Ilo Toerkell: ganavya, your new record is titled Daughter of a Temple. What is the story behind that name?
ganavya: I feel like the truth behind it is more subtle than my language can hold. So, instead of giving you a direct answer, I can only tell you a story. Hinduism, or Sanātana Dharma, is the religion that my parents largely practice. They don’t think of it as a religion but rather as a set of grammars of being. In Sanātana Dharma there are four stages of life. There’s the first stage where you’re a student of life, Brahmacharya. The second stage is where you build a household, and you live a material life. One of the last stages is called Vānprasthya. That is where you go to the forest, and renounce everything that you have. For better or for worse, I felt like I was witnessing my parents withdrawing into the forest, which is what that phrase actually means, Vānprasthya. I don’t mean that literally, I mean an internal forest.
My parents were looking to buy an old house that they wanted to rebuild and make an ashram. The word ashram in its simplest form means sanctuary. Every ashram in our traditions is connected to a temple. A temple can be different things. It can be uḷḷuṟai which is a Tamil word for the inner landscape, it can be temples in our hearts, it can be building literal temples, or it can be a kitchen table that welcomes anyone who needs food. My parents almost bought this place. I remember looking at my father and my mother and asking: You know this is not a small undertaking, how could you choose this? And they answered very softly: What is life if not to build temples? They believed that it is not the physical thing that is the temple, but it is the effort itself that is the temple we are building. I am their daughter.
There is something gentle about saying daughter. You’re positioning yourself also as a child. We are the children of divine effort. I think this is where it [the title] comes from.
Daughter of a Temple
Your parents played a key role in how you got into music. Both of them have musical backgrounds and as a child, you were trained in South Asian devotional music and Sampradāya pilgrimage music tradition. Now, Daughter of a Temple features your father on the song “OM NAMAH SIVAYA”. It seems like a full-circle moment.
I am a musician because of many different reasons. But I think the driving force behind it was actually my mother, who also sings on the record. It was my mother’s desire to become a musician. When I was a child, we went to India, and I trained so intensively that I stopped going to school at some point. I’m very grateful for my upbringing, but one of the things that I wish was different is that I lost a lot of time with my father. I couldn’t spend much time with him because I was dropped into training. I missed my father, who was also my best friend as a child, for so many years. By the time I came back, he couldn’t recognize me, and I couldn’t recognize him. At this point, I’d like to get to know my father as a friend. As a friend, I can say, the man named Ganesan Doraiswamy loves to sing.
I believe we are all limbs of the same body, every single one of us. My parents are part of the same expression of this pre-manifested divine force of love. So many of us are forced to live lives past the grammars of our parents. I don’t have the words to describe the new worlds I’m living in to my parents but I can take them along with me. That is what I am doing on this record. Thankfully everyone at the label LEITER as well as my collaborators were so open and gentle with them.
Transcending Grammars
You mentioned grammars in our conversation, and you also shared on Instagram: “I sing so I can transcend our known grammars.” How did you get to that point where you were able to transcend the grammars?
I don’t think I necessarily got to the point. The ocean of life has its own current and it just pushes us into places. We can swim, or we can resist it. But either way, you’ll be moved along. I barely understand any of it, but I suspect that the true grammar that transcends all our known ways of being is not linear. There is no forward, there is no backward, there is no above, higher, lower, below. It just is.
The grammars that you just spoke of, how do they apply to music and this record in particular?
There’s a community of Micronesian seafarers who navigate based on their position to islands called etak-s. They know where they are in relation to all of these different islands. To me, that’s a very powerful image, because that’s how many of us navigate aesthetic islands – also in music. Our worlds are not always in conversation with each other. Some people travel between these islands, but largely, each island has its own things that matter and its own grammars. I hope to find ways of being in conversation with people in between islands. I have accepted that it cannot be through language, not even a shared or musical language, but rather a way of being that emanates love. Most of us who travel between these different aesthetic islands, that’s what we do. With Daughter of a Temple, we want to create a joint utterance that contains all our grammars.
Building a Village
You spoke of collaborating with others sharing space and grammar, yet I read that this record is also inspired by loneliness.
I wouldn’t say it was inspired by loneliness. I was asked by the wonderful writer who does the press releases for LEITER what the impetus behind the record was. On that particular day, the answer was loneliness. If I’m being completely honest right now, it is probably still true. Because what is it that we’re seeking? We’re all looking towards the principle of village. We want to know where the elders are, where the little ones are, who will feed us when we get sick and who needs feeding. We are seeking a way out of loneliness ultimately looking for togetherness. That holds true for the record still.
Do you feel like you were able to build a small part of that village by making this album?
Yes, if I could summarize the entire experience of the album, this one week when we had multiple houses all rented in the same set of streets, it was a temporary village of sorts. We ate together, we prayed together, we made music together. The songs on the album are slivers of so much more. I was on tour recently in the States and I walked into a restaurant in Chicago to get a quick meal right before the show and I saw a table full of people who had actually met at Daughter of a Temple. They had kept in touch and were still eating together. I think people stayed in touch because in part we built that temporary village.
Photo by Ricky Weaver
Do you think music has a special power to connect people and ease loneliness?
Honestly? No, I don’t. I think everything is equally potent and beautiful and sacred. If we wanted to, we could transcend, go into a trance, by collective gardening. We just choose not to. Music does have a certain set of conveniences that allows it to do this function. But no, if we wanted to, we could all dance together, we could garden together, we could cook together, we could paint together. More than music, I would say singing together is a special way to connect and everybody can sing.
Your voice has been accompanied by many others: singers, artists, musicians, instruments, places. Do you have a favorite collaborator for your voice?
For my voice to come out in its full form, I think the people on the other end need to have a kind of sensitivity to it. There’s this track called “ami pana so’dras”. It’s a quiet song that is very important to me. When we recorded it, there were just two people on the other end: Nils and Felix from LEITER. The sound was just one singular drone made by a glass harmonica. That’s all I needed for my full voice to come out. That particular evening, in that one moment, we recorded the entire piece in one take. I think moments like these are born when we have care. I don’t even know if I would say careful listening, just care. The right kind of care is my answer.
Daughter of a Temple by ganavya is out now via LEITER. Stay up to date with the artist via her Instagram and website.