Music from India focus of history project

When Ameeta Kelekar is not conducting medical research at the University of Minnesota, she is engaged in one of her other passions: Music from her native India.

Although she does not play, Kelekar comes from a family of musicians, and over the past decade she has been instrumental in spreading the word around Minnesota about the beauty of Indian music -- most recently as president of the Indian Music Society of Minnesota (IMSOM).

This spring, as IMSOM prepares to start its 2011 music season, Kelekar will be participating in an oral history project with the Minnesota Historical Society about the organization and Indian music in the state.

The project will be done by summer and then placed at the Historical Society in St. Paul.

"We are doing it for the sheer love of music," said Kelekar, an assistant professor at the university's Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology.

The project is being conducted through the India Association of Minnesota, which received a $7,000 state Legacy grant through the Minnesota Historical Society.

Although the India Association covers all of the Twin Cities and the state, many of its leaders live in Dakota County and the south-metro area.

Kelekar is one of seven people being interviewed and recorded. IMSOM also will provide posters and hundreds of recordings from concerts it has put on over the decades, said Allalaghatta Pavan, former president of IMSOM.

The artists who have performed at IMSOM events over the years have included such legends as Ravi Shankar (sitar), Lalgudi Jayaraman (Carnatic violin), the late Bhimsen Joshi (Hindustani vocal) and the late M. L. Vasanthakumari (Carnatic vocalist).

"It's wonderful to go down in history," Kelekar said. "You want to make this music a permanent part of Minnesota."

The music project is part of a larger, decades-long collaboration between the Historical Society and the India Association to chronicle the history of Indian migration and culture.

"I think it's important to know how we were," said PG Narayanan, a former president of the India Association.

Narayanan estimates there are about 40,000 Indians in Minnesota. He said the first arrived in Minnesota in the 1950s or early 1960s, most often as graduate students attending universities.

The association has done five previous oral histories focusing on such things as first-generation immigrants, second-generation immigrants and Indians living in outstate Minnesota.

"This journey has been an eye-opener for the community," said Raj Menon, who is handling the music project for the India Association.

Pavan, who plays the tabla (hand drums), said music has played an important part in unity among Indians from all over the Midwest over the past 40 years, and IMSOM has been the pivotal force in that area since it was founded in 1980.

Since then, the group and the musicians who have performed in Minnesota have also influenced non-Indians. Kelekar points out that at most concerts, about half the audience consists of non-Indians.

"The society started as a way to connect back to India," Pavan said. "It documents the history of our culture. ... [But] the existence of the society is significant, not only for the Indian community but for the musical community at large."

Menon and other leaders of the India Association see the ongoing collaboration with the Historical Society as a way to preserve and share their culture with their children and their children's children.

"We are trying to capture as wide angle a view of the Indian community as possible," Menon said in an e-mail. "We want to make sure future generations can understand and appreciate the dedication and commitment of past leaders and patrons by recording the kind of struggles they had to go through."

Heron Marquez • 952-707-9994