Shama Rahman will perform her new album, Truth Be Told, live at London’s Southbank Centre at 6pm on Tuesday 24th May. It will be the first time that the cutting edge mi.mu glove system will be the centrepiece of a performance, allowing intuitive human movement to bring together music, visuals and dancers in an immersive, interactive performance.
Shama describes herself as a storyteller from the future, ambitiously keen to demonstrate just how the gloves may change the future of live performance. Incorporating gesture and motion detection, the mi.mu gloves offer an unprecedentedly intuitive approach to controlling music and visuals. Technology is no longer a barrier, but an enabler.
“The gloves sense your movements, allowing you to trigger samples and control music parameters directly with gestures,” says Rahman. “So the movements can be choreographed into a form of dance, leading and led by music. I know that my live interpretations of this album could open many doors and make people think about the future of music. That’s where I want to be.”
She is an accomplished sitarist, skilled in classical Indian music, yet takes this instrument across genres, highlighting its versatility with jazz, electronica, dub, world beats and more. All while holding a PhD in the Neuroscience of Musical Creativity. We will be chatting to Shama about how these two backgrounds influence her creative process in a few weeks.
Her new album, ‘Truth Be Told’ is due for release on 1st August. It’s a transformative journey, told through personal life experiences of childhood, finding identity through revolution, love, disillusionment and hope. Individual tracks travel across genres and are skilfully weaved together with interludes of spoken word, poetry and instrumentals.
Recorded completely live with both electronic and acoustic elements, it is the first ever full album to use mi.mu gloves throughout. A Kickstarter campaign is also underway to fund the live performance, the recording, and a documentary about the project. Support it here.
Shama’s last album, Fable:Time was championed by the likes of Gilles Peterson, Tom Robinson, BBC London, BBC Asian Network, The Arts Desk and more. For tickets and info about the Southbank performance, visit the website here.
Shama has delivered a fascinating TED talk on multidisciplinary creativity, demonstrating the exciting potential of such projects. Watch it here.
