![Musician Keshav Batish [l] and his father Ashwin Batish in the KAZU studio](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/2121770/2147483647/strip/true/crop/5712x4284+0+0/resize/840x630!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F45%2F92%2F991053b840e7a387e22a93c11513%2Fimg-0271.jpg)
Keshav Batish comes from a legendary musical family that includes his father, sitar and tabla player Ashwin Batish, and his aunt Meena Batish, a singer.
Batish is in the qualification phase of his Doctor of Music Arts degree at UC Santa Cruz. Part of this qualification is a music recital that will take place at the UCSC Recital Hall on May 3. The recital is open to the public.
Batish and his father Ashwin recently performed at KAZU Studio B. They began with a musical piece called a raga.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Dylan Music: Wow, that was really great. What is. What is that? What did you just perform?
Keshav Batish: So this was a composition in Raag Todi, which is a morning raga.
DM: Oh, perfect.
KB: Good time to play it at the time of recording this. And so ragas have times of day that they're played. Also, they're associated with seasons and other emotional aspects. And so, you know, there's this richness behind each raga in the characteristic that it evokes.
DM: So what is the program you're doing? How is that going?
KB: So I'm in a program called a DMA. So it stands for Doctor of Musical Arts, and I'm in the qualifying phase of that, which means the recital is a part of that qualification, which means that if and when I pass that which is, a combination of this recital and an exam, I move towards the ability to complete a dissertation.
DM: Maybe you can just explain or describe what people can expect at the performance. It's open to the public?
KB: Absolutely. Open to the public. And the idea is that in the first half of the concert, there'll be a Hindustani music component, much like you'll hear demonstrated of myself on sitar and my dad on tabla.
And then in the second half will be a collection of compositions that are written for this research. The sitar and the Hindustani element is part of it. And the other part of it is my love of the music of people like John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, and contemporary people like you could say, the greats that come to mind are people like Wadada Leo Smith and Hafez Modirzadeh, a person who I’ve been able to work closely with for some years now. People who are working interdisciplinary and also working in between cultural traditions. So that's kind of the feeling that I'm composing through and composing with.
DM: And ‘Dad’ Batish—what do you learn from your son? You were saying you’ve learned stuff even today, musically…?
Ashwin Batish: Well, you know, I'm an observer and my observations are all about, you know, seeing my children grow up. They have learned from me, of course. And they've learned from their mother. They've learned from their aunts. But at the same time, we are constantly learning from our surroundings, our children. We learn and we grow. And I think this is really a part of what life is all about. I could never have said, you know, “I have a son who will play the sitar” when I didn't have one, but now I can.
DM: So do you want to go out with maybe a quick final performance?
KB: I'll play a short piece, “Raag Bhairavi.”
Keshav Batish and his father Ashwin will be performing at the UCSC recital hall on Friday, May 3r at 7:30pm.
UC Santa Cruz is one of KAZU's many business underwriters, but was not involved in this story.