 Thanks for your patience Welcome to culture hub. This is waves of gravity. Thanks for coming out It's the first in-person performance that we've had at culture hub since the onset of the pandemic here in New York So you're in a very select few We're trying to keep the audience numbers Down small but you know it really is meaningful to see real faces and in real Spaces, so thank you for being here and thank you for supporting a live performance I want to thank Our founding partners Lamama Experimental Theater Club In Korea And without them our programming just wouldn't be possible. So I just want to give them a big thanks I also want to thank the creative team of waves of gravity It's been a real pleasure working with them putting this together over this week And of course they've put in weeks and weeks and weeks before that but You'll get to meet all of them at the end of the evening. We'll have a short Q&A with the whole creative team So we would love it if you can stick around and if you have any questions about the show or the process That will happily answer them for you We're live streaming tonight So this is going out to a larger audience to expand the reach So hello everybody that's tuning in online I want to thank the New York City Artist Corps grants that are also helping make this possible that are really Trying to activate the city and bring back live performance in real space And of course all of the culture of funders as well A few practical things The fire exits we have a fire Exit out this back way here and also from whence you came Towards Third Street. It would be great if everyone can silence their devices anything that makes sound Yeah, and just put them away. We'll try to avoid photography and and In video and yeah devices that make noise and I think I Did everything and Without further ado, I'm gonna give you Neil Murgai Astronomer with a telescope searching for the Big Bang Continental drifter hyphenated hybridized Fused at the molecular level exploring stellar regions Bupping time and space You can try to hold the experience During this moment This moment This moment well, you can try We are all in a process of becoming Do you remember being a kid? Anybody? It's all a blur to me Time had a different pace back then For most people their childhood was isolated memories the moment You live in as a child is a much bigger percentage of all the moments you have lived All your life you just been a kid You don't have an experience of that larger time cycle. I have this concept about the gravity of the moment That's right. You can increase the weight of the moment and you can make time slow down Just like in Einstein's theory of general relativity, you know that one for sure anybody Well, basically the faster you're moving the slower time goes lower and the more gravity there is the slower time goes This is true My poetic take on Einstein's theory is that if something serious is happening or you Consciously increase the gravity the weight of the moment through your focus sound and attention You can actually slow down your experience Those gravity moments in life stick out fun sad serious You know what I'm talking about when you're a kid and you're having fun time can go so quickly Right, but then if you have that heavy moment happen as a kid That's heavy man. It can be really slow It can feel much slower than even now when I'm trying to slow down time Consciously I vaguely remember lying awake at night in our house in Westboro. Maybe being bored. I couldn't sleep I Remember lying in bed and time moving really slowly And there's this girl named Bell down I didn't like her or anything. It was just her name Bell down and her name just kept going through my head Bell down Bell down It was just kept going through my head and I was so bored I had these waves Bell down Bell down and it just took so long that time was just can I just go to sleep? Bell down Bell down Bell down We had some boredom What if we could create waves of gravity like when two black holes collide? literally when two black holes collide an actual Wave of gravity is formed that changes the fabric of space and time Another night there was a moment where I remember lying in bed Maybe playing with my Star Wars figures It was a similar state of melancholy and I was thinking about death somehow. It was it was vague And my dad came into my room. He said what are you doing? I said, I'm just thinking Said you're too young for that go have fun stop thinking. I didn't know then what would happen just a few months later I was 12 years old. I got a call from the hospital. It was late at night My dad was still out playing tennis. Now my mother worked at a hospital So I was surprised that they were asking for her They should have known that she was in India at that moment They asked for a neighbor who might be looking out for my brother and I moments later. I watched As he pulled into our driveway Walked up to the front door and that moment took forever And he told me that my father had passed from a heart attack Now I have these isolated images from them Some random memories certain ones stick out more than others. Oh And I have his LP collection the only media known to last and I have some of his mannerisms My family in India tell me that you know, I move like him. I even eat like him Move my hands like him So sometimes I wonder, you know, did he ever move like this you ever move like this Did he ever move like this? Did he ever move like this? Like this Maybe I should stop thinking For those who you don't know This is a sitar. I would say sitar was my calling at first Music had started to become my calling though calling me away from life as an engineering student That's right. I studied civil engineering because it seemed like the most civil thing to do at the time and I was in classes Calculus physics chemistry structural dynamics electricity and magnetism I Didn't do too well in the emag I had to do the remag Thankfully, I didn't have to do three mag Sorry mom. I was using my left brain in Class but outside of class. I was using my right brain playing guitar writing my own music and working at the radio station Where I learned about music from all over the world and hosted a show called Continental Drift It was only years later that I learned to refuse these parts of my brain and studying the science and Mathematics of sound and music after I graduated from Georgia Tech I went to India and decided to start learning sitar and you have to start with the basics really just the basics You have to start with sitting That's right. Just sitting on the ground Balance the sitar on the ball of your foot get toward your other foot around we sit on the ground not in a chair Right, so you have to learn to sit for long long periods of time and we develop a rigorous Discipline which is hard for me. I've never been all that discipline So rewarding when those strings sing back at you with ways of a harmonious overtone rich sound Prepare yourself mentally and physically You can't just sit down and practice six hours or even two hours a day. You have to dedicate lots of time Countless hours to imbibe the raga science Learning to do one thing for long stretches of time. I was finishing my MFA thesis my head was swimming in topics about Physics and metaphysics of sound and music. How can sound exist without time? How can time exist without sound? My head was deep in these concepts and it was the day before my MFA portfolio was due But then Cindy, can I speak with Neil? Cindy Lauper. I'm playing with Wycliffe on David Letterman tomorrow We want a sitar player and I heard you might be the guy. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I would love to I'm so glad to play some hip-hop Damn with all these bands playing hip-hop Okay, so are you union you got to be union for this gig? I Not union. Oh, hold on. Hold on. Let me talk to my manager. Hold on I'll join you. No problem. Okay, you don't have to be union. Okay, great It's so funny. You call me. I've been thinking about time and sound in your song time after time. See you tomorrow Okay, cool. Cool. All right. We'll see you tomorrow. That sounds good. All right Our next guest is a Grammy award-winning musician whose new EP is entitled from the hut to the projects to the mansion We you want a chair? Can we get you a chair? I'm sorry. I didn't curtain me. You need a chair. You're right. Okay. Yeah. No, he's Where are my man? He meant to be there. I don't know. That's where he's supposed to be That is where I was supposed to be I was definitely meant to be there, but the best part The best part was when we're plugging in our instruments and Paul Schaefer and the tonight show band we're playing this classic Bob Marley song that we all know and he looked at me through his sunglasses and He gave me this look that he'd given so many musicians over the years He said yeah, man, and he broke down the band So I just started playing along Saw the show Ignition seemed like everyone I had ever met contacted me afterwards with congratulations Overwhelming actually I was on Letterman. So now my music was success. Maybe even a good career choice Meanwhile when I asked Wyclef where the watch party was he said, I'll call you Okay, cool. Why clap? It was so fun Time was going so fast. I was 15 minutes of fame in four minutes of song. I Was the only sitar player to ever play on the David Letterman show It's true. I asked Paul Schaefer He was asking and he was also telling everybody right how you doing you guys still with me here That's really good here because this show is not just me. It's about you and me Your focused energy and attention create and shape the space Now has anybody ever heard of entrainment? anyone entrainment entrainment is A physical phenomenon Where like white waveforms they want to sync up to meet up? That's right physical phenomenon waveforms that are close to each other. They want to become synced up Maybe you've seen people walking in NYC and their arms and legs just starts swinging in unison or Maybe you're having a conversation with someone and the ideas are flowing and you're on the same wavelength man Or did you know? That the earth and moon are entrained such that we only see one face of the moon as It goes around the earth every 28 days Now that's Entrainment. I mean entrainment It's the process of like waveforms Sinking together now this drum is called DAF. It's a great tool for entraining minds It comes from Iran from Persia. In fact, I wanted to go to Iran once. I was traveling in India Wanted to go study DAF in Iran. I had a letter from Jalal Zulfan A great master of Persian music who had already accompanied in concerts of Persian classical and folk music So first I went to the Iranian Embassy and showed them the letter This won't work. You need a letter from your own embassy. Okay, so I went to the US Embassy I waited around for what seemed like forever Finally somebody shows up. I showed him the letter from Jalal Zulfanun Explained how I just wanted to go to Iran and study and I so I showed him the letter and I I just wanted to go to Iran I really need this. Can you get I need this letter from you to get my visa? That's what the Iranians told me What can we do? We don't show any such letters especially now for the Iranians. Oh, that's harsh Okay, so I go back to the Iranian Embassy Right and this time I brought my DAF so I showed them the letter again Right and I just tell them I want to go to Iran. I want to study the music and the culture It just wasn't working So in a flash of brilliance, I just started playing my drum. This is the Embassy of Iran not a concert hall Please leave now what I want to do now is stretch Anybody want to move in their seat get comfortable in their seat? Just move around maybe we could all take a deep breath together Because I want to tell you about the singing that you've been hearing me doing overtone singing In fact, all singing is all singing is overtone singing It's true In reality, we're always singing a Myriad dimensions of notes all the time. We just can't hear it We have we can't hear it and ourselves or in the voices of others We aren't aware of it I'm talking about overtones as a physical manifestation of all sounds all waveforms We need to listen with judicious attention To the mathematically aligned musical infinite harmonics the overtone Universe inside all waveforms all sounds like right here and right now The magic of the sitara sound is in the Joari the bridge That gives life to the sound that buzz you here is the overtones Infinite in number the life of the party and now with the voice Let's start with a hum, which is the best way to dampen all the overtones the overtones revealed Oh There's no effects here. I'll cut the reverb no effects here Just me the microphone and the sound built into our own voices. Oh But I also have My overtone warp tunnel right here, which is how I use what I used to travel around the universe The concentric rings represent different pitches different frequencies So you can see the overtones in the living color All the overtones in each note our voices contain all these dimensions if we could just learn to pull back the curtain How do you do this Neil you have to ask why do you do this Neil? That's right because why really slowly is Is oh a And that sweeps up to the overtones you can watch Primordial sound Ford distinct overtones from that. So remember this when you go home and practice in the bathroom No, really I used to go around New York City Looking for the most reverby echoey places I could find to practice like stairwells or the subway I would be singing at the top of my lungs and the subway would Train would come by the brakes would be screeching You know after place where it goes around the bend and the brakes are screeching right there And I'm singing even louder and louder and the my overtones are matching with the frequencies of the brakes And nobody can hear me because the train is so loud. Anybody else do that? I can't be the only one Okay, we got one over here. I've worked with these sounds for over 20 years And I found a lot of comfort and support and discovering the tones within the tones the overtones living in that sound the pure sound is a healing experience I made a song about the creation of the universe It's a kids song. I've written a lot of them over the years But this one is my first time. I wanted to make it simple about the sound That's the one And how that sound created the universe and the galaxy and the stars and planets and all of us Because we're all made from the same stardust This is the concept of the big bang the sound that created the universe How do you tell that story to a child? First there was the song I'm teaching it to my two-year-old daughter Lila She's so inspired by all things space She has to see the moon every night. She knows the names of the planets in order She wants to know about the galaxies. I Think I did something right there, but I was actually a much younger man in a different space and time And I did not realize it then but perhaps Perhaps I wrote this story for my first daughter Rihanna shortly after she was born Rihanna passed after only a few days of being on this planet This was almost 20 years ago. Rihanna was here for such a short time But she had such a huge impact on my life How can those few days of space and time feel so much longer than the days themselves? How can one person's life have so many ripples and waves throughout my much longer life ten years past? Losing the loved one is one of the heaviest moments you can go through and yet time just keeps marching on I learned lots about music and played hundreds of gigs Learned how to cook like a champ had long rafting trips through the Grand Canyon. I Even got my MFA and interdisciplinary arts and learned how to mix it all up And I have to get real we're talking about the black holes here my partner Jessica Who had such a zest for life and was so connected to earth and nature? Jessica She too past It's hard to hear and even harder to say but she was in a lot of pain And she took her own life It was ten years later that it only just started the process of trying to pull back See the larger picture like an astronomer through a telescope Searching for the big cycles of time on the small things you can see without a telescope Don't make sense But since then I have been making my own path forward and choosing to move on in time Through healing and sound and music and community with Brooklyn Raga massive Anybody know it? Yeah. Yeah, I thought so We literally started our weekly jam session the month after Jessica Pat It's been an ongoing music therapy a place to experiment with new ideas be with friends And also create space for other performers and lovers of Raga music today. We've been trying to slow down Feel the gravity of each moment But time is going to catch up with us Just like making improvisational music We don't know how it'll end until it's over can see them from the system, all the planets spinning, eternal and eternal. First there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, oh, everybody sing First there was the sound. You all still with me here? Yes. Alright. feeling okay? We'll just last forever. We'll make it last as long as possible but it's the last song and I'm just gonna set up for this here. I used to hear from people that my music was very sad well it made them sad maybe I was sad inside I'm not sure but it made them sad so I wanted a song about being too hopeful or hoping too hard sometimes having any hope at all I started to worry during the better times of lightness and joy that oh no there's another black hole just waiting around the corner so I've been afraid of hope but I hope for hope hope is a thing worth hoping for I am here with you and I wonder is getting together in a room full of people again during COVID a form of hope for sure vaccinated of course storytelling a form of hope is making music a form of hope is hope another word for healing space and time space and time we speed it up for the bad times vibrations sinking hearts and minds sending way warping space and time telescope exploring stellarians in the oral tradition overtones the meaning with this rendition transform the ways into positive energy it's always got to be you and me watch I bring back to the top you know get up though watch I bring back to the top first of all to my mom Indra Gill and my stepdad Barry Reeves who are here he actually filmed the the footage of the beach that you saw and to my wife Seema Lisa Pondia who created this beautiful artwork behind me and the videos all the videos produced and this wouldn't be possible without my good long-time friend and family member our director McCall Bianca Sino and give it up for the whole culture hub team we got Billy Deandra Jean the whole team they've kept music going through the pandemic and art and theater going live streaming and everything and big thanks to the City Artist Corps fund for supporting this here today and so many other great performances around the city and I'm yours truly Neil Marguerite thank you okay so we can have there is a lot that you could respond to you could respond to or question about there's a lot of tech on stage so sometimes in work culture hub which is like you know doing a lot of very forward-thinking state-of-the-art tech stuff during this whole time or about the or about the show itself and we have this is Seema Lisa Pandia who Neil give a shout out to who did the arts and animations Neil Marguerite we can give it up again for Neil yeah and I'm McCall Bianca Sino and I'm the director so anybody out there want to be passed a mic we're just a bunch of people streaming from a place in New York City please yeah you can just respond you hear me now the visuals were awesome really beautiful especially with your mumbling those light effects that were just like radiating like the flowers and things that was like my favorite but I think it was awesome so and the question for you is like so is the music for you like like except for like it's maybe it's like it's hard to are you just trying to be in a moment really or is there something more that you would like to achieve while doing it there's always tough to be in the moment and have this whole process and show but yes the answer is yes for sure I'm always trying to be in the moment especially for this show you know I it started as a pandemic project I've been looping practicing looping music for years using number of different apps and pedals and then at the beginning of the pandemic I started using Ableton live very sophisticated software and then slowly had a vision to for visuals to accompany that and to to create live video loops at the same time as I was creating live audio loops and I had been working with SEMA using her animations of the tabla art as some some backdrops for things I was doing and then you know I was doing the you know creating all the music and all the audio looping and the video looping and mixing and manipulating and I thought well I'm just not doing enough here so so then I called up Nicole and I said we need to add a story to this right and and she said well let's make it your own story I didn't even know what story I wanted to make and she said okay let's make it your own story and then we slowly developed that based on some things from my MFA and these concepts that I've had for a long time and to get back to your question yes you know trying to be trying to be in the moment within the certain framework that I have but kind of free to move around in that in certain ways yes I just want to say that sitar is like putting me in a moment like the moment you pull the string so that's something that just brings in the most they just wanted a thank you for responding to the visuals but yeah just also in parallel that that visual that you mentioned the one you know where there's like kind of a diagonal line that we see a lot that I call it my timeline but that also came about in in a moment you know we were I was experimenting with with kind of visual feedback loops just as like Niels also experimenting with live looping and also we saw some some visuals that he was doing with with live feedback creating you know kind of fractals basically but when you put a camera into you know to record what's coming out of the TV and it's kind of feeding back on itself what came out was also just a moment in in the chaos that we were able to capture to use for the for the space so I felt like that really just kind of blended really well thank you I'm glad you noticed that anybody else no pressure I think that through your work I feel that there is a lot of practice reminder of what how everything is connected I find us is lacking in normal everyday life among us but at the same time when the critical life situation happened is such an important key point to always go back to that same thought I wanted to know do your work and you practice so much with so much such a creative way how do you constantly say in your life reminding yourself that this is the key of all yeah I guess I developed into the into the sound practice and it's the sound it is it is a healing experience and I don't know about a key word but over time as I practice more and more and discover learned about sounds from around the world and overtones singing and the science and mathematics of it you know there's a lot there's a lot of comfort there and and and learning about you know that yes music is healing you know scientifically it changes the vibrations of the brain we can actually can shamans beat the drum at a certain tempo because they entrains the brain waves into the theta wave state that is the state for meditation and and relaxation deep deep deep relaxation so they beat the drum doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom do this beat 48 beats per second basically and it literally entrains our minds to go into that that receptive but meditative state yeah thank you I have a question from the video stream I have a question from the video stream from Yolini dream Yolini says yay could you speak more to the concept of black holes colliding and the relationship of gravity yeah literally black holes are the biggest gravity things in existence right and they're so powerful that when they collide we just sang about it but but this is like it's really true black holes collide they send out waves of gravity and we we've recently been a that's something that Einstein predicted a long time ago but in the last I think five or six years we started to to measure it through these big miles long lasers and then there's like one laser going this way and one laser going this way and you know the time that they take if it can be changed just by like a fraction just infinitesimal fraction but through that they can actually know where the black hole is you know where this collision is happening they can find it and maybe even the size of the black holes I don't understand all that part of it but but you know gravity Einstein says that that gravity slows down time right heavy gravity slows down time are you going really fast time is slowed down so in a black hole time will go very slowly but you know when they collide they send out they send out the waves so what if we could have so much intention behind our purpose and whatever it is that we're doing that we create our own wave of gravity and flip it and turn it into a positive energy force that's the question I want to find out one day any other last question or thought anybody comments suggestions observations observation that's space and time just a quick comment I mean I don't know that I understand everything in terms of I know that I don't understand everything in terms of the science and the mathematics behind it but I just want to say I feel like y'all have done such an excellent job of expiry experientially you know kind of conveying the the feeling of how much more there is and you know getting us all here in the moment and and training our energy waves and it's just really beautiful way to kind of I think communicate probably a lot of what you know even if we don't understand it all literally I think you've just done a wonderful job of bringing us all into it and sharing it so thank you for that thank you I appreciate that thank you yeah I don't understand it all either especially the mathematics of it but but they've proven it so I'm accepting it in fact you know and I'll take my own poetic take on it so that's a lot that's it thank you all so much for being here we're gonna take this show to hopefully like lots of places and tour the show so please support us and share it this will be archived you can go and share it with all your friends and tell everyone else about it and this is our last night so big thanks to Seema for putting up with me and putting this and McColl for for putting and the team culture hub thank you all