Pratyay Raha
SOUND BODY
MA IN COMPOSITION AND CREATIVE MUSIC PRACTICE – FINAL PROJECT
SOUND BODY is a video installation and study to explore the human body as an instrument of sound and movement. In the process investigating diverse kinds of relationships that can emerge between sound and movement. Also, visual layering and perspectives creates a bridge between sound and movement.
Nine Rasas (emotions that we encounter in daily life) have been chosen as a basis of these sound movement experiments. The nine emotions are together called Navarasam in ancient Indian performing tradition. Shringara (love/beauty), Hasya (laughter), Karuna (sorrow), Raudra (anger), Veera (heroism/courage), Bhayanaka (terror/fear), Bibhatsya (disgust), Adbutha (surprise/wonder) and Shantha (peace or tranquillity).
Main sound-movement body in the experiments:
Lenka Puzova
Additional sounds: Oscar Mascarenas, Qunfeng Lu, Calvin Mcmanus, William Troy, Tanmoy Pan, Pratyay Raha
Supervising Professors: Dr. Eoin Callery & Dr. Oscar Mascarenas
Full project: Screen 1 - video 1 Screen 2 - video 2
Duration: Video 1 - 23:13 mins, Video 2 - 23:07 mins
Year: 2021-2022
The Liminal Sense
Selected and presented at Forecast Forum, Berlin. This proposal was part of 18 selected projects from a pool of 600 applications from 100 countries. Mentored by experimental voice artist Rully Shabara, this project is a sonic exploration (work in progress) into notions such as Otherness, marginality, boundary, and the body in the Indigenous-culture spaces of West Bengal.
How and why do these spaces come to represent the Other? Using field recording and conversation with indigenous communities this project seeks to investigate the role of the human voice in Indigenous traditions. The Liminal Sense will meld different dialects, music, sound, text, and poetry to reimagine a space and time which was once brimming with creative impulses and rich heritage, and is now on the verge of extinction.
Coming soon is an album comprising of these language sounds and field recordings of human voice from indigenous cultures in West Bengal, India
Full Video: Click here
Duration: 20 mins
Year: 2022
The Dancing Scarf (String Quartet)
This composition was made as a part of the MA in composition and creative music practice, University of Limerick. It is inspired from the music of the Indian film maker Satyajit Ray and explores the nuances of a synthesis between Indian music and Western classical music.
Violin 1: Abigail Portillo
Violin 2: Hains Tooming
Viola: Eleanor Chapman
Cello: Isaac Bovyer
Composition: Pratyay Raha
Mentor: Dr. Eoin Callery, Kenneth Rice
Duration: 3:13 mins
Year: 2022
Clarity Collective
Clarity Collective is a group of contemporary and experimental composers comprised of Calvin McManus, Pratyay Raha, Qunfeng Lu and William Troy. The performance is a display of compositional techniques that were the ethos of learning outcomes of the MA in Composition and Creative Practice.
Video: Excerpt from a live performance
Year: 2022
Durga Pujo 2022 - A Sonic Journey
UNESCO declared Durga Puja an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, mentions in their website,
"Durga Puja is an annual festival celebrated in September or October, most notably in Kolkata, in West Bengal of India, but also in other parts of India and amongst the Bengali diaspora. It marks the ten-day worship of the Hindu mother-goddess Durga. In the months preceding the festival, small artisanal workshops sculpt images of Durga and her family using unfired clay pulled from the Ganga River.
Selected for broadcasting on an Framework Radio Network
This project sonic perspective of the festival and worship of Durga Pujo in the city of Kolkata (Eastern India) and capturing how the sonic character of the city changes drastically during this festival.
Ft.: Gandharvi Khatua & Pratyay Raha
Field Recording, Editing, Mixing: Pratyay Raha
Year: 2022
Polar Sounds Project
Selected as an artist to take part in Polar Sounds project
Polar Sounds is a unique project reimagining some of the little-heard sounds of the Arctic and Antarctic regions, reflecting on climate change and the evolving sounds of the polar seascapes.
Polar Sounds is a limited-edition project, with just 50 artists selected from across the world for participation.
Polar Sounds is a collaboration between Cities and Memory, the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity (HIFMB) and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI).
Year: 2022
Role of Music Activism (IPTA) in Indian Freedom Movement – Colonialism to a Post-Colonial Context
Selected and presented at ISA Science MDW, Vienna
1930-1950s: India saw the cultural expression of a wide spectrum of political sentiments and positions around imperialism, fascism, nationalism, and social transformation.
A critical transitional phase: from colonialism to a postcolonial context. Any history of this period is incomplete without an account of the cultural innovations made by the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) in the fields of drama, music, and dance. Unfortunately, music, a very important section of the IPTA’s creations has not been studied/analyzed as part of Indian history. The IPTA made an experiment of the movement by using songs against fascism known as “Songs of People’s War”.
Year: 2018
Presented at ISA Science 2018, Austria
Madhukori
Original music production for the theatre production 'Madhukori', Novel based theatre production by a critically acclaimed theatre company from Kolkata, Garia Krishti
This production is a complex and layered love story revolving around the life and journey of the protagonist Prithu Ghosh.
Novel: Buddhadeb Guha
Theatre adaptation and direction: Sitangshu Khatua
Music composition and sound design: Avigyan Khatua and Pratyay Raha
Duration: 150 mins
Year: 2018
Gorbhodharini
Original music production for the theatre production 'Gorbhodharini'. Novel based theatre production by a critically acclaimed theatre company from Kolkata, Garia Krishti
Gorbhodharini is a story of four revolutionary youths Ananda, Kalyan, Sudip, and Joyita who went to shake the consciousness of the feudal society.
Novel: Samaresh Majumder
Theatre adaptation and direction: Sitangshu Khatua
Music composition and sound design: Avigyan Khatua and Pratyay Raha
Duration: 150 mins
Year: 2021
Khela Jokhon
A documentary film that researches and explores the lost real world games of West Bengal, celebrating the importance of community. With the advent of virtual and computer games how children have become alone, individualistic and detached from community.
Music Direction: Pratyay Raha
Direction: Malyaban Ash
Duration: 60 mins
Year: 2019
Bhumchu
A documentary film that takes the viewer through the Buddhist festival of BHUMCHU, celebrating the importance and sacred role of water. It traces and dives deep into a journey of rendering gratitude to water and exploring how its conservation had been in the realm of the Tibetan philosophy and the Buddhist consciousness for centuries.
Production: DIPR Govt of Sikkim
Music composition and sound design: Pratyay Raha
Direction: Abanti Sinha
Duration: 40 mins
Year: 2021
Nothingness
Nothingness - Visual Music
The history of Visual music is vast and unique. It goes back to the time of Oskar Fischinger and Walter Ruttman. It is a way of experimenting with visual and sound, trying to create one with the rhythm and movement of the other.
Mentor: Dr. Eoin Callery
Additional sounds: Dr. Oscar Mascarenas, Qunfeng Lu, William Troy and Calvin Mcmanus
Composition, design, mixing, visual edit: Pratyay Raha
Duration: 5 mins (approx)
Year: 2021
The Externality of Inside
Teaser for the final live performance for the MA Contemporary Dance, Irish World Academy. The performance is a result of three months long "stream of consciousness generated movement improvisation", reflecting the process of encountering pregnancy for the first time. Led by the physical and mental changes that pregnancy carries, dealing with a "new" body as a dancer. The sounds were also made imagining the listening of the baby in the amniotic fluid. The final concept is based on perceiving the body as an environment to live in, being a whole world for someone else´s existence.
Dance, movement, video: Lenka Půžová
Sound: Pratyay Raha
Duration: 12 mins
Year: 2022
Reliver
Short screen dance based on a topic of temporality expressed by a metaphor of entering space from different perspectives, always leaving the previous one behind. The topic of the past that is always behind, carrying traces of our history that we leave in space, living and experiencing it. The sound is created on the basis of a sense of leaving, always carrying sounds from the past. Created during the MA Contemporary Dance Performance in the Irish World Academy, University of Limerick, 2022
Camera, Edit, Direction: Lenka Půžová
Sound: Pratyay Raha
Dancer: Grace Cuny
Duration: 7 mins
Year: 2022
Real-ity?
The solo opens up the topic of transience, the question of whether the world around us is real or it´s just a subjective illusion mediated by each of us. What exactly does the reality look like? How can we be sure that the top is up, the bottom is down, and the right is right? One tries to transfer the experience from the place one left to the place where one returned/where one moved, but some things are non-transferable from one place to another and indescribable by words. Do we then live a reality transformed by a reference to the past that still affects us, even though it is no longer a reality? Can reality be fake? Is the past even a reality? We have used voices in the whole piece, focussing more on the sound of voice rather than the meaning as here the space of the words are also a form of space which we leave behind or arrive to.
Text, voice, performance, concept: Lenka Půžová
Sound: Pratyay Raha
Duration: 7 mins
Year: 2022