Arts Division
Mr.
Graduate
Feminist Studies Department
Music Center
Music Center
Balakrishnan Raghavan is an accomplished musician, researcher, and educator. He is a doctoral candidate in Cross-Cultural Musicology with a designated emphasis in Feminist Studies and a Graduate Pedagogy Fellow at the University of California Santa Cruz. Bala's work focuses on oral traditions of music across the Indian subcontinent, with an emphasis on the politics of spirituality, South Asian performing traditions, caste, gender, and sexuality. Bala trained for over twenty years in traditional vocal music. With over ten years of interdisciplinary performance experience, he attempts to re-imagine the many ways of looking at traditional music from India, centering the marginalized experience at the intersection of song, poetry, sexuality, and personal narrative.
Indian Music
Traditional Musics
South Asia
World Music
Women in Music
Spirituals
Translation
2025 Ways of Invocation: Longing for Water. Water Ways, Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts, Tallahassee. Link
2024 Karnatik Musics Celestial Compositions, Sound Scene Festival, Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C. Link
2023 Annanmar Katai - a Tamil Oral Epic, Virtual Museum of Images and Sounds, Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology, American Institute for Indian Studies, Delhi. Link
Performing Experience (Selected)
2024 Music composition and performance for Delhi Crafts Council Exhibition at the India International Center, New Delhi.
2024 Abhinaya Somatics, with dancer Navtej Johar, Rtambara, Kochi, India
2024 Red Earth Moon Stone, jazz improvisation trio, 360 Record Shop, New York.
2024 At Odds with Even Love. Musical-Storytelling through queer letters and Amorous South Indian Classical Compositions. The University of Michigan.
2023 At Odds with Even Love. Musical-Storytelling through queer letters and Amorous South Indian Classical Compositions. Venues/Organizations: Bangalore International Center, Bangalore; Ashoka University, Delhi NCR; UCLA, California; Indexical, Santa Cruz, California.
2021–23 Collaborated and performed with Bharatanatyam dancer Navtej Johar for the British Council-funded India–Wales Project, Ashoka University, DAG Museum, and Goethe Institute.
2023 James Tenny: Postal Pieces, Rodrigo Barriga Ensemble, UCSC Music Center.
2023 Composer and Vocalist for visual artist Seema Kohli’s experiential performance "My Cloak of Color, Air, and Song," Bikaner House, Delhi.
2023 Nakatani Gong Orchestra with percussionist-composer Tatsuya Nakatani, Indexical, Santa Cruz. CA.
2022 At Odds with Even Love. Musical-Storytelling through queer letters and Amorous South Indian Classical Compositions. India: Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, and Pune. USA: Upstate New York, Santa Cruz.
2022 Red Earth, Moon Stone, Improvisation trio with Berlin-based Saxophonist Camilla Nebbia; New York-based Accordion player Simone Baron. New York.
2022 Art Omi: Music Concert, Composer and Vocalist. Music in the Park. Upstate New York.
2022 Cuban Son Performance with Prof. Russell Rodriguez. UCSC Music Center, Santa Cruz.
2021 Carnatic Music Concert. Margazhi Music Festival, Srivari Temple, New Jersey.
2021-22 Lonely Hearts Club. Online documentary theatre performance. Goethe Institute, Mumbai (2021, 2022); Love, Sex and Data Conference, Mumbai (2022); Center for the Study of Globalization and Culture, Hong Kong University (2022).
2019-21 At Odds with Even Love. Musical-Storytelling through queer letters and Amorous South Indian Classical Compositions. India: Chennai (2019), Mumbai (2020), Pondicherry (2021); Nepal: Kathmandu (2019).
2020-21 The Five Elements Project. Carnatic music, stories, and mystic poetry in Tamil and Sanskrit. Tantrotsav Festival, Pondicherry (2020); Auroville Foundation (2021), India.
2021 Carnatic Music Concert, Auroville Foundation Day, Pondicherry, India.
2013-20 Carnatic Music Concert, Sursangam Classical Music Festival, BITS Pilani, Goa.
2019 Mystic and the Muse. Tagore Centre, Indian Embassy, Mexico City, Mexico.
2018-19 Rasamanjari. Supported by the Arts Council England. Bharatanatyam and Carnatic Music, Collaboration with Dr. Chamu Kuppuswamy. and Dr. Wendy J. Phillips-Rodriguez. Malleswaram Sessions, Bangalore (2018); Tagore Centre, Mexico City (2019); Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico City (2019).
2018 Composed and Performed for the Saint Vedanta Desika 750th Birth Anniversary at the British Parliament, UK.
2018 Songs of Kabir, YourQuote Language Festival, Bangalore.
2017 Abhinaya through the Ages. Bharatanatyam and Carnatic Music, Nehru Center, London, UK.
2017 Music of the Troubadours and Padams from South India, Idrisi Ensemble, London, UK.
Publications
2025 (under review) Raghavan, B. "Queering Pasts, Performing Futures: Rendering South Asia Heterodox Poem-Song as a Site for Queer Futurities." Queers from Concert Hall to Classroom. Contemporary Music Review.
2023 Ghosalkar, Anuja, et al. "The Lonely Hearts Club: A polyphonic reflection on the making of an erotica performance in India." Forum Modernes Theater, vol. 34 no. 2, 2023, p. 291-305.
2020 Raghavan, B. (2020). Engaging with the idea of a gurukulam in the 21st century. The Finnish Journal of Music Education, 23(1-2), 106-115.
2020 Raghavan, B. & Kuppuswamy C. (2020). Sampoorna rasa in Trinity compositions for dance. Contribution of Trinity, Central University of Tamilnadu, Thiruvarur, First Edition 2020, pp.30-42.
News media and magazine articles
2024 Hampapura V. et al. "Poetry: Five different translations of Shervin Hajipour’s Persian protest song ‘Baraye’," Scroll. 24 Oct, 2024. scroll.in/article/1074816/poetry-five-different-translations-of-shervin-hajipours-persian-protest-song-baraye
2019 “Applause in the Indian context.” Sruti Magazine Chennai, December 2019, Issue 423, pp. 68-69.
2018 “I am the Kintsugi.” Anthology of poems on ‘Surviving child sexual abuse.’ Muktha Foundation, Bangalore, India, pp. 38-44.
2017 Selection of Poems. Write Out Loud, The official poetry folio of Lahe Lahe, Volume 1, Issue 1, Bangalore, India, pp.62-67.
