Cherisse Moe

Shar­da Patasar has placed Trinidad and To­ba­go on the in­ter­na­tion­al map with her new piece, Au­dac­i­ty of Black Wa­ter. The track is in­clud­ed on Earth Ris­ing, Vol II: Mes­sages from the Pale Blue Dot, part of a three-vol­ume project com­mis­sioned by the UK arts or­gan­i­sa­tion, Ar­tan­gel. Patasar’s work stands out as a rare in­stru­men­tal orig­i­nat­ing from the Caribbean rather than In­dia—and the first sitar com­po­si­tion in the se­ries.

Re­leased last month, this in­stal­ment brings to­geth­er artistes from coun­tries like Bo­livia, France, Italy, and Chi­na.

The op­por­tu­ni­ty came through her long-stand­ing con­nec­tion with Al­ice Yard, an in­ter­na­tion­al res­i­den­cy part­ner for the project. With a back­ground span­ning Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture, cul­tur­al stud­ies, and In­di­an clas­si­cal mu­sic, mov­ing be­tween writ­ing, vi­su­al art, and sound felt com­plete­ly nat­ur­al. When Ar­tan­gel ap­proached Al­ice Yard for rec­om­men­da­tions, Patasar was put for­ward. She land­ed the com­mis­sion af­ter sub­mit­ting sam­ple record­ings—in­clud­ing a po­lit­i­cal piece cre­at­ed in 2022 to mark Trinidad and To­ba­go’s 60th In­de­pen­dence an­niver­sary.

Au­dac­i­ty of Black Wa­ter, she ex­plains, bridges fam­i­ly her­itage, his­tor­i­cal res­o­nance, and lo­cal cul­ture. The ini­tial draft be­gan with lines of po­et­ry ex­plor­ing Kālā Pāni. While tra­di­tion­al­ly linked to the In­di­an in­den­tured cross­ing, Patasar ap­plies the idea of “dark wa­ter” to all an­ces­tral ar­rivals in the Caribbean. She in­ter­weaves Kālā as black­ness, time (Kāl), and art (Kalā), treat­ing the di­as­po­ra as one of in­fi­nite cre­ative pos­si­bil­i­ties.

Un­con­cerned with strict cul­tur­al preser­va­tion, she us­es in­her­it­ed tra­di­tion as a mal­leable re­source to con­struct her own cre­ative worlds. The mu­sic is built on a folk song her grand­fa­ther sang, which her fa­ther lat­er used to teach her clas­si­cal ra­gas. The song car­ries a light, flir­ta­tious en­er­gy: “Hold meh hand gyul, meh fin­ger full ah gold ring.” Trans­lat­ing that the­atri­cal­i­ty from po­et­ry to melody, she drew on the ban­ter, pi­cong, and rhyth­mic speech pat­terns of Trinida­di­an life.

Com­posed and arranged by Patasar with pro­duc­tion and bass gui­tar by Joan­na Maria Hus­sain, the track be­gins with the phys­i­cal sound of the ocean and her breath be­fore push­ing the bound­aries of the in­stru­ment through rhyth­mic basslines, lay­ered string work, and an in­no­v­a­tive open­ing strum­ming tech­nique.

The al­bum was aired a few weeks ago on Jarvis Cock­er’s BBC Ra­dio 6 Mu­sic pro­gramme, though iron­i­cal­ly, she ini­tial­ly had no idea her piece was in­clud­ed. “I re­ceived an email say­ing that the al­bum was to be show­cased on his pro­gramme and that Ar­tan­gel would send me clips. Jarvis Cock­er is very well known in the in­die mu­sic cir­cle and al­so hap­pens to be one of the judges for the Book­er Prize this year, so I thought, ‘That’s very cool!’ I wasn’t think­ing mu­sic. I was sim­ply think­ing, ‘Oh, he’s a judge for the Book­er!’”

De­spite the land­mark achieve­ment, Patasar re­mains pret­ty mod­est. “Peo­ple are lis­ten­ing to it cur­rent­ly, but I have giv­en lit­tle thought to the in­ter­na­tion­al reach,” she ad­mits. “There’s the idea of a sitar from the Caribbean, which is a nov­el con­cept. I like it as a thought, but I’m not sure it has any re­al mean­ing to me.”

She sees the sitar as an in­her­it­ed lega­cy—both in­stru­ment and sound—passed down through her fa­ther, Mun­gal Patasar, the renowned Trinida­di­an sitarist, com­pos­er, and mas­ter of In­do-Caribbean fu­sion mu­sic. “It wasn’t some­thing forced on me,” she says. “I chose it as my own.”

Lis­ten close­ly, and you might won­der if her sitar is strict­ly In­di­an. But even when she plays with­in the clas­si­cal tra­di­tion, there is an un­mis­tak­able Trinida­di­an flavour in every note. “A more in­tu­itive ear hears it. Even if I can’t iden­ti­fy the dif­fer­ence, I say this con­fi­dent­ly be­cause it is based on sev­er­al in­stances of feed­back. To be a Caribbean sitarist is unique be­cause it is a re­gion that is al­so un­der­rep­re­sent­ed in this way. It is an­oth­er pock­et of the world that comes to the fore through the in­stru­ment and com­po­si­tions.”

Over the years, her re­la­tion­ship with the in­stru­ment has changed, mov­ing away from rigid clas­si­cal preser­va­tion to­ward a broad­er con­cep­tu­al prac­tice in­flu­enced great­ly by care­ful lis­ten­ing, ques­tion­ing, si­lence, and nav­i­gat­ing life’s un­cer­tain­ties. “Lis­ten­ing forms a large part of my artis­tic prac­tice,” she re­flects. “I have found Trinidad to be a space where there is very lit­tle lis­ten­ing hap­pen­ing, so I usu­al­ly pour ques­tions in­to cre­ative work. There is no sense to me in en­gag­ing with any­one who is not do­ing any deep lis­ten­ing, even to them­selves.”