Singing Emptiness – Linda Hess

Description

In Singing Emptiness, two men, five centuries apart, make contact with each other through poetry, music and performance: Kumar Gandharva, the great twentieth-century Hindustani classical vocalist, sings the songs of Kabir, the great fifteenth-entury poet. Kabir composed poetry that evoked a space called nirguṇ or shunya—something without qualities or boundaries, empty—which challenged listeners to know it and to know themselves; and Gandharva sought the voice that could actually sing emptiness.

Singing Emptiness includes a substantial introductory essay, bilingual texts of 30 songs, and contributions by two renowned Indian writers, U. R. Ananthamurthy and Ashok Vajpeyi.