pakhawaj (barrel-drum).
“Unfortunately, even though the Bihar Brothers’ visa application was approved in a timely fashion by USCIS in the US, the interviewing officer in India declined to approve the visa application,” Dr. Brian Q. Silver, Executive Director, International Music Associates, based in Washington, DC, wrote to The American Bazaar, adding that they hoped to reschedule another tour next fall.
“We very much regret having to cancel this very promising tour, but this decision by the U.S. Consular Office in India leaves us no choice. We hope to schedule another tour next fall,” wrote Silver.
The tour was being organized under the aegis of The Dhrupad Music Institute of America (DMIA), a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization. Interestingly, the US embassy in Indiai had no problems in giving clearance this summer for a concert tour and workshops in the US to the renowned Gundecha Brothers, who are the teachers of the Bihar Brothers. That tour too was organized by the DMIA.
The Bihar Brothers were scheduled to perform at the following venues: Washington D.C (Nov. 2); Wayne, NJ (Nov. 6); Chicago (Nov. 8); Seattle, WA (Nov. 12); San Francisco, CA (Nov. 15); Los Angeles, CA (Nov. 16); Boston, MA (Nov. 21); Wayne, NJ (Nov. 23) –
Jha, the elder of the two vocalists, has received his Bachelor’s and Masters degrees in Music from Banaras and Delhi Universities. He has performed at some of the most prestigious national concert and festival venues in India, including the Haridas Sangeet Samelan in Mumbai and the Sawai Gandharva festival in Pune. He has also appeared on nationwide television, and performed in 2013 with his teachers on a five-country tour of Singapore, the Philippines, Belgium, Argentina, and Brazil. He assisted in the founding, and remains one of the principle teachers, of the Dhrupad Sankula in Bangalore. He has also been teaching since 2009 at the Shriram Bharatiya Kalakendra in New Delhi, one of India’s most prominent music and dance academies.
Kumar received his B.A. and M.A. degrees in music from the I.K.S.V. Institute in Khairagarh, one of India’s leading music universities; he also received a national scholarship from the Government of India from 2009-11 to learn Dhrupad with the Gundecha Brothers. He has performed in numerous music festivals throughout India, and is teaching in Hyderabad at the branch of the Gundecha Brothers’ Dhrupad Sansthan.
Joshi, a senior disciple of Akhilesh Gundecha on the pakhawaj, has advanced degrees in Sanskrit and music, and has performed at such major venues, among others, as the Madras Music Academy, and the Sawai Gandharva (Pune) and Saptak (Ahmedabad) festivals, as well as under sponsorship of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations in New Delhi, in solo, and accompanying a wide range of India’s senior vocalists and instrumentalists.
Dhrupad is an ancient style of Indian classical music. The nature of Dhrupad is spiritual; seeking not to entertain, but to induce feelings of peace and contemplation in the listener. The word Dhrupad is derived from “Dhruva”, the steadfast North Star (Polaris) and “pada” meaning poetry. It is a form of music that traces its origin to chanting of the ancient text of Sama Veda. From this early chanting, millenniums ago, Dhrupad evolved into the sophisticated classical form of music, that it is today.
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Any idea why the visa was denied?