Background
“The Ganga, especially, is the river of India, beloved of her people, round which are intertwined her memories, her hopes and fears, her songs of triumph, her victories and defeats. She has been a symbol of India’s culture and civilisation, ever changing, ever flowing, and yet ever the same Ganga” Jawaharlal Nehru, First Prime Minister of India
2000 In Varanasii artist-photographer-film-maker Andrei Jewell met Deb Das Baul and recorded and filmed songs of the Baul on the rivers edge. Seeing the degradation of the river by pollution and the threatened way of life of traditional people underscored by a meeting with an acclaimed Brahmin Priest, Professor and Environmentalist V.B. Mishra. The birth of the project’s conceptual framework was formed.
2000 The Holiwater Project was created at the turn of the milllenium, when a group of international performance artists ( including. DJ-Percussionist Isaac Tucker-UK band ‘Spektrum’), led by Andrei, sailed up the Ganges in an old riverboat, recording the sights and sounds of the passing landscape along with Deb Das and his blind companion Kannai Baul. In Varanasi, they recorded with Pandit Vikash Maharaj, a highly accomplished maestro of the Sarod with Prabash, his son -a 14th generation tabla player.
2001 the collective attended the Maha Kumbh Mela and recorded further. These audio and visual recordings mapped the sounds of 60 million souls attending the ‘sangam’ for a sacred bath ( a confluence of 3 rivers – where the Tantric Kundalini tradition views this confluence as a virtual 3rd eye ) The recordings also formed an audio work ( ‘Blind Man’s Bath’ ) by Andrei Jewell which in 2006 features in NY based art publication Visionaire.
The recordings also become a conceptual ‘offering’ from the river and the project. During the gathering, via the internet, these raw recordings found their way onto an album (‘The Kumbha Mela Experiment – East of the Ganges’) by a group of London based producers gathered together in their studio at the same time led by Youth (The Verve) Alex Patterson( The Orb) Tangerine Dream, Brother Culture and Dreadzone amongst others.
2002 Andrei connects Vikash and Prabash Maharaj in New Zealand with Tom Bailey, acclaimed UK producer (International Observer and former front man of The Thomson Twins) and James Pinker, ( percussionist for Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan / Michael Brook on ‘Realworld’ ) The collective project performs with Isaac Tucker in giant geodesic dome at the Splore festival as a mixture of dub and classical.
2003 Vikash and Prabash return to NZ once again and perform with Tom, James and Andrei a 3 way live video installation inside the Auckland Museum for the Sir Edmund Hillary Exhibition which forms the basis of the current album. The sound created is formatted by Andrei playing the visuals in slo-mo to the musicians who in turn create large sections of space as the show tracks ‘a cycle of a day in the life of the Ganga as she flows through Varanasi’. This forms the ‘score’ to not only the installation-show but acts as a format for Andrei co-writing a feature length story with published writer Gordon Chambers titled Holiwater. The story tracks the Baul musician’s Ganges pilgrimage from river mouth to mountain source as Deb Das aids his blind companion Kannai Baul’s search for lost family as a background to their involement with The Holiwater Project.
The Holiwater Project also performs that year at WOMAD Taranaki in a wooded glade and in a St Mathews Cathedral where Tom pulls out the stops and performs a raag on the massive pipe organ. The show is marked by a touching tribute to end the war gathering with Iraq.
The project also goes into the studio and records the basis of the album with Tom lending his deft skills in the post production of the album’s mesmerizing classical and contemporary sound. The raags are original compositions created by Vikash on the Sarod and accompanied by Tom on the Keyboards with James and Pabash backing with the rhythm section. Later that year female vocals are recorded on the Gange’s River bank in Varanasi with renown singer Revati Salkakar. The band also perform to critical acclaim a series of live shows in Varanasi, Delhi and Neemarana Fort, Rajasthan with mass media coverage to highlight the river’s water issues.
2004 Andrei is awarded on behalf of the project The Indian Avantika ‘National Award for Services to Humanity and The Environment’
2005 The as yet unpublished track ‘Revati’s Lament’ is picked up on the web by BBC music journalist Ian Peel writing for DJ Magazine and is voted No.1 download ahead of Basement Jaxx (#3) and the Black Eyed Peas (#5)
2006 The Holiwater Project is featured on global eco TV series, Eco 4 The World and is invited to attend the 2nd Annual UNEP ‘Champions of the Earth’ Award in Singapore. Andrei also attends the Quest for Global Healing conference in Ubud, Bali where connections are made with global luminaries including Bishop Desmond Tutu.
Tom at the same time back in the UK forms a connection with the Jaipur Festival and the project is invited to perform in an empty fort above ‘the pink city’ in January 2007. Andrei and a film crew head out into the Rajasthan Desert and focus on the stories facing the area around the dire condition of Water as part of the installation-show’s content. This marks the project’s shift of focus from pollution, damming and glacial melt on the River Ganga to issues of drought, water rights and provision of the Rajasthan Desert- highlighting another window of environmental degradation which reflects water issues severely facing communities worldwide in an age of rapid climate change.
2007 The Project is scheduled to finally release the Album, Documentary and Book as a Box-set worldwide mid year. The documentary accompanying the album & book is a process documentary tracking the progress of the project. As the Earth faces climate change, uncontrollable pollution, the depletion of resources and the resource wars forecast particularly concerning Water - the documentary’s narrative asks - ‘can we use the very tool of our destruction – technology – to turn things around in time? What can ancient wisdom tell us about the nature of reality and our relationship to the planet? Can Western advances be used in harmony with Eastern beliefs and systems? What happens if you combine technology with tradition? We set out to find out through the Holiwater story…